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May 2, 2005
Mundane - but creative
Understandably, but regrettably, the high-tech sector of the economy gets most of the attention when it comes to the study of innovation and creativity. Understandably because it provides a lot of the sizzle and excitement (from our fascination of hot, new gadgets to our fascination for hot, new billionaires). Regrettably, because there is a lot of creativity and innovation occurring in "mundane" areas of the economy.
A story in The New York Times, "Small Business: They May Be Mundane, but Low-Tech Businesses Are Booming," last week illustrates my point:
Forget Web sites and molecular imaging. The biggest fields of opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs are the same mundane ventures that have been kicking around for decades.
Think landscaping companies, child-care providers, janitorial services and nail and hair salons. In a generally buoyant market for low-technology businesses, those are four of the biggest winners by far. Altogether, sole proprietorships in the United States, a rough measure of the size of the small-business low-technology sector, grew by nearly 4 percent in 2002, the latest year with statistics available, to 17.6 million, and their combined revenue increased by 5.5 percent, to $770 billion. The figures come from the Census Bureau's Economic Census, a snapshot of the American economy that is taken every five years.
What has this got to do with creativity and innovation? Well, people are getting into these businesses not just to make money, but to break out of the humdrum of other occupations:
Hilary Finn, who runs HomeGrown, a landscaping company in Brooklyn, helps explain the profession's popularity. Ms. Finn, 46, spent a decade as a personal trainer, but after giving birth to a second daughter in 2002, decided to switch occupations, for the flexible hours and the chance to express her artistic impulses.
"Since I was a child, I had been creating gardens," she said. "I had graduated having studied painting and sculpture, but not design, at Empire State College. But I loved spaces and moving things around and creating spaces outside."
The entrepreneurs featured in the story:
share two distinguishing characteristics of single-owner businesses: pride of ownership and desire to take control of their lives, said Erin Fuller, executive director of the National Association of Women Business Owners.
"Often, these owners do not want their business to become super large," she said. "They take pride in their craft and, by keeping small, they can control that."
"Pride in their craft!" When in the Industrial Age of mass production and workers-as-cogs-in-the-machine did you hear that phrase? But in the Information Economy, it is a key intangible. In many ways, the rise of the Information-Innovation-Intangible Economy is a return to the craft economy of previous days.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at May 2, 2005 9:10 AM
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