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The Power of Small® : Part 1


The Community


"We can't look outside of the community for our economic salvation." Professor Stephen Goetz from Penn State University said. "The best strategy is to help people start new businesses and firms locally and help them grow and be successful."

 

The Power of Small® is a simple mindset. It empowers individuals and small companies by making a difference in their footprint, community improvement, and wealth generation. As individuals, we sometimes feel powerless to change our environment and the way we do business due to factors outside of our control including the economies of scale brought about by globalization and the monopolization of the economy by monolithic companies.

 

Unfortunately, small businesses rarely make headlines in a way that highlight the positive impact they have on the economy, even though they drive a considerable portion of the economy. It is fascinating that as of 2022, nearly two-thirds of all people in Canada and almost half (46%) of people in the United States employed in the private sector work for small businesses. 


As Julia Carney so elegantly put it in her poem called Little Things, “Little drops of water, little grains of sand, make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.”


While large-scale production should and will always exist in many industries, new technologies enable small-scale manufacturing to be competitive in the land of the giants and presents with it new commercial opportunities.

 

Small-scale manufacturing is exactly what the name implies. It is making products in lower volumes. It is using smaller production facilities. It is benefiting local communities. It is ensuring you aren’t simply just a number.

 

The Power of Small® enables entrepreneurial freedom and provides employment opportunities locally, in addition to creating new support avenues for local communities. Domestic manufacturing can also allow for the intellectual property protection of your product through mechanisms such as patents.


If a given initiative starts “at home”, people are much more likely to be invested to make a difference. This can in part be attributed to the sense of pride and accountability all stakeholders have in local communities. This can result in small-scale manufacturing companies being more environmentally sustainable than large-scale companies. Smaller companies are often more conscious of minimizing utility usage (water, power, gas, etc.), reducing packaging waste, and reducing their carbon footprint through their day-to-day actions.


The Power of Small® fosters a community identity. Smaller scale operations can be more dynamic and adjust quicker to regional demands and needs allowing them to operate in niche and/or custom markets. Small-scale setups can adapt easier than large scale operations to changing consumer demands and enabled continuous fine-tuning of existing products including flexibility and variations in product design and production volume to satisfy local markets. It considers all aspects of local business ecosystems and empowers local companies to customize product designs, packaging, and personalized branding.

 

Small-businesses are also critical to a circular economy. When customers support a local business, most of the money they spend will end up circulating back into the local economy. Owners of small-scale businesses tend to eat at local restaurants, use local barbers, and shop at local retailers. The salaries they make as business owners return to the communities from which they came – encouraging economic growth. From January 3 to February 6, 2023, the Canadian Survey on Business Conditions invited representatives from businesses across Canada to take part in an online questionnaire about business conditions and business expectations moving forward.

 

Small businesses need the community and the community needs small businesses.





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