The recession has upended a millions of lives. But, as The New York Times pointed out recently, it's also created a new class of "accidental entrepreneurs." Either by necessity, sheer ingenuity or just plain luck, thousands of the newly unemployed have formed their own small companies in the last year.
Here's how the NYT described this trend:
"The most recent Index of Entrepreneurial Activity by the Kauffman Foundation showed a slight uptick of new businesses in 2008 -- a full recessionary year -- over 2007. An average of 320 Americans out of 100,000 formed a business each month, Kauffman said. What's more, it found, the patterns "provide some early evidence that 'necessity' entrepreneurship is increasing and 'opportunity' entrepreneurship is decreasing."
Much has been written about the entrepreneurial opportunities offered by recessions - companies like FedEx, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft were all formed during downturns. But, entrepreneurship may be naturally ad hoc. Here's how tech entrepreneur (and co-founder of Intel) Gordon E. Moore put it: "There is such a thing as a natural-born entrepreneur... But the accidental entrepreneur like me has to fall into the opportunity or be pushed into it."
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