• A New Generation of Entrepreneurs
• Mainstreaming of Entrepreneurship
• Small Business: Economic Growth Engine

A New Generation of Ambitious, Optimistic Entrepreneurs

• More than 65 percent of 14- to 19-year-olds are interested in starting a business compared with about half of the general public. (Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership)
  Millennials have an optimism not seen among kids in decades. (“Newsweek,” May 8, 2000)
  
• Today’s teens “are the most occupationally and educationally ambitious generation” ever. (Barbara Schneider, David Stevenson, The Ambitious Generation)
  
• Gen Y is marked by a distinctly practical world view. Raised in dual income and single-parent families, they already have been given considerable financial responsibility. (Business Week, February 15, 1999)
  
• At 18 years old, they have five-year plans. They already are looking at how they will be balancing their work and family commitments. (Deanna Tillisch, research director of 1998 survey of college freshmen for Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance)
  
• This generation has spent more time on its own than any other in recent history, bringing a profoundly different and complex perspective on the world, and one heavily influenced by the Internet. (Patricia Hersch, A Tribe Apart)
  
• This generation is extremely peer-driven and team-oriented. “Boomers may be bowling alone, but Millennials are playing soccer in teams.” (William Strauss, The Fourth Turning)

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The Mainstreaming of Entrepreneurism and Small Business

• Being an entrepreneur has moved from cult status in the ‘80s to become de rigueur at the turn of the century. Amateur entrepreneurship is over. The professionals have arrived. (Inc. May 15, 1997)
  
• FORTUNE’s first annual “40 Under 40” ranking (Sept. 1999) spotlights the Internet era’s unprecedented intersection of youth, technology and opportunity.
  
• Today’s entrepreneur isn’t as much focused on money and power as he or she is “wildly excited” about an idea and utterly convinced of its success and its ability to change the industry, the world and how people live. (FORTUNE June 7, 1999)
  
• Today’s entrepreneurs experience “entrepreneurial insight,” a clear vision of the opportunity at hand and knowledge of what must be done to prevail. (Ian C. MacMillan of the Wharton School)
  
• A study of MIT graduates who had gone on to start technology-related businesses shows that 70 percent of the starter-uppers had parents who were entrepreneurs and that nearly all possessed a powerful drive for accomplishment. (FORTUNE, June 7, 1999)
  
• In the 1980s, only 1 or 2 percent of graduating MBAs wanted to start out as entrepreneurs; today 10 to 20 percent want to be their own bosses. (U.C. Berkeley)
  
•  “Control of destiny” is the most commonly cited career goal of young entrepreneurs, and 87 percent of entrepreneurs say the reason they left corporate life was to gain more control over their lives. (Inc. Magazine)

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Small Business as the Engine of Economic Growth

• There are approximately 25 million small businesses in the country. More than 10.5 million Americans are self-employed. (U.S. Small Business Administration)
  
• Small businesses currently employ more than half of the country’s workforce and account for more than half of the private sector economic output. (U.S. Small Business Administration)
  
• Small businesses provide approximately 75 percent of the new jobs added to the economy. (U.S. Small Business Administration)
  
• From 1992 to 1996, small businesses (those with fewer than 500 employees) created all of the new jobs in the U.S. (U.S. Small Business Administration)
  
• The number of home-based businesses in America is expected to increase by 4.5 million in 2000. (U.S. Department of Labor)
  
• The average business owner today has three employees, 1.3 locations, and is not a part of a franchise organization. Owners typically work about 50 hours a week at businesses that generate average revenues of $50,000 to $200,000. (Dun and Bradstreet/Entrepreneur, March 1998)
  
• The self-employed are better educated than the population in general, with 24 percent of NASE members holding a Bachelor’s degree, versus only 16.5 percent of all Americans over the age 25. (NASE survey, 2000)
  
• Between 1990 and 1995, the number of entrepreneurial education programs throughout the United States grew from 25 to 60. (Entrepreneur, April 1998)

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