The Entrepreneurial Mind

The good folks at the Institute for the Future in California have issued their third and final installment of the Future of Small Business reports. This project was funded by Intuit.

Today, there are 26 million small businesses in the U.S. that generate roughly $5 trillion in annual sales. If they were a country that would make them the 2nd largest economy in the world! Those numbers will continue to grow over the next decade as small businesses re-emerge as artisans with even more economic force.

Artisans, historically defined as skilled craftsmen who fashioned goods by hand, will re-emerge as an influential force in the coming decade. These next-gen artisans will craft their goods and shape the economy -- through upswings and downturns -- with an effect reaching far beyond their neighborhoods, or even their nations. They'll work differently than their medieval counterparts, combining brain with brawn as advances in technology and the reaches of globalization give them greater opportunities to succeed.

This series offers a fascinating look at the future of out entrepreneurial economy.

Here is a link to the second installment.

Here is a link to the first installment.