Small Business Will Lead Us Out of This Recession

Posted by Jim Van on May 25, 2011 under entrepreneur, small business | 2 Comments to Read

Recently, a local business publication held its annual Business Plan Competition. Around 100 entrepreneur-types submitted entries, many of them from local colleges, universities, financial institutions and healthcare organizations. There were a lot of terrific ideas, some readily able to be successfully with the right infusion of capital, others presenting a bit more of a challenge.

One of the great realities of thecompetition was the realization, at least on my part, that innovation continues to live strongly here in America, and very much so here in Rhode Island. It was so evident in everything about the competition that at least some of those entrants would be major drivers of our economic future. It led me to the above headline: Small Business Will Lead Us Out of This Recession.

No one was more pleased than me when the state granted sufficient incentives to Fidelity Investments for them to effectively move most of their Massachusetts-based financial services jobs to a gleaming new campus on former farmland in Smithfield. And how brightly can one beam with pride that Woonsocket’s CVS/Caremark has become a behemoth in the pharmacy sector? Yhese businesses provide thousands of jobs for Rhode Islanders and nearby Mass. residents alike. So did Stanley/Bostitch, formerly based in East Greenwich RI, and soon to be an emply shell of a former manufacturing plant. For most of my life, Bostitch employed hundreds of workers in the manufacture of fastening devices.

In business, one learns early on not to put all of one’s eggs in a single basket: many smaller clients is often better, albeit more work servicing, than a couple of large clients. This holds true from an overall economic point of view, which is why the vast majority of American workers are employed by small firms, while the larger firms get all the publicity.

Maybe one of the winners of the competition will someday will have formed a company and grown it to be a multi-national conglomerate employing thousands of Rhode Islanders. But, my money is on the top 10 or 12 who succeed in building small businesses that employ hundreds of Rhode Islanders between them and products and services to other growing companies and service providers, who in turn provide hundreds of jobs for other Rhode Islanders. THAT’s what will bring us out of this recession and provide a strong future for this economy, whether in RI or Indiana…

Dave D. said,

I think everyone, from politicians on both sides of the aisle to workers agree that small business is the key to getting out of this recession. The question is: what will the economy look like once we emerge, and what kind of work will be available. Gone are the days when my grandmother and her girlfriends ran Link-o-matic machines in the Jewelry District for minimum wage. What’s evolving there is the Knowledge District, and at first glimpse, one will need to have a graduate degree to work there…
James said,

I agree that if anyone will lead us out of this mess, it won’t be the companies that got us into this mess. HP has record profits. They lay off over 14000 people. Go figure. Where’s all the money going? Certainly not to job creation.

One problem I forsee, I have a business in Massachussetts. We’re forced to pay a ‘minimum’ corporate tax (just under $600) for the privelage fo being incorporated, or at least registered as a foreign corporation here. And THAT’s if one doesn’t make a profit. What’s the logic in that, and how is that going to help me create jobs in my business when I’m dealing with BS like that? As long as government keeps messing with small business, this recession will drag on and on. The rich will get richer, and the rest of us, well…