Where Small Business Is Going

Intuit and the Institute for the Future recently released a new report on what the small business landscape will look like in 10 years. The study found three important trends that will define small businesses: the changing diversity of small business owners, the proliferation of personal businesses, and the emergence of entrepreneurial education.

Some of the findings include:

• Entrepreneurs will no longer be from the middle sector; but on "the edge."
  
  
• Future small business owners will not be from the middle of the age spectrum. There will be a surge of "elderpreneurs," or "second career entrepreneurs," in their 60s.
  
  
• Elderpreneurs will share the high growth sector with younger business owners that are born in the mid-1980s or later.
  
  
• Women-owned businesses will continue to flourish. The glass ceiling that has limited women's corporate career paths will send more women to the small business sector.
  
  
• "Mompreneurs" which describe working mothers, who are seeking an alternative to traditional employment and a way to combine work with parenthood, will also continue to expand.
  
  
• Both of these trends have been growing since the late '80s will continue through 2017 -- You go girls!
  
  
• Immigrant entrepreneurs will help drive a new wave of globalization. U.S. immigration policy and the outcome of the immigration debates will affect how this segment performs over the next decade.
  
  
• There will be a shift away from "traditional employment" and a surge in personal businesses.
  
  
• Personal businesses -- one person businesses with no employees -- have become an important part of the U.S. economy and will increase in number over the next decade.
  
  
• The growth will be driven by downsizing in larger companies and changes in technology.
  
  
• Many ex-corporate workers will become "free-agents," with less job security, but more flexibility.
  
  
• The third trend forecasts that "entrepreneurship" will be a widely adopted curriculum for educational and vocational institutions.
  
  
• The last decade has seen a rapid growth of university-level entrepreneurial training. The next decade will see the continuation of this trend, but will also see the growth of entrepreneurial training aimed at youth, mid-career professionals, artists and trades-people. The elements of entrepreneurship will become a mainstream subject helping to prepare our youth to be successful in the workforce.