Business Boom
While equal opportunity was fueling an entrepreneurial boom, the world of small business was changing in other ways as well.
Until the 1970s, franchising had been a rather limited and expensive route to business ownership. And before 1979, when the Uniform Franchise Offering Circular went into effect, it was also an industry rife with scams.
Today, there are more than 2,500 franchise companies, with business models that span 80 industries, from accounting to weight control. While most franchises used to involve operating a store, many franchises now can be started part time or from a kitchen table for $50,000 or less.
Home businesses, in general, began to evolve as well. As personal computers and printers got cheaper, home businesses of all kinds were able to grow from modest, usually one-person operations into sophisticated, high-earning businesses, says Rudy Lewis, president of the National Association of Home Based Businesses.
One of the cheap ways to get into business--often from home--had always been direct mail. In the 1970s and '80s, shipping, paper and printing costs were low, recalls John Schulte, president of the National Mail Order Association. The catalog industry boomed, going from $29 billion in sales in 1980 to $109 billion in 1999.
As paper and mailing costs soared, another option appeared: the internet. From the mid-'90s on, it was cheaper than ever to connect with buyers across the country or the globe.
Home businesses saw explosive growth, from about 6 million in 1984 to 23 million today, Lewis says. But the size and sophistication of home enterprises is even more impressive. With internet communications and research at their fingertips, he says, global businesses are routinely being run from home. Lewis' own home based companies do training in 20 countries, import eyeglass frames from China and develop condominiums, among other things.
"[Home businesses] accelerated in the late 1990s and 2000s and really became fashionable," Lewis says. "It used to be I'd say I had a home business, and people would look at me weird. Now they say, How can I do it?"
Getting Schooled
As more entrepreneurs began launching new enterprises, colleges and universities sensed a hunger for information. The institutions soon created courses and whole new training centers to help this new generation of entrepreneurs learn business skills. From the first MBA entrepreneurship program launched at the University of Southern California in 1971, entrepreneurship education grew fast.
By the early 1980s, more than 300 universities had courses in entrepreneurship and small business, the Baylor study found. Early entrepreneurship centers found an immediate and enthusiastic audience, says Rudy Lamone, founder of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, which opened in 1986. "We were just overwhelmed with phone calls and requests to come speak and to help solve entrepreneurial problems," he recalls. Networking breakfasts and workshops initiated by Dingman in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. corridor were mobbed, as hundreds of new and would-be business owners sought to learn from and do business with each other.
Today, more than 2,200 entrepreneurship courses are offered at nearly 1,600 schools nationwide, according to the Baylor study.
College campuses weren't the only places entrepreneurs could go for help, either. For instance, the SBA's Office of Women's Business Ownership, added in 1979, began testing the idea of women's business centers in 1988 to help women achieve business ownership. The initial half-dozen centers were so successful that nearly 100 centers now operate nationwide.
Whether you start a business in a skyscraper with big-money backers or in your bedroom with money from your savings accounts, you'll be able to pursue your dream of business ownership free from much of the conformity, prejudice and technological barriers of the past. There's no telling where the passion and drive of the next generation of entrepreneurs will take American business next.
Page
1 | 2