Small Business Labs

Small and Mid-Sized Business Software Usage Trends

Good article on bMighty on SMB software plans and usage.  The article summarizes several Forrester Research reports and adds commentary from bMighty editor-in-chief Fredric Paul. 

The article reports that application integration and reducing costs are currently the top software goals of SMBs, followed by using information technology to increase innovation.

Topping the list of software products of most interest to SMBs was unified communications.  This was followed by open source software and mobile development tools. 

And despite the hype and others reporting questionably high usage of Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis and other social media, Forrester has what I think is a much more realistic view - which is way less than half of small and mid-sized businesses are current users of these types of tools. 

Presentation on 2009 Top 10 Small Business Trends

We put up a presentation version of our 2009 Top 10 Small Business Trends on Slideshare. 

It is more detailed and wordy than the presentations we use in front of live audiences.  We did this so it would be more self-explanatory.

Click here for the text version.

Synthetic Biology

 Synthetic biology is the application of engineering principles and approaches to biological system design and development. 

Today the research mostly consists of inserting carefully crafted DNA into bacteria cells to make them behave in new ways.

More commonly called genetic engineering, potential applications include new forms of biofuels, bacteria based biosensors, bacteria that eat pollutants and new drug therapies. 

Frankenstein type creations are still very, very far away - so no need yet to alert the villagers. 

A number of trends are driving the emergence of synthetic biology.  Vast increases in computation power and speed make simulating and understanding simple biological organisms possible.  And advances in genetics and genome sequencing make genetic engineering possible.

The Royal Academy of Engineering in England has put out an interesting report on synthetic biology.  It is quite optimistic about the possibilities it has to change the world. 

Part of our mission at Emergent Research is identify and track trends and shifts that will impact small businesses in the near to mid-term future.  Synthetic biology is still a ways out, but the future often arrives faster than we think.

Geeking Out with WolframAlpha

WolframAlpha is a computation knowledge engine that uses its built-in algorithms and stored information to compute answers to submitted questions.  It is sort of an Ask Jeeves on super strength steroids. 

According to their website, their less than modest goal is to:

"make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything."

I think the closet thing I can compare to their goal are the computers on Star Trek.  The crews of the various star ships could ask pretty much anything and the computer would have the answer.

Mashable has some great examples of WolframAlpha questions and answers. 

WoframAlpha is still a research project and not a serious Google competitior (at least not yet).  But the technology is very impressive and the asking questions is fun. 

I admit to not yet fully understanding the math and algorithms behind it, but this does appear to the future of knowledge discovery. 

 

Foreign Policy on The Next Big Thing

Foreign Policy magazine has a special section of 13 essays with each looking at a trend that will likely impact the world in the coming years. 

Some are widely followed trends like genetic engineering, water, shifts in education and nano technology. 

Others are quite different than you usually see including trends on happiness and anger management, an odd and scary trend that seems highly unlikely. 

As Alvin Toffler says in his essay, the future will be filled with unexpected surprises (are there other kinds of surprises?). 

For those interested in trends and the future, it is a fun article that is well worth reading.

Wireless Only Households

We ran across an interesting study from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on the growing number of wireless only households.  As the chart below (from the study) shows, 17.5% of U.S. households have only cell phones. 

        

If you add in households without any phones, 20% of American households do not have land line phones.  This about triple the number of just 5 years ago. 

According to the study, there are substantial state level differences. Oklahoma has the highest percentage of cell phone only households at 26.2%.  It is followed closely by Utah (25.5%) and Nebraska (23.2%).

The states with the lowest percentage of cell phone only households are Vermont (5.1%), Connecticut (5.6%) and Delaware (5.7%). 

The focus of RWJ study is the impact of wireless only households on survey research.  A quick summary is it makes it much harder to do phone based survey research.

From a broader perspective this shift highlights the increasing role cell phones are playing.  This is not just true for voice communications, but also as Internet access devices. 

Patent Trolls Continue to Grow in Number and Power

Patent trolls are individuals or companies that acquire patents, but have no plans to make products or bring inventions to market.  Instead, patent trolls sue other companies that they claim are infringing against their patents. 

Called "non-practicing entities" by the legal profession, patent trolls often win by suing and quickly settling with their targets.  The targets, both large and small corporations, often settle to avoid expensive patent litigation expenses.

This, of course, results in more patent suits by the trolls.

According to Patent Freedom, the U.S has about 220 patent trolls.  And they've raised around $6 billion over the last decade from private equity firms looking for the large potential payoffs associated with patent litigation.

While small businesses are generally not the target of patent trolls - they tend to look for deeper pockets - they need to be aware of the growing role of intellectual property litigation is playing. 

Americans Staying Put Instead of Moving

Interesting report on U.S. mobility in the Nielsen Wire.  As the chart below shows, the percent of Americans who moved has steadily declined from 20% in 1947 to 11.9% in 2007. 

            

According to the report, this trend is being driven by:

1.  an aging population, which is more inclined to stay put instead of moving.

2.  the growing incidence of two career families, which make moves more difficult.

3.  smaller families and small household sizes, which mean less need to move to larger homes.

2009 Business Travel Trends

USA Today has a list of 10 trends impacting business travel in 2009. 

Not surprisingly, factors related to the economic downturn dominate the list.  Businesses are cutting travel expenses and airlines, hotels and rental car companies are cutting prices and trying other inducements to survive.

According to the article, airlines continue to cut capacity.  I've noticed a steady drop in flight options over the last year.  This also explains how air travel can be down yet every plane I get on is sold out. 

The article also talks about meeting attendance declining.  According to the article meeting attendance is expected to be done by 5% in 2009 and 7% planned 2009 meetings have been canceled. 

On the plus side, except for crowded planes it is a good time to travel. 

Is the Economy Bottoming Out?

The February jobs numbers were not good, with non-farm employment falling 651,000 jobs and the unemployment rate increasing to 8.1%.  And according to the ADP Employment Report, small businesses cut 251,000 of those jobs. 

But the good news is job losses do not appear to accelerating.  The U.S. economy lost 681,000 jobs in December and 655,000 in January. 

March will likely be another bad month, but the economy should see some benefits from the stimulus package beginning in the 2nd quarter.  Modest, middle class tax cuts will start and government hiring should go up due to federal hiring increases and state and local hiring stabilizing due to stimulus money. 

Some stimulus package infrastructure spending will also start in the 2nd quarter.

According to the Blue Chip Economic Indicators February consensus economic forecast, the economy will bottom out later this year and pick up in 2010. 

Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are also forecasting economic growth in 2010.

Let's hope they are right.