BW Online | June 5, 2002 | Small Business, Great Expectations

SMALLBIZ Information Center Leadership Resource Center Sales & Marketing Smart Answers Success Stories Technology Today's Tip

PREMIUM CONTENT MBA Insider

BW MAGAZINE Get Four Free Issues Register Subscribe Customer Service

ONLINE FEATURES Book Reviews BW Video Columnists Interactive Gallery Newsletters Past Covers Philanthropy Podcasts Special Reports BLOGS Auto Beat Bangalore Tigers Blogspotting Brand New Day Byte of the Apple Economics Unbound Eye on Asia Fine On Media Green Biz Hot Property Investing Insights Management IQ NEXT: Innovation NussbaumOnDesign Tech Beat Working Parents TECHNOLOGY J.D. Power Ratings Product Reviews Tech Stats Wildstrom: Tech Maven AUTOS Home Page Auto Reviews Classic Cars Car Care & Safety Hybrids INNOVATION
& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip INVESTING Investing: Europe Annual Reports BW 50 S&P Picks & Pans Stock Screeners Free S&P Stock Report SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth 100 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 S&P 500 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs MBA Blogs MBA Profiles MBA Rankings Who's Hiring Grads

BW EXTRAS BW Digital BW Mobile BW Online Alerts Dashboard Widgets Podcasts RSS

RSS Feeds

Reprints/ Permissions Conferences Research Services

JUNE 5, 2002

IN BOX

Small Business, Great Expectations
A new survey of the mood among America's entrepreneurs paints an unqualified picture of confidence in the future

STORY TOOLS

Search for business contacts:

PREMIUM SEARCH
Search by job title, geography and build a list of executive contacts

Wall Street is marking time, up one week and down the next. Investors rattled by Enron's fall and fears of widespread accounting irregularities remain skittish. In Washington, the guardians of U.S. domestic security issue slews of terrorist alerts while warning that, sooner or later, another attack on the homeland is inevitable.

So where does one turn these days for a bracing dose of unqualified optimism?

According to the D&B (formerly Dun & Bradstreet), entrepreneurs and small-business owners are not merely immune to the deluge of disquieting news, their spirits are soaring in anticipation of the better days that the overwhelming majority expect to see just a few months down the road.

SHRUGGING OFF TERROR. Drawn from telephone interviews with almost 550 business owners across the country, D&B's 21st annual Small Business Survey found that 75% of those contacted were making their plans in the belief that the economy would witness a substantial improvement by yearend. This is a significant jump from the previous year, when just 64% held higher hopes for the economy.

Asked specifically how their own own businesses would fare in the months ahead, expectations were even more upbeat. An astonishing 87% expect to see a healthier bottom line due to increasing sales and the acquisition of new customers. In a telling indication of the way the entrepreneurial emphasis has shifted since the dot-com boom went bust, a scant 3% of respondents regarded e-commerce and the Internet as engines that would drive their outfits' growth.

And the biggest challenge facing small-business owners? Well, it certainly wasn't terrorism, which cast a shadow over the expectations of just 4% of those questioned. No, in what is perhaps the most telling indication that entrepreneurs' confidence is not just whistling past the graveyard, the respondents' greatest collective fear was that they would be unable to find the qualified employees they need.

Now that is optimism indeed.

By Roger Franklin in New York

Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds. XML

Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed.

Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video.

To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here.

Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page