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In his inauguration speech, U.S. President Barack Obama paid homage to entrepreneurs. The path to greatness, he rhapsodized, has been paved by “the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things—some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.”
Almost three years later, it’s clear he was spot on. Entrepreneurship has been one of the precious few bright spots in a gloomy economy, and this new generation of entrepreneurs, both intentional and accidental, has taken it upon themselves to keep things chugging along. At the same time, starting a business gained serious cool cred.
Consider American Express’s slick ad campaign featuring Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard; foursquare’s founders as models in glossy Gap mag ads; and the cults of celebrity surrounding “the Zuck” and the late Steve Jobs. Even A-list stars like Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga added headlines to their clip files from startup-centric blogs like TechCrunch and Mashable.
“Entrepreneurship has become sexy in a lot of ways,” says Clay Newbill, Executive Producer of ABC’s Shark Tank, which features people pitching their dreams to a panel of deep-pocketed investors, including Mark Cuban.
Entrepreneurship has never been more practical, either. According to the Kauffman Foundation, 5.65 lakh new businesses were created in the U.S. in 2010—the most in 15 years—as many new ‘treps were forced into it by the downturn. “Young people know that there’s a high likelihood they’ll have to make it on their own,” says Thomas Knapp, Associate Director at the University of Southern California’s Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. USC has seen a 13.2 percent year-over-year increase in students taking entrepreneurship courses at the school. Here, 10 sectors to get in on while they’re trending up. —Jennifer Wang

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Discovery fuels invention (and purchases)

If the more than 27 million pieces of content shared online every day is any indication that collective knowledge is king, then it should come as no surprise that it’s now a key component of modern decision making. According to a July study on the psychology of online sharing by The New York Times Customer Insight Group and Latitude Research, 85 percent of those surveyed say reading others’ responses helps them understand and process information and events, and 73 percent say sharing helps them process information more deeply. Notably, 73 percent share info to connect with other people with the same interests—a big part of why discovery is an important market, and recommendation engines for everything from music to movies to food are so popular.
“People are looking for a trusted filter to surface good content, good products and good experiences,” says Jonathan Hills, partner at New York City-based Bashki Generation, a digital agency specializing in content sharing. Hills notes that for some brands, every person who shares content brings an additional five new unique visitors back to a site, who on average will spend 1.3 times longer on that site, read 1.9 times more content and experience 27 percent favorability toward the brands they encounter within the shared content.
A late 2010 study by Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst Sucharita Mulpuru found that 62 percent of online retail shoppers think product recommendations are useful, and 15 percent made purchases based on recommendations. “Rather than have a one-size-fits-all approach, recommendation engines let you automate and personalize the site experience for shoppers based on what you can infer about their needs, wants and shopping preferences,” Mulpuru says.
Retail was just the start. Decision engines that curate a user’s interests, social information and recommendations from others are cropping up more and more—and even the big players are working to keep up: In 2009, Netflix awarded a million dollars to the team that offered the best solution for improving their recommendation engine’s accuracy of predictions.
“Given the profusion of content out there,” Mulpuru says, “anything to help to filter what is relevant to you makes a lot of sense.”
—Michelle Juergen

Trend no:2

Collaborative Commerce

It’s nice to share
A preschool lesson catches on for adults

Sharing is a beautiful thing, and that’s become particularly true in the business world today. The last few years have seen a veritable Cambrian explosion of startups, especially in the collaborative-consumption space.
Rachel Botsman, co-author of What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, attributes the trend to consumers’ increasing comfort with technology, which has enabled disruptive platforms that allow sharing, bartering, lending, renting and gifting—of goods, skills, money, space or services—at a local, peer-to-peer level, on a scale once thought impossible. It is, Botsman says, “a multibillion-dollar market opportunity.”
No kidding. The U.S. product-rental market (Rentcycle, AnyHire) is valued at Rs.4.25 lakh crore; the vacation-rental space (Airbnb, CouchSurfing) at Rs.4 lakh crore; the ride-sharing industry (Zimride, liftshare) at Rs.5.85 lakh crore. In addition, the North American car-sharing market (Zipcar, Getaround) is projected to grow to 1.4 million members in 2012, up from 6 lakh in 2011.
Leah Busque, Founder and CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based TaskRabbit, billed as an eBay for errands, says 2011 has been a banner year. In the last six months, the company has expanded to six cities, up from just two in May, and task volume has increased twelvefold. What’s especially interesting about the phenomenon, Busque says, is that these technologies are actually being used to move transactions off the internet and create “meaningful” connections with others in the community.
“Last year I was traveling the world talking about these ideas and VCs looked at me like I was slightly crazy,” she recalls. “Now everyone… is pointing to it as one of the big investment areas.” —J.W.

Trend no:3

Customization

Have it your way
Designed and customized, down to a T

“Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black,” Henry Ford once said.
That statement is now as outdated as the Model T. Giving consumers the option to be picky has become a viable business model as the penchant for personalization grows. Mass customization isn’t new—expert B. Joseph Pine II published influential work on it in the 1990s calling it “the new frontier in business competition,” and large companies like Dell, Nike and M&M’s have employed it for years. But the interest hasn’t waned: More than 35 percent of U.S. online consumers are already interested in customizing product features or in purchasing build-to-order products that use their specs, according to a study done this year by Mashable. And customers are willing to spend at least 25 percent more to get products built specifically to their needs, according to a March study by research firm The NPD Group. Seventy percent of product strategists currently offer customized products, according to an April study by Forrester Research.
And it’s becoming a startup’s playing field, made possible in part by the lowering costs of customization configurators—in the past decade, developing one cost Rs.5 crore and took nine months to build; today they can be developed for Rs.25 lakh in two months, according to research done earlier this year by Forrester—as well as the success of customization retailers like CafePress and Zazzle, whose maturation and market penetration are inspiration for other entrepreneurs, says Frank Piller, a leading expert in mass customization and founding faculty member and co-director of the MIT Smart Customization Group at MIT. “There’s still a lot of opportunity in this market,” he says. “Even after more than 15 years of research in mass customization, I’m still excited about it.” The companies that will be sustainable, Piller says, are the ones that offer products not just with aesthetic value (like the option to choose colors), but also functionality.
Jon Chait, a partner at Waltham, Mass.-based Dace Ventures, says the early stage VC firm has seen a rise in the number of customization companies looking for financing—from about one or two in the startup phase two years ago to one or two per month today. “And it’s not just the same companies cycling around,” he says. “It’s people launching new models.”
Take that, Henry Ford.—M.J.

Untethered
Leaving the PC behind

Computing power, network speed and quality workers are the three barriers standing between companies and true mobility. In 2012, for the first time, widely available tools can eliminate the first two issues, leaving businesses the opportunity to smooth out the third.
Analysts estimate around 50 million tablets were sold in 2011, with almost 100 million set to leave shelves in 2012. According to Forrester Research, approximately 25 percent of companies either already give tablets to their staff or plan to in the future.
Accounting firm Deloitte, meanwhile, estimates that businesses purchased almost 10 million tablets in 2011, and that moving forward, a quarter of all mobile device sales will be corporate.
Mobile data will be the largest growth factor in the near future, and wireless networks will upgrade to LTE speeds to meet the increased demand. This will make it easier for users to feast on data wherever they go, and help connect areas where broadband has yet to roll out.
Already, according to the Pew Research Center, 35 percent of American adults own a smartphone, and 25 percent of that group uses the device as their primary internet on-ramp.
Closing the network gap means the last mile is now in workers’ minds. According to a recent CareerBuilder survey, only 35 percent of people working from home log eight hours of productivity per day—but that’s an increase from the 17 percent who went all-out in 2007. In this tough economy, bet on an improved remote effort if people want to save their jobs. Companies will continue to trim overhead to survive, which means more workers punching the clock from their kitchen table. —John Patrick Pullen

Trend no:5

Creativity

The artist within
It’s easier than ever for every man to
express himself

Ten years after American Idol first introduced chasing down dreams as a reality show concept, entrepreneurs are stepping up to help creative wannabes of every stripe do their thing. (Talent optional.)
Creative inspiration is likely rubbing off on Everyman, thanks to the ever-growing presence of artists, writers and musicians on social media and the proliferation of community news sites. Artists are no longer just downtown dwellers—now they’re your neighbors.
According to economic development consultant Mt. Auburn Associates, there are six million creative jobs in the U.S., a total that contains everyone from architect office admins to dancers, whether they’re self-employed or salaried. Within this group, independent artists, writers and performers account for more than a million jobs, a figure that has increased 15 percent during the Great Recession. A 26 percent lift in photography studios, 29,000 more graphic designers, another 35,000 interior designers and an 11 percent increase in filmmakers—it’s all proof that the 2000s have been a decade of living creatively.
Most important, DIY workers are earning good money. According to the Kauffman Foundation, the last 24 months were the most pioneering among the self-employed in 15 years. But with the U.S. Census reporting a 27 percent drop in new employer businesses since 2006, this means more new enterprises are parties of one. And there’s no good data to account for people who dabble in creative interests as a side job, a number that is impossible to calculate, as hard as the IRS tries. Dare to dream, indeed. —J.P.P.

Trend no:6

Urban Farming

Growing cities
Urban farming ventures continue to sprout

The push for local local local on our dinner plates shows no sign of letting up, a trend that might eventually reverse findings tracked by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, which reports that from 1980 to 2001, the distance food traveled from farm to table increased 25 percent, to 1,500 to 3,000 miles. Companies focused on narrowing that distance are seeing a boon. Eating locally now means sourced from the backyard.
“There’s a push back against larger companies that make too much money and don’t support their community,” says Suzi McCoy, Founder and President of Garden Media Group, a PR firm representing outdoor-living businesses. “People living in cities are transforming small backyards and public alleys into lush green gardens that are kid-friendly and social meeting places.”
There’s no doubt that urban farming is on the upswing. Fifteen to 20 percent of the world’s food supply is harvested in cities, according to researchers at the Worldwatch Institute. As more and more people move from rural to urban settings in search of economic opportunities, urban agriculture is becoming an important provider of food and employment, the researchers say.
The number of farmers markets in the U.S. increased 17 percent last year to 7,175. Further, independent retailers in communities with “Buy Local” campaigns reported an increase in holiday sales last year that were three times stronger (up 3 percent) than those in cities without such campaigns (up 1 percent), according to a survey by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
And the craze for urban clucking continues. Companies like ChickenCribs—their modern chicken coops were featured in Sunset magazine—are cashing in on the growing popularity of metropolitan backyard chicken farming. There are now more than 44,000 subscribers to Backyard Poultry Magazine and more than 15,000 members of online forum BackyardChickens.com. The spread of backyard chickens has promoted spinoff businesses that cater to the local market. Some communities are even relying on mobile slaughterhouses to manage and distribute poultry meat, says Jac Smit, President of The Urban Agriculture Network.
Where will it go next? Up. The wave of the future might just be indoor vertical farming, where 1 acre is equivalent to 4 to 6 outdoor acres, according to Dickson Despommier, creator of The Vertical Farm Project. A growing sector if ever there was one. —Kara Ohngren

Trend no. 7

Gamification

Play space
Whack-a-mole meets work

“Games are the new normal,” declared Al Gore in a keynote at the Games for Change festival in New York City last June. From the looks of things, he’s absolutely right.
Most obvious is the massive—and to social gaming newbies, somewhat perplexing—appeal of FarmVille and foursquare. In addition, studies from research firms including M2 and Gartner reveal that by 2015, U.S. companies will spend approximately Rs.8,000 crore on gamification products and services. Further, more than 50 percent of the biggest companies worldwide have plans to gamify their innovation processes.
“Gamification is the concept of applying game-design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging,” explains Nathan Lands, Creator of Gamification.org and Co-Founder of Gamify, which will soon launch a product that allows individuals and brands to gamify their own virtual spaces. Game techniques like leader boards, badges, challenges and rewards, he says, all have wide-ranging business applications that can be implemented to increase customer loyalty and employee engagement.
Where games exist, customers seem to follow. A recent survey by research firm Interpret reveals that 24 percent of people who play casual games have clicked on an ad in a social game and made a purchase, which has prompted some companies to take a literal approach to gamification: New Jersey’s TerraCycle, an upcycling business that turns recyclables into retail products that are sold in stores like Target, launched a “Trash Tycoon” Facebook game in September and picked up 1.6 lakh users within the month. Others, like DevHub, a free business-website builder, made its tools more fun to use and quickly saw a 70 percent spike in the number of people who actually finished building their websites. There’s even a startup incubator called YouWeb, led by Silicon Valley heavyweight Peter Relan, focused exclusively on nurturing games companies.
Kiip is even gamifying games by offering free stuff after players reach certain achievement levels, proving, says Gabe Zichermann, Chair of the Gamification Summit and author of Game-Based Marketing, that there’s no upper limit to how much fun something can be. “Games have transformed our culture, how we view the world, how much fun we think we should be having and how we interact with other people,” he says.
The technology now exists to serve that transformation, and many startups and small businesses are experimenting on the front lines of the gamification movement—perhaps channeling Albert Einstein, who famously said, “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” —J.W.

Trend no:8

Design

Looking good
The masses want their goods pretty

High-design products are everywhere—and not just expensive midcentury furniture, but cars, housewares, electronics—even medicine bottles. The world is finally catching on to the form-meets-function aesthetic of design-savvy centers like Scandinavia and Japan.
With the rise of celebrity designers like Frank Gehry and Philippe Starck, the newfound interest in sustainability, the spread of small chain stores like Design Within Reach and the ability of unknown designers and artists to sell their creations online, quality design is more popular and accessible than ever.
And it permeates all industry sectors: from big-box stores such as Target, which sets an example with its clarified prescription-medicine packaging; to Whirlpool, with its new focus on user experience and sustainability; to small companies like Moss and Muji, the purveyors of beautiful, functional objects.
“There is a movement toward simplicity and authenticity,” says Richard Grefé, Executive Director of AIGA, the professional association of design. “People are frustrated with… financial markets, politics. It’s about moving back to basics.”
Because the design field is so broad in scope, it is nearly impossible to quantify. Adam Smith, head of the industrial design department at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), says the field has shifted in the last 20 years from exploring materials and fabrication processes to designing such products that “improve people’s lives.”
Grefé says companies that previously tried to weather the recession through cost-cutting measures are turning their focus to gaining market share—often through innovations in design.
One demographic that has been underserved, he says, is consumers who are over 60. Design, he says, “affects everything: the size of a doorknob, clarity of language, just thinking about everyday activities.”
Meanwhile, RISD is sending its graduates into the world with “artrepreneur starter kits” that include Square card readers and activation codes, so that the nascent design moguls can process credit card payments via certain mobile devices, plus info on the alumni programs with online design markets Etsy, Quirky and Kickstarter. It is definitely quite the well-designed program. —Carolyn Horwitz

Trend no:9

Extreme Fitness

Grunt work
The fitness sector gets rock hard

Companies that provide intense fitness options, including military-style training, mud runs and in-your-face personal trainers are bulking up.
High-intensity boot camps were among the top 10 fitness trends of 2011, according to the American College of Sports Medicine. Sean Davis, owner of Davis Training Bootcamp in Centennial, Colo., says 100 percent of his paying clients attend workouts three to five times a week. That’s a stark contrast to the estimated 67 percent of health club members who don’t attend the gym at all. Tech entrepreneurs are also capitalizing on this trend. Bluefin Software recently developed a Rs.150 Bootcamp app that lets users build their own circuit training workouts.
Another sector ripe with opportunities is urban adventure racing. The traditional 5K road race is considered quite the bore these days.
Joggers are more interested in dodging giant swinging balls and slogging through mud. The Dirty Dash attracted about 5,000 participants at each of its eight races around the country this year. —K.O.

Trend no:10

Jobs

Employees Only
The Great Recession spurs growth

With the unemployment rate lingering at a dreadful 9 percent and roughly six people competing for every one available job in the U.S., applicants need some help, and many are looking to online tools to get it: 14.4 million people used social media to find their last job in 2011, according to online job search resource Career Enlightenment.
In March, LinkedIn reached 100 million users worldwide and is growing at roughly a million new members every week, the equivalent of a professional joining the site every second, says CEO Jeff Weiner.
Naturally, businesses offering employment support are on the upswing, and new job-hunting smartphone apps—like the popular Snagajob, JobCompass, Pocket Resume and Interview.Buddy—are popping up.
Debbie Landa, founder of Dealmaker Media, a network of innovators, and host of annual startups innovation conference Grow, says the employment support sector is rife with opportunity. “The challenge today is that many of the existing job sites are broken—they try to be all things to everyone,” Landa says. “There are a ton of new accelerators that are investing in young entrepreneurs who couldn’t find a job and are starting up companies to solve that exact problem.”
Employment recruiting is booming, too—on a social level, of course. Eighty-nine percent of companies will use social networks for recruitment in 2011, according to Career Enlightenment, and investors are taking notice. Burlingame, Calif.’s Jobvite has secured $30.5 million in funding for a software platform that provides advanced technologies to manage talent acquisition, from sourcing to applicant tracking to reporting.
Additionally, Don Charlton, Founder and CEO of The Resumator, has raised Rs.4.3 crore in seed funding for his combination of social recruiting tools to promote jobs inside social media, and an applicant tracking system that makes reviewing résumés collaborative, efficient and paper-free.
Looks like the jobs category may go meta and create more than a few jobs of its own. —K.O.

©Entrepreneur December 2011 by Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

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