Trendwatching.com has a feature on the emergence of the ”minipreneur,” defined as:
…a vast army of consumers turning entrepreneurs; including small and micro businesses, freelancers, side-businesses, weekend entrepreneurs, web-driven entrepreneurs, part-timers, free agents, cottage businesses, seniorpreneurs, co-creators, mompreneurs, pro-ams, solopreneurs, eBay traders, advertising-sponsored bloggers and so on.
Evidence includes the 724,000 Americans who claim eBay as their primary or secondary source of income, and the 1.5 million more who claim it as a supplementary income source. Or, consider the 5 million ”web-based entrepreneurs” that represent 25 percent of all small businesses (according to MasterCard International and Warrillow & Co.). The trend is driven, says the article, by increasingly easy and decreasingly costly access to sources and resources, the desire for financial control and self management, and the trappings of a ”do-it-yourself” culture. How should businesses respond to this trend? According to Trendwatching:
Ask yourself how you can help them to make money by facilitating their admin, their production, their advertising, their insurance, their travel, their networking, their selling, their tech needs, their learning, their payments, their suggestions, their hosting, their new business ideas. Don’t ask them to consume; help them to create, to produce. Or…help them to become journalists, banks, human billboards or headhunters!
One more indication that the ”observational” mode of cultural experience may not be the one set for radical growth — think ”inventive,” ”interpretive,” or ”curatorial.”
