There are now so many one person businesses emerging, SME’s that employ no-one on a full time basis, but call on contractors and specialists when necessary, that I think we need a new term:
“Solepreneurs”.
They are often entrepreneurs, but not in the generally accepted sense of someone doing something radically new.
Rather, they are seeking to innovate, fill a niche, provide a service, or just do a better job on a local level, or in a marginally different way, often personalised in a way corporations, loaded down with overheads, processes, and corporate egos cannot. The digitisation of the way we work has removed the transaction costs in so many ways that these solepreneurs now have marketing and administrative clout unimaginable just 20 years ago, sufficient for them to often be potent competitors to established businesses that perpetuate the myth of the corporation.
The local chambers of commerce and networking groups are filled with them, and whilst individually they are insignificant, except perhaps to their customers, together they are a potent force emerging in the economy.
I wonder when politicians and rule makers will wake up?
Better be soon, as the face of the workforce is changing rapidly, and the old ways of public administration simply do not work well enough.
Remarkably there are plenty of “agpreneurs”, but agri politics is a particularly potent form of the disease in my experience, and tends to blunt the effort.
Too many vested interests in the bodies formed to administer and spend the various levies and research grants, and too little intimate connection to the markets.
Need Ag+Entrepreneurs