Better Business & Planning Practices

According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 1999 National Entrepreneurial Assessment for the USA:

* The United States has a birth rate of 14-16 ventures per 100 existing businesses, on par with Canada, and far ahead of birth rates for other countries. Roughly another two million U.S. businesses are started as self-employment entities, without employees. As many as 8.4 out of every 100 US adults -- 16 million Americans in all -- are starting businesses of their own.

* Small U.S. businesses (those with fewer than 500 workers) employ 53 percent of the private work force, account for 47 percent of sales and 51 percent of private sector GDP.

* Small businesses create the majority of new jobs. For example, 1.6 million, or 64%, of the 2.5 million new jobs created in 1996 were small business ventures. Since 1980, Fortune 500 companies have lost more than 5 million jobs while the United States as a whole has added 34 million new jobs.

* 7% of all new inventions occur at smaller companies.

* The populations of U.S., Canada, and Israel will grow more than 20% over the next 25 years. By contrast, Denmark and the U.K. project no growth, and the populations of five countries in the GEM study (Italy, Germany, France, Finland, and Japan) will decline.

* Women in the U.S. are much more involved in starting businesses than in most other countries. The GEM study finds the U.S. ratio of entrepreneurial women to men is 61%.

* Total income of the top 20% of the population is nine times that of the bottom 20%. High-income people thus have more money for goods and services and more savings to invest in new businesses, while the wide income dispersion may contribute to entrepreneurial incentives.

* Start-ups are heavily concentrated in urban areas on the East and West coasts (Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston's Route 128, North Carolina's Research Triangle, etc.). Cities such as Chicago and Atlanta have low levels of entrepreneurial activity.

* At higher levels of education, entrepreneurship curricula have blossomed in the past 20 years. Hundreds of U.S. colleges and more than 90 university-based centers of entrepreneurship now offer entrepreneurship training. But many GEM interviewees feel the courses are few and limited in depth and the teachers inexperienced. They also find too little training in engineering and technical skills needed to bring technology innovations to market.

* Compliance with U.S. regulations and tax laws is labor intensive and costly. In 1992, it was estimated that regulatory compliance cost small businesses about $5,000 per employee, versus $500 to $3,400 for larger companies. This can be reduced by more than 90%!

* More than 200 U.S. universities now engage in R&D transfer (versus only 25 in 1980). That adds $21 billion and 180,000 jobs each year.

* According to a 1998 national survey of 1,010 businesses with fewer than 100 employees conducted by American City Business:
o 70% have one to four employees and
o 59% have annual revenues < $500,000
o 40% services, 18% Retail, 11% construction
o 72% are not home based

* Regionally, the largest number are located in the South (34%), followed by the West (23%), North Central (22%) and Northeast (2%). The North Central has older businesses and the highest annual revenues.

* Although 71% of small business technology decision makers are male, the South and West tend to have more female technology decision makers, and the firms are more likely to be minority or female-owned.

Return to Library of Business Information

Get-the-Job-Done Right
and Save a Ton of Time or
we'll Credit-Your-Account!
Download and use any JIAN Business Planning Solution for up to 60 days and become convinced that it's what we say it is. If it's not, we will credit your account.

...