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INTUIT future of small business report sec on d installment : tec hnolo gy tren ds an d small business The Intuit-IFTF Future of Small Business Project: About this Series Small businesses are an important and growing driver of U.S. economic growth and dynamism. They employ over half of America’s private sector workers, produce over half of America’s non-farm private GDP, and create roughly 75% of new private sector jobs. The next decade will see the growth of small business continue, and the social and economic impacts of small business increase. To better understand this important segment of the U.S. and global economy, the Institute for the Future has undertaken a research project to identify, analyze, and forecast the significant trends and forces impacting small business over the next decade. We present our findings in a series of forecast reports. This report, Technology Trends and Small Business, is the second in the series. The first report described demographic and social trends that are impacting small business, and the third report will cover trends related to industrial structure and economic decentralization. The reports and related research are available at www.intuit.com/ futureofsmallbusiness. The last decade has seen substantial growth in the small and personal business sector of the U.S. economy, and technology has been a major contributor to this trend. The growing digital infrastructure has reduced the costs of starting and running a small business, lowered competitive barriers, opened new markets and industries to small businesses, and led to the creation of new, and often disruptive, business models. Despite the positive contributions technology has made to small businesses over the last decade, the hype surrounding the benefits of new technologies often exceeded the reality. In many cases technology was not mature enough, technical infrastructures required for success were not in place, and new technology was simply too complex to be easily deployed or used. The next decade will see the reality of technology catch up with the hype of the last decade. Broadband and wireless networks will become ubiquitous. Increasingly advanced, yet cheaper, computing power will greatly improve the collection, analysis, and sharing of data and information. The Internet will become a platform that provides small businesses with a wide range of new tools, services, and capabilities. Technology will become cheaper, easier to deploy and use, and pervasive. As the digital infrastructure matures and becomes widespread, small businesses—traditionally late adopters of technology—will need to aggressively use new technologies to create, build, and market their products and services. Small businesses that fail to embrace technology will be under increasing competitive pressure from more technologically savvy firms. THE INTUIT FUTURE OF SMALL BUSINESS SERIES JUNE 2007 | SR-1037B www.iftf.org ©2007 Institute for the Future for Intuit. All rights reserved. We tend to overestimate the near-term impacts of new technologies, and underestimate the long-term impacts. —Roy Amara, President Emeritus Institute for the Future This installment of the Intuit Future of Small Business Series looks at three emerging technology trends that will affect small business formation and operations over the next decade. 1. The Connected World: Small Business Management On My Time, On My Terms. Advances in technology will result in a connected world where networked digital intelligence, mobile devices, and analytical tools support and augment small business operations and management. This digital infrastructure will allow greater flexibility around when, where, and how work is done, allowing small business managers to run their businesses on their time and on their own terms. • Small businesses will use intelligent devices to gain customer insight and improve delivery of goods and services. Intelligent devices and sensors, equipped with computing, storage, and sensing abilities, will not only monitor themselves and their environments, but will provide business owners with new insights about assets, employees, and customers (see pages 8–9). • Mobile devices will become central to small business management. The expansion of mobile networks, combined with new display and sensing technology, will make mobile devices more than just a communications tool (see pages 10–11). • A new wave of analytical tools will increase small business productivity and ease management burdens. Small business owners will delegate more responsibility to digital assistants and automate a broader range of processes. Analytical tools will turn data into actionable information and drive better decision making (see pages 13–14). . Beyond Web 2.0: Technology Fuels Small Business Formation, Operations, and Innovation. Leveraging the emerging digital infrastructure, inexpensive and easyto-use Web services and tools will extend the ability of small businesses to build complex online applications and create, communicate, and share information. The emergence of this Web platform—in both the real-life physical world as well as emerging virtual landscapes—will drive small business formation, operation, and innovation.  T e c hnolo g y tren d s an d small business The Connected World • High-tech will no longer be a high hurdle as costs and complexity fall. The lowering or elimination of technology barriers will accelerate the formation of small and personal businesses (see pages 16–17). • Small business relationships will become increasingly virtual as online social networks expand. The “connected world” nature of the Internet will let small businesses expand their relationships with partners, suppliers, and customers beyond their local neighborhood (see pages 19–21). • Virtual worlds will be widely adopted venues for reaching customers and experimenting with new product ideas and business models. The real estate adage, “Location, Location, Location,” will include small businesses’ presence in virtual fantasy worlds, and virtual representations and annotations of the real world (see pages 21–24). . Small Business Marketing: The Mindset Shifts from Push to Pull. Small businesses will need to shift their marketing methods to provide customers and prospects with the right information, in the right context, at the right time. • A small business’s online presence will be the most important factor in customer acquisition. Customers will increasingly find the information they need to make purchasing decisions, rather than merely accepting what’s pitched at them. Creating an online presence that extends beyond the company’s Web site—and contains relevant content—will be an increasingly important part of the small business marketing mix (see pages 27–28). • Small businesses will increasingly market themselves through the connected world of cars and cell phones. As the sophistication of cell phone based and automobile marketing rapidly improves, small businesses will need to be poised to take advantage (see pages 29–30). INTUIT FUTURE OF SMALL BUSINESS SERIES   T e c hnolo g y tren d s an d small business THE CONNECTED WORLD 1 1. TH E C O N N ECT E D WO R LD : Small business MAN AG E M E N T O N MY T I M E , ON M Y TERMS Imagine a world in which almost every object in the environment is equipped with embedded processors, attached to wired and wireless networks, and capable of limited “machine decision making.” That’s what Xerox PARC scientist and Chief Technology Officer Mark Weiser envisioned when he coined the term “pervasive computing” more than a decade ago. In Weiser’s vision, people and things will always be connected to wireless networks whose power will provide small businesses with a rich set of information that can be acted on by managers and employees. We will constantly interact with computers but, unlike today, they will become embedded in the world around us and eventually fade into the background. Computers and networks will be everywhere and nowhere. After several false starts, Weiser’s vision of the connected world is emerging and, over the next decade, this digital infrastructure will become a reality. Innovative manufacturing methods and nanotechnology are reducing the size and cost of digital storage, communications devices, and computer hardware. New display technologies and small-scale power technologies are improving mobile devices. Radio frequency identification tags, or RFID tags, and smart dust—sand-sized sensors that gather and transmit information wirelessly —are finding their ways into products, objects, and devices. Sophisticated analytical soft- Figure 1 ware is helping to manage these devices and analyze the data they generate. Tying these Most American Adults devices together are globally available high-speed wired and wireless networks. The connected world is also changing the way we interact with each other. Today, more than 70% of American adults have Internet access, and over 85% use cell phones (see Figure 1). This pervasive connectivity is redefining the boundaries of presence and location. Online communities and social networks are changing how Are Online Percent 80 75 we form friendships and create new forms of community. New cooperation and user-contribution technologies are connecting people separated by geography into 70 trust-based networks that exchange information and advice. The connected world is also fundamentally changing almost all aspects of small business. Entrepreneurs and small businesses will need to successfully navigate and use the connected world to survive and thrive. 60 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 Source: Source: Pew Internet and American Life Pew Internet and American Life Project I N T U I T F U T U R E O F S mall B U S I N E S S S E R I E S  Broadband Takes Over By 2010, roughly 87% of Just as the Internet has created a range of social and business changes, broadband U.S. Internet connections proliferation and increasing broadband speeds will cause their own revolution. High- will be broadband. speed, always-on Internet access changes and intensifies the user’s relationship with the Internet. Broadband users spend more time than dial-up users playing games, instant messaging, downloading multimedia entertainment, and working online. Broadband users are more likely to post information, participate in online chats, and visit community Web sites. Broadband users also spend more time researching goods and services online. They also watch less TV than dial-up users. Broadband access is growing rapidly in the United States (see Figure 2). Close to half of U.S. homes and more than half of U.S. businesses have broadband access. According to the Telecommunications Industry Association, by 2010 roughly 87% of U.S. Internet connections will be broadband. Broadband speeds will be much faster than today’s 1–5 megabits, with 100 megabit consumer access becoming widely available. Broadband has already created new small and personal business opportunities and impacted small business operations. Niche media firms are rapidly growing in number in large part due to broadband distribution of their content, and broadband access has been a key driver of e-commerce. As a Web service and part of the emerging Internet platform, small businesses will need to factor in the affect of the broadband Figure 5-2 Figure 2 revolution on their businesses. U.S. Home Growth U.S.Broadband Home Broadband Percent of all adult Americans with high-speed access at home Use Grows Percent 50 40 30 20 10 0 Jan. Feb. 2000 2001 Feb. 2002 Feb. 2003 Feb. 2004 Feb. 2005 Feb. 2006 Source: Home Broadband Adoption 2006, Pew/Internet. Source: Pew Internet and American Life Project, Home Broadband Adoption, 2006.  T e c hnolo g y tren d s an d small business 1 THE CONNECTED WORLD Wireless Networks Become Ubiquitous The next decade will see wireless network coverage and speed increase, while network costs will continue to fall (see Figure 3). Wi-Max, an emerging wireless network standard, will allow high-speed (up to 40 megabits) mobile access ranges of 5–10 miles—greatly extending the range and speed afforded by today’s Wi-Fi networks. Cell phone network systems will also be high-bandwidth and allow access to rich data streams, including fullmotion video. High-bandwidth mobile data access will become cheaper and more common. In addition to fee-based network services, local governments and businesses of all kinds are starting to offer free wireless Internet access. Cities see free Wi-Fi access as an opportunity to spur local business and support residents. In addition to local governments, an increasing number of retail businesses also are offering free Internet access. Common in coffee shops, free Internet access is becoming increasingly available in hotels, restaurants, and office building lobbies. Numerous startups such as FON, WeFi, and Whisher are building tools to aggregate these fragmented hotspots into global wireless cooperatives that let people share bandwidth with roaming users in return for the same privileges outside their home area. While free and low-cost Wi-Fi networks will probably not be as widely available as cell Figure 3 phone-based wireless networks, they will in many cases provide a cheaper competitive Number of Global Wi-Fi alternative to commercial wireless services. Hotspots Is Growing Rapidly Global WiFi Hotspots Thousands 250 200 150 100 50 0 2004 2005 2006 2010 Source: Telecommunications Source: TIA’s 2007 Telecommunications Market Review and Forecast Industry Association I N T U I T F U T U R E O F S mall B U S I N E S S S E R I E S  S M A L L B USINESSES WILL USE INTELLI GENT DEVI C ES TO GAIN CU S TO M ER INSI G HT AN D IMPROVE D ELIVER Y OF G OO D S AN D S E R V ICE S As machines and products become equipped with computing capabilities, digital storage, and sensors, they become “intelligent.” Intelligent devices and sensors already exist and are used in a variety of industrial and consumer products. Expensive or hardto-maintain machinery often includes intelligent devices. Airplane and boat engines, farm and manufacturing equipment, elevators, and vehicles are increasingly intelligent and monitor their own operations. They can accurately predict when they need service or will fail, and can alert equipment owners or maintenance staffs when they need repairs. In some cases, the machines are capable of fixing themselves. Small businesses are already starting to use intelligent devices. Pool maintenance companies, for example, use intelligent sensors to monitor water conditions. If a problem occurs, the sensor either alerts the company or automatically adjusts the amount of chemicals being added to the pool. By using intelligent sensors, the pool maintenance company reduces both the amount of chemicals used in the pool and the technician time spent monitoring the pool. This leads to more pool uptime and fewer costly service calls. RFID chips and sensors are being attached to or embedded in a growing number of products (see Figure 4). These chips allow manufacturers to accurately track product movement, greatly reducing shipping mistakes and lowering supply chain costs. Network-connected sensors monitor and report on conditions in production lines and office buildings and make automatic adjustments when problems arise.  T e c hnolo g y tren d s an d small business 1 THE CONNECTED WORLD Over the next decade, intelligent devices will become smarter and more able to perform increasingly complex tasks. They will also become cheaper and smaller. Analytical software will improve, and simple rules-based software decision methods will expand to more effective “machine intelligence” systems. Machine-to-machine communications will dramatically increase as these devices “talk” to one another and make decisions based on their interpretation of the data they collect. For small businesses, the growth of intelligent devices will result in an explosion in real-time data about assets, employees, and customers. This information will fundamentally change how small businesses operate, allow greater customer insights, and more efficient delivery of goods and services. Figure 4 RFID as a Tracking Connective Technology: Focus on RFID Technology H EA L SE CU RI TY RE IN VE NT IO N TH Tracking Objects Item-level tagging Tracking Containers RFID EPC UPC Biotelemetry Pet chips ID Cards Livestock RFID Smart dust Home tags 1¢ EPC tags RFID casino chips Prada ONS Airline baggage Hospital RFID Marathon timing Speedpass IFF Wal-Mart, DOD Tesco, Metro ONS Tracking Vehicles 5¢ EPC tags Gillette purchase Alien, RFID Matrics Center Classic articles IFF 1950 Fleet management Aircraft transponder 1960 Rail RFID OmniTRACS OnStar E-tolls 1970 1980 1990 2000 2005 2010 Source: Institute for the Future Institute for the Future SR–838 650.854.6322 www.iftf.org © 2004 Institute for the Future. All rights reserved. Reproduction is prohibited without written permission. I N T U I T F U T U R E O F S mall B U S I N E S S S E R I E S  M O B I L E DEVI CES WILL BEc ome C ENTRAL TO Small business MANAG EMENT Mobile phones have become the main tool for managing the complex choreography of everyday life. Globally, cell phone subscribers now outnumber landline phone subscribers, and more than 210 million Americans have mobile phones. In addition to its role in voice communications, the cell phone is increasingly the Internet access device of choice. Wireless mobile phone Internet access is widely available in the United States, and coverage is rapidly expanding. The increasing computing power of mobile phones and devices, coupled with the widespread availability of high-speed wireless networks, will change the way mobile devices are used, expanding their role from a communications tool to a key operational device. Smart Phones Today’s cell phones have personal computer functionality—providing music and video entertainment, games, Internet browsing, and business and personal productivity applications. Smart phones connected to increasingly available wireless Internet data access services provide a small but powerful mobile office capability. Today, fewer than 5% of all U.S. cell phones are smart phones. By 2012, IFTF forecasts that the majority of cell phones produced will be smart phones. Smart phones are getting smarter. While today’s smart phones are limited in terms of memory and processing speeds, mobile chip technology is advancing rapidly. Smaller and more powerful chipsets are giving mobile devices the power of desktop computers, and advances in flash storage are rapidly reducing the costs and increasing the size of mobile storage. The next five years will see smart phones and other small mobile devices become close to desktops in terms of computing power. New Display Technologies and Portable Power Will Expand the Uses of Mobile Computing The next decade will see the emergence of a mix of flexible and projection display technologies, which will fundamentally change the way mobile devices are used. These new computer displays will increase the range of mobile applications, increasingly embed the environment with computer displays, and end most of the problems associated with small mobile displays. 10 T e c hnolo g y tren d s an d small business