Many of the myths about small business are being rebuffed. One myth was that although small business employs a growing number of people, the pay rates are sorely lacking. The truth is that small business now pays about 90% of big business, while offering more flexible working conditions. They are able to compete for some of the best people with a combination of good pay and desirable working conditions.
Another myth is that innovation in our economy comes from VC backed high growth ventures, large corporations with big R&D budgets, or government backed research, but rarely from small businesses.
A new study just released from the NFIB (all of their studies can be found here) shows the fallacy of this myth.
“Small businesses produce a significant number of innovations,” said NFIB Research Foundation Senior Research Fellow William J. Dennis. “Smaller enterprises appear particularly adept at major breakthroughs in contrast to more incremental or evolutionary changes.”
Even small businesses that are not deliberately attempting to discover innovations employ at least one person, including the owner, whose primary job is to develop new products, services or designs, the study found. Twenty percent say they have one or more people assigned in such activity, suggesting that the owners consider the creative function to be valuable to the business.
Three-fourths of those surveyed said they specifically encourage employees to suggest ideas for new products or services, or to seek better ways to produce and distribute what their company sells. More than half of those who do inspire buy topiramate online uk workers to be innovative offer recognition, bonuses or both to those who succeed.
In the year leading up to this study, more than two-fifths (42 percent) of all small businesses surveyed reported introducing at least one new or significantly improved product, service, process or design into their sales inventory.
Design is a major innovative focus, the poll found. Twenty-one percent of small firms market design, which is profitable. Almost two-thirds (60 percent) of those marketing design said it generates half or more of their sales.
“Patents and copyrights often proxy for innovation in business,” Dennis said, noting that some 5 percent of small-business owners hold a patent (in their name or the firm’s name) that they actively use in their business activities. Manufacturers hold one-third of patents.
Copyrights are more common: 13 percent hold at least one. Data from the survey show that once small firms reach the 10-employee level, copyright acquisitions rise notably. Almost 20 percent of firms that grow to this point own one or more. Manufacturers and those in knowledge-intensive industries such as information and professional, scientific, and technical services are the most frequent holders.
It is critical that entrepreneurs remain , in a word, entrepreneurial. In most cases it is change that created the original opportunity for their business. If they fail to remain innovative, the very changes that gave their business birth could soon make them irrelevant in the market.
“Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix.” (Christina Baldwin).
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