ABSTRACT
While the cloud is big business for major providers of cloud-based technology, such as Amazon, Google, HP, and Microsoft, the biggest beneficiaries of the cloud will be the small businesses that employ nearly 90 percent of the world’s working population and produce 65 percent of global GDP. These businesses are incredibly productive and e#cient when compared with larger businesses. For example consider that small business in the United States:
• Represents 99.7 percent of all employer firms • Employs just over half of all private sector employees • Pays 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll • Has generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past fifteen years • Creates more than half of the nonfarm private gross domestic
product (GDP) • Hires 40 percent of high-tech workers (such as scientists, engineers,
and computer programmers) • Makes up over 95 percent of all identified exporters • Produced thirteen times more patents per employee than large pat-
enting firms; these patents are twice as likely as large firms’ patents to be among the 1 percent most cited
Yet the first challenges any small business faces are funding, sta#ng, and scale. Each of these can be a monumental challenge not only to the business but also to the potential for innovation that small businesses provide to the overall economy. If you look at the numbers above, it’s not hard to understand why small business is such a critical part of sustainable economic growth. Diminishing the role that these engines of the economy can have is like throwing the plankton out of an ecosystem; it
may take some time but eventually every organism, including the ones at the top of the food chain, will su!er.
