The Future of Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs, Part 3

In the first two parts of this series, we took a look at some of the key findings in the Intuit Future of Small Business Report™, which was recently made available. In the final part of this series, we’ll take a look at the future face of entrepreneurs and the ways they are shifting from traditional employment. According to Intuit, additional report findings include:

• the line between small and large businesses will blur as more entrepreneurs form free-agent contracts with large companies as a natural response to the demise of lifetime employment.
• By 2017, free agents will thrive with less job security — they will have clients, not employers — but, in trade, will exert far more control over their time and working conditions.
• For some professionals, entrepreneurship will complement a corporate career, but not replace it. The reason: Corporations and government agencies will see the entrepreneurial spirit as key to innovation and will train promising candidates accordingly. As a result, professionals will spend their careers alternating between two related worlds, sometimes running their own businesses in the free market and at other times running a virtual business within a larger organization. Experience in the former will help bolster the latter.
• Entrepreneurial training will begin much earlier in life, with universities, secondary and vocational schools — and even some elementary schools — offering entrepreneurship as a mainstream subject. At the college level, the emphasis will widen, focusing not just on high-growth businesses backed by venture capital, but on small business ownership of all kinds.

As we all try to predict the future of our businesses and strategize for small business success, knowing how our business world is shifting can help us plan for growth and change.