Every year around this time I look forward to Steve King’s small business trends for the next year. Steve, who runs Emergent Research, is a true expert, and his insight is always valuable. And I just read his Top 10 Small Business Trends for 2014 and once again, it’s great food for thought.
My personal favorite this year is this:
8. Boomer/Millennial Business Partnerships: Growing numbers of baby boomers and millennials are teaming up to start and run small businesses. Often family members, each brings complementary skills and abilities. Baby boomers provide capital, business experience and networks. Millennials bring tech skills, a feel for online businesses and business models as well as energy and enthusiasm. In many cases, these partnerships are born of necessity due to a lack of traditional job opportunities for one or both. But the opportunity and desire to run their own show is also a major driver for members of both age groups.
I love this idea. I see it happening, anecdotally, both around my local community in Eugene, Oregon, and around my online community in social media, LivePlan, and so forth. I see examples of exactly what Steve is predicting. And both generations need it.
Steve also predicts convergence of mobile, cloud, data, and analytics—his number one trend for 2014. Also, more digital divide, widening income inequality, environmental concerns coming back up again … but don’t settle for my summary, read Steve’s post.
Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software and Bplans.com. Follow him on Twitter @Timberry.
