Small is beautiful

In August of 2008, we printed an editorial, “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” in which we criticized what we saw as Sullivan County’s tendency to look to large outside corporations to ride in and rescue us, at the expense of fostering small local entrepreneurs. In arguing for the latter, we pointed out the importance of small businesses nationwide in job creation, and the success overseas of programs like micro-credit lending versus big-business investments in fostering economic prosperity and quality of life.

The immediate feedback we got on the editorial was that we had not given sufficient credit to agencies like the Partnership for Economic Development that already provide considerable support to small businesses, a critique we heard from enough different sources to give it some credence. But we still believe that there is more that could be done in the direction of small-business incubation, and hence are delighted to see some very interesting thinking along those lines embodied in the Local Small Business Development Stimulus Package recently put before the Sullivan County Industrial Development Agency (IDA) (see story on page 15).

Provisions of the plan include a revolving loan fund for a micro-credit program for individuals who have the skills and the desire to be self employed but cannot obtain financing through traditional avenues; the creation of a small business incubator that would provide services such as facility and equipment sharing (e.g. phone, fax, internet access, meeting rooms), receptionist and secretarial services and assistance with functions such as bookkeeping and website design; and development of a small-business development strategy.

We do not have sufficient business expertise to judge whether the particular group of proposals put forward is the optimal one, though we find the micro-credit idea particularly interesting given its track record. But apart from the details, it seems to us that a program with this particular focus is particularly appropriate in the current economic climate. For months, we have seen one too-big-to-fail multi-national dinosaur after another crashing to the ground, taking great swaths of the economy with it. The importance of developing a diversity of small businesses to maintain economic health has never been clearer.

The proposal submitted to the IDA is, at the very least, the beginning of what could be an immensely productive discussion about how we can further develop the self-sufficient, locally rooted parts of our economy that best allow us to hold each other up when national and international systems fail. We encourage our readers to learn more about it (there is contact information in our article) and pitch in with their own expertise and any ideas they may have as to how to fine-tune it to the optimal form. It’s an idea whose time has come.

Dr. Punnybone

Through the Looking Glass