The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis has a nice piece out examining many of the same issues we looked at in Starting Smaller; Staying Smaller: America's Slow Leak in Job Creation but from a five state perspective.  I particularly enjoyed their interviews with some local entrepreneurs and service providers to provide additional reaction and context to some of their findings.  The five states they examine, because of their geographic responsibilities, are quite interesting on this topic - Minnesota and Wisconsin (not doing that well) and North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana (doing better).  But even those states doing OK by the measures examined are only just holding steady.  Indeed, it's not that you're seeing better survival rates, better job creation, or better numbers of starts but that those things are trending down for the latter states.  This piece is worth a read and if you're doing a similar type of analysis at the regional level in the U.S. please let me know.  

	Monica Thompson - 8/11/2011 7:50:03 PM
	The idea of businesses starting smaller and not having immediate intentions of supporting anyone except the entrepreneur is pretty obvious among those of us interested in business formation. However, this is the best commentary on that topic I've seen. I'll definitely be checking out all of the Kauffman research around this subject. It suggests that many of us are consultants or web-based knowledge workers that don't really need anyone else to help us run our businesses. Indeed, that challenge of how to encourage more businesses that actually will hire less skilled employees, or equally skilled employees, is important.

	White Media - 8/25/2011 12:44:47 PM
	yes, the commentary was interesting. I actually work for a small business supplying <a href="http://www.whitemedia.com/">website design in ny </a> and the notion of remaining small is a challenge for us. We appreciate our small-town roots, but we are rapidly growing and, thus, truly need to make room for new hires. However, with the state of the economy, this has not occurred. It is sort of a double-edged sword.