By Stefano Virgilli — We live in a very interesting period of business history. Starting a company has never been so easy.
And certainly many people have not missed the opportunity to become entrepreneurs nearly overnight.
In certain countries, ease of doing business has become a mission, hence a company could be established and set up entirely online in just a matter of minutes.
Other countries however maintained that a certain level of difficulty is a good barrier that could protect local entrepreneurship from unwanted foreign competition.
What is really interesting to notice is that many students nowadays are happy to start their own business either as soon as the graduate, or even sooner, while they are still studying.
The entire start-up movement has created a new entrepreneurship culture, which depicts the new entrepreneur as casual people, not necessarily wearing a suite and a tie, but rather a millennial youngster wearing jeans and T-shirt.
Steve Jobs had most probably contribute the most in shaping this new idea that entrepreneurship is all about inspiring others, not necessarily about numbers, data and business plans.
He certainly broke some taboos of the rigid academic approach to business and entrepreneurship.
In the US there are currently 27 million entrepreneurs. It means that approximately one in 10 Americans runs his or her own company.
In Italy, where I was born, a country of approximately 60 million people, we used to proudly announce that we could count over 4 million micro enterprises employing 4 people or less.
Almost 1 in 4 adults was part of such a business legacy.
Countries like Singapore, on the other hand, would still consider an SME a company generating revenues for $99 million.
Entrepreneurship is different in every part of the world.
In the Middle East, entrepreneurship used to be a simple “middle man” job, where a person would have established a business and then hired someone else to manage it.
Nowadays instead, more and more young Omanis are taking pride in managing their own small and medium enterprises.
In other countries, where the economy was not so strong, a new generation of entrepreneurs has decided to create their own jobs.
Indonesia is a great example.
Millions of young entrepreneurs have stepped up and established regional connections that enabled them to start supplying products and services to wealthy neighbour countries such as Singapore.
According to the latest data published by the Indian chambers of commerce and the relevant ministry, there are approximately 50 million micro, small and medium enterprises operating from all parts of India.
China, the other giant, had nearly 75 million SMEs. It is interesting to note that China has far more small and medium enterprises dedicated to high-tech than India, despite the fact that back in the ‘80s, both India and China were comparably low on high-tech.
China however has grown exponentially ever since. It is nearly impossible to estimate how many entrepreneurs there are in the world.
Some estimates say approximately half a billion people runs his or her own business.
The number is constantly changing, but the ratio sounds like about 1 in 10 of every man and woman on earth within reasonable working age could be the owner of a business.
This shall not be read as if the other 9 in 10 are all employed, as certainly there are 2 other categories to account for: 1. those who could not find any employment and 2. those who are working under no regulations.
This last category could consist of both employed and self employed individuals that are not registered with their local Government authorities, yet operate on daily basis.
Most governments around the world are fighting against such practice, as it subtracts taxes from the pockets of the country.
However some countries are still struggling with such malpractice.
Back in the ‘90s it was estimated that 50 per cent of the economy in Italy was run by individuals who were not declaring their income for tax avoidance.
After a number of governments have decided to tackle such phenomena, certainly the per centage could have decreased, but a consistent number of people all over the world operate unregistered businesses.
As for the future, it appears inevitable that more and more entrepreneurs will venture into new markets as both ease of doing business and ability to connect with customers all over the world open the door to new opportunities for everybody.
— vs.voxlab.net@gmail.com
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