Supply & Demand - Faculty.utep.edu

A/ex; de Tocqueville a French traveler,wrote about his travels in the UnitedStates during th 1830s. His book,Democracy in America, a two~volumestudy of the American people and theirinstitutions, is stiIJ relevant today.The Role ollheEntrepreneurWhat astonishes me in the United States isnot so mucb the marvelous grandeur of suchundertakings as the innumerable multitudeof small ones.-Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835What [de Tocqueville noticed nearly 160years ago] -before the advent of AppleComputer, Genentech, Microsoft, or Nucor-isjust as true today. The only difference is that thespirit of enterprise is more than ever a globalphenomenon with few bounds.From the row of kiosks selling goods on nearlyevery block in Moscow to the cramped factories inTaiwan, Russian biznez-me-n and Chinese dJangshangare reshaping their nations' economies inmuch the same way asthose ingenious oldYankees created the basisfor America's business culturesjust after independencewas won.Any [de Tocqueville ofmodern -times] wouldnotice something elseabout this global shift:e-ws cChanges in the rules of thebusiness game are puttinga premium on theentrepreneurial qualitiesof [the smaller]companies. Today'ssuccessful enterprisesare nimble, innovative,close to the customer,and quick to themarket. They're notbureaucratic, centrally controlledinstitutions that are slowto change. It adds us to a new managementcatechism with many of the hallmarks ofsmall business....Sure, some industries, such as auto making andpetrochemicals, still require size and scale. But theswift pace of technological change and the fragmentationof markets aTe eroding the traditionaleconomies of scale. Indeed, some managementthinkers now speak of the "diseconomies ofscale," the unresponsiveness, sluggishness, andhigh costs that come with bureaucracy. While thebehemoths try to adjust to new competitive realities,younger and smaller companies haveemerged as the agents of change in economiesaround the world....-Reprinted &001 Small Business Trends and Entreprenet