Is it harder to succeed as an entrepreneur because big companies control more industries than they did? This was the suggestion of a recent article by Ben Casselman in the Wall Street Journal. He made the case that start-ups are declining because animal spirits are fading in the US.
I profoundly disagree with his contentions, and there are statistics to back my case. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, an annual assessment published jointly by Babson College and London Business School, found that total activity in the US in 2012 was at its highest level since 1999.
In particular I take issue with the idea that “dominance of large corporations in nearly every industry . . . makes it tough for new ventures to gain a foothold”. I believe quite the opposite: the tendency towards consolidation creates opportunities for innovative newcomers.