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A New Entrepreneurial Dynamic
21st Century Startups and Small Businesses

v1.0 Greg Autry

Chapter 1 The Entrepreneur in Context

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

            —Robert Frost

Almost every business starts small; a few will grow very large.

Plant sprout.

This book is about entrepreneurs, and by extension businesses that are usually small—those that will remain small, those that will grow, and the rare few that will scale rapidly into huge corporations. We all think we know what “small business” means. The media is full of stories about the growth of small business, the job creation power of small business, the significance of small business in our economy, the political interests of small business owners, and more. Still, “What is a small business?” turns out to be a curiously difficult question to answer. To the average person, the definition of small business remains limited to “I know it when I see it.” When you press further, things begin to break down.