From Forbes, Elaine Pofeldt provides another excellent article on the furture of one-person businesses. She reports that one-person businesses will grow in the next ten years in part because of technological advances. Elaine writes:
Intuit just predicted in its Future of Small Business report that the number of small businesses in the U.S.—most of them solo operations—will grow from about 30 million in 2014 to about 42 million in 2026. The annual growth rate will rise to 3.3%, up from 2% annual growth from 2004 to 2014, according to the financial and accounting software company. Intuit prepared the report with Emergent Research, which studies independent work.
Many factors will drive the faster pace of growth, among them the expansion of online marketplaces; a proliferation of on-demand talent; the availability of cost effective online advertising; access to better business infrastructure, such as cloud computing; and the growing abundance of useful data, Intuit found. There were more than 280 on-demand companies in 2016, according to a new white paper by Manta, a social network for small business owners.
Consumer trends are also playing a role, with more Americans gravitating to niche products. For instance, craft breweries made up almost 20% of the beer market in 2015, up from less than 5% in 2008, said Alex Hood, vice president of product management for the company’s small business group.
As a result of these trends, the advantages big companies have because of economies of scale are shrinking. “Now small businesses can compete and be very flexible in how they scale up or scale down their business,” Hood said. “The cost structure big businesses used to use as an advantage is breaking down.”
Read the full story at Why Small Business Ownership Will Skyrocket In 10 Years — Especially By Solopreneurs
