May 4th, 2015, the official start of “Small Business Week” in the United States, yet in Canada Small Business Week is in October. Every year since 1963, the U.S. Small Business Administration takes the opportunity to highlight the impact of outstanding entrepreneurs, small business owners, and others from all 50 states and U.S. territories. In fact, every year since 1963, the President of the United States issues a proclamation announcing National Small Business Week, which recognizes the critical contributions of America’s entrepreneurs and small business owners.
Having a week of recognition for small business is important because every day, small business owners are working to grow their small businesses to create 21st century jobs, drive innovation, and continue to increase North America’s global competitiveness.
This week across the United States, National Small Business Week events will be held in multiple cities. While some larger cities will feature one day of events during National Small Business Week, many smaller cities and towns are holding smaller media events to celebrate the small businesses that hold their communities together.The official Small Business Week will culminate with the NSBW (National Small Business Week) Awards ceremony in Washington, DC – but it does not mean that celebrating small business achievements is over.
It is important for everyone to recognize the role that small businesses play in any society. When a small business is first established, it represents ways that business owners test their new ideas in the marketplace. Those small business companies that survive over time, are able to provide economic stability for owners and their families – but they also provide important value to the community as a whole. In Canada, the United States and around the word, small businesses in fact create more jobs for workers than large corporations.
Providing a steady source of income to owners and employees is just one reason small businesses are important. They are also the backbone of almost every community. A large portion of what people and businesses consume is not from large corporations, but from small businesses.
Small business owners are innovators – and innovation is often easier in a small business. This is because these small enterprises and their employees usually work in close proximity to consumers and learn first-hand about their needs, wants and demands. Also, consider that small businesses typically have few levels of management separating front-line workers from the owner. Talk to any small business owner and he or she will tell you that their employees help their company grow by sharing ideas that will benefit consumers – simply because they too are consumers who deal one-on-one with a company’s customers.
Because small business owners go through less bureaucracy to put employees’ new ideas into action, innovation is faster. This is why some prefer to work for a smaller business than a large corporation where their ideas are often lost or “put on the back burner until more research can be done.” This is also why more small businesses look for team space when they are considering office space. Team space is an open concept office that is similar to co-working office space, except the team all works for the same company and shares the same goals.
While Telsec is known for offering private, shared offices and virtual office situations, they also offer team spaces for teams as large as 30 people. In the past few years, the demand for co-working team space in a serviced office environment has increased. One Telsec team-space client even referred to it as their “private co-working centre.” Workers have their own space to get their individual tasks done, but have the ability to co-work with other people in the company.
There is a network of independent business centres known as ABCN (Alliance Business Center Network) that met last week in Washington, DC. These business centres are all about providing services to small businesses that require office space or virtual office services to grow their small business. While some of their tenants are larger corporations who need office space in many markets, the vast majority of their office-for-rent tenants are small businesses looking to have the same services that larger companies traditionally pay more to have.
