Is Entrepreneurship Declining?
Posted by: John Tozzi on July 01 Scott Shane says yes. Steve King says no. I’d like to see a closer analysis of the trends in the past 10 years. There’s been a fundamental shift in how people start businesses and the types of ventures they start in the last decade. Technology has lowered barriers to entry in many industries, and the Internet has opened up new markets. Scott writes about the Wal-Mart effect: Large, efficient companies are able to out-compete small start-ups, replacing the independent businesses in many markets. Multiply across the entire economy the effect of a Wal-Mart replacing the independent restaurant, grocery store, clothing store, florist, etc., in a town, and you can see how we end up with a downward trend in entrepreneurship over time. But there’s a separate trend we could point to: The emergence of niche markets where many small players compete, without the dominance of a Wal-Mart-like giant, or even mass markets where niche players are gaining a foothold. For
