Small Business Labs

JANUARY 3, 2019

According to a recent Job Creators Network Foundation survey , "Sixteen-percent of Americans say they are likely to start a new business in 2019." This is an example of the false positive problem with survey data.    The false positive problem crops up in many surveys (including ours). Most won't. 

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Small Business Labs

MAY 26, 2020

Lots of work from home (WFH) surveys have been conducted over the past month.  For example, the Global Workplace Analytics Work from Home Experience Survey found that "U.S. " And as the Harris/Zapier survey chart below shows (click to enlarge), 66% of the respondents prefer working at the office.  

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Small Business Labs

APRIL 20, 2021

" The reason hybrid work is winning is surveys consistently show most workers and their bosses think hybrid is the best way to go. For example, PWC's study It’s time to reimagine where and how work will get done found that "less than one in five executives say they want to return to the office as it was pre-pandemic."

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Small Business Labs

MAY 10, 2011

You many have noticed that different surveys show very different small business social media usage rates. For example, the Wall Street Journal article Facebook Tops for Small Business reported on a survey that found small businesses quite positive about social media. 

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Small Business Labs

JANUARY 7, 2019

.  Making Ends Meet: The Role of Informal Work in Supplementing Americans’ Income looked at data from the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Household Economics and Decision Making (SHED). The study found "28 percent of adults age 18 and older participated in informal work for pay during the survey reference month."

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 3, 2020

  It's based on extensive surveys and interviews across 33 countries and updates similar efforts conducted in 2013 and 2016.     For example, 55% of Americans agreed that unequal wealth distribution is bad for society.  This   These are: Climate emergency and antagonism.

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Small Business Labs

JUNE 29, 2020

The impact on cities is a good example of the pandemic's 2nd order effects.     Examples include advertising agencies and marketing firms, professional services providers and cities, which rely in part on sales tax and consumer use fees for much of their budgets. .  So the budget cuts have already started.

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Small Business Labs

AUGUST 10, 2020

"Armchair digital nomads" is the term we use to describe the millions of Americans who aren’t currently digital nomads but tell us in surveys they plan on becoming one.   For example, in 2019,  57.1 million Americans said they would (16.1 These numbers dwarf the 7.3

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Small Business Labs

JANUARY 30, 2018

    It was based on a gig economy survey they conducted with Marist Poll. The highlights from their survey are: NPR/Marist Poll Highlights. The highlights from their survey are: NPR/Marist Poll Highlights. Overall the survey results are consistent with the growing number of other gig economy surveys. 

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Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 1, 2018

They also found their survey questions "did not work as intended" and resulted in a large number of false positives. The false positive problem – meaning people say they do something in response to a survey question when they don’t – is a common problem with gig surveys for two broad reasons. This works out to about 1.6

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Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 13, 2020

For example, the picture below is from the blog of  the #VanLife Hearnes family  and shows them having fun while touring Utah with their dogs.   Although 2020 was the 3rd year of MBO Partners' ongoing digital nomad study, it was the first year specific survey questions on VanLifers were included. 

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Small Business Labs

SEPTEMBER 14, 2020

" The Chamber article illustrates this by pointing out that "the financial services sector, for example, has already recovered 94% of its pre-pandemic employment. According to an NPR survey and covered in their article Nearly Half Of U.S. " Another factor is remote work.

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Small Business Labs

APRIL 11, 2019

  According to The Infinite Dial 2019 , an annual survey conducted by Edison Research and Triton Digital, more than half of all adult Americans have listened to one. In case you hadn't heard, podcasting is booming.    In fact, many successful podcasts come from solopreneurs and micro-businesses.

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Small Business Labs

JULY 25, 2017

71%  of healthcare executives surveyed said they are already using on-demand labor platforms, and the same percent believe that building a strong contingent workforce will help them win the war on talent. This data comes from Accenture's Digital Health Vision 2017.

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Small Business Labs

NOVEMBER 8, 2016

On-demand food delivery is a good example.   A few examples of recent activity in this space include: Facebook is offering food delivery from within its app. And 60% of those surveyed had done so to avoid going out. It's also why all the talk about the on-demand/gig economy going away is quite silly.

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Small Business Labs

JANUARY 10, 2019

The Mother Jones article The Gig Economy is a Big Nothingburger is an excellent example of the response to a new paper - Understanding Trends in Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States - from the economists Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger. " This equates to roughly 70 million Americans.

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Small Business Labs

NOVEMBER 7, 2017

  Take for example the coverage of the recent National League of Cities report  Cities and the Innovation Economy: Perceptions of Local Leaders. cities surveyed already are using drones.  It's always interesting how the media covers the sharing economy. 

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Small Business Labs

JULY 2, 2015

The majority of those surveyed say that, for a variety of reasons, they voluntarily chose the independent work life over more traditional gigs. The survey, which we worked on, was constructed to provide a statistically valid sample of all independent workers (self-employed, contractors, freelancers, etc.) in the U.S.

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Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 10, 2016

Late in August Deloitte released survey results under the headline Deloitte survey finds 67 percent of Americans who have worked as independent contractors would choose not to do so in the future.  This despite most of them having stopped being independent workers. 

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Small Business Labs

JULY 29, 2014

.   As the article's title states, 87% of the surveyed freelancers reported having more than one source of income. But its been very hard to quantify this information via surveys.  Because of this, survey questions asking about 2nd jobs tend to under report side gig activity. This data is an example.

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Small Business Labs

NOVEMBER 22, 2016

Their survey asks: "In the last year, did you earn money by selling something online?" " 18% of adult Americans surveyed said yes. 8% of the survey respondents said yes to this. But 60% of those who said yes said they performed tasks online like completing surveys or doing data entry.

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Small Business Labs

JULY 23, 2015

In our work we've seen a clear shift to using digital data and away from our traditional sources - surveys and government produced data. But we think in a few years our use of digital data will dwarf our use of surveys and government data. A good example of this shift comes from LinkedIn.

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Small Business Labs

JULY 2, 2013

Transamerica Insurance released their 14th annual retirement survey.   Today, for example, about 27% of Americans aged 65+ that are still in the workforce are self-employed. .   Today, for example, about 27% of Americans aged 65+ that are still in the workforce are self-employed.

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Small Business Labs

JUNE 12, 2014

Ethnography , for example, uses field observation to study a group.  Actual behavioral data is increasingly available, reducing (but not eliminating) the use of other methods such as observational research and surveys. The main research methods used by social scientists have historically been qualitative.

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Small Business Labs

APRIL 18, 2017

This is an example of a research problem called  survivor bias , which regular readers know is  our favorite research bias. For example, the research objective of our ongoing on-demand economy study with Intuit is to better understand the attitudes and motivations of those working as gig workers for online talent marketplaces.

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Small Business Labs

MAY 15, 2017

According to the National Technology Readiness Survey , in 2015 22.4 Pew Internet, for example, found that 72% of adult Americans have used some type of shared or on-demand service.   A good study example is big 4 accounting firm EY's Is the gig economy a fleeting fad, or an enduring legacy?

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Small Business Labs

JUNE 25, 2015

For example, Pew ends the Millennial generation in 1997(see chart on right). In most cases differences of a few years one way or another won't really matter or change the results of most surveys. For example, we recently saw a report that defined Gen Y as those born from 1980 to 2007.

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 24, 2015

  In our most recent survey of people with 2nd jobs, about 20% of these "side giggers" said "learning new skills" was the reason they had a 2nd job.   We don't have historical survey data on this.   We don't have historical survey data on this.

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Small Business Labs

AUGUST 18, 2014

  In our interviews, surveys and focus groups independent workers almost always describe what we call the  yin and yang  - or two sides - of independent work (freelancing, self-employment, etc.).   So who's right? Both and neither, depending on how you look at it.  The rest are on the fence.

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Small Business Labs

NOVEMBER 15, 2011

  This is a great example of how Big Data and related analytics are fundamentally changing business and how we work.    It's also an example of how actual data is replacing surveys and other forms of market research.     Payroll and financial data are good examples. 

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Small Business Labs

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

According to the Federal Reserve of New York 2016 Credit Survey: Report on Startup Firms , 70% of young businesses say they need funding to grow. QuickBooks Capital is also a good example of how small businesses are going to take advantage of big data, AI and machine learning.  

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Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 28, 2017

According to the survey results, 37% of those using online, on-demand platforms have an existing business and 21% have a desire to run their own business. A good example is Victor Sandifer, Lyft driver and small business owner of Run the World Clothing. In other cases, the on-demand work is directly related. 

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Small Business Labs

AUGUST 3, 2015

  The two most recent examples are discussed in our posts Why the Self-Employed Flourish and Coworking, Independent Work and Happiness.  Independent workers of all ages, for example, consistently tell us a key reason for becoming independent is increased flexibility - even if it results in lower and less predictable income. 

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Small Business Labs

APRIL 25, 2016

  For example, Skift's article   Skift Survey: More Evidence of Uber Becoming a Rental Car Replacement  covers data showing that more consumers are turning to ridesharing services instead of renting cars.   But the ridesharing industry is not just stopping there.

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Small Business Labs

JUNE 15, 2015

He says 91 percent of Walmart shoppers said in a 2014 survey that they would consider buying affordable organic food." " My favorite example from the article is Bitty Foods , which makes cricket-based flour and cookies. For example, Pepsi is using 3D printers to improve the potato chip.

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Small Business Labs

JULY 25, 2016

  The study consisted of a survey of over 400 small business owners coupled with a set of 26 in-depth interviews with "successful" business owners. Wealth, Tastes and Entrepreneurial Choice , a 2015 academic study on this topic, is a good example and references a number of related studies. 

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Small Business Labs

AUGUST 20, 2015

. Millennials — the 20- and 30-something consumers whom marketers covet — would rather spend their hard-won cash on out-of-town vacations, meals with friends, gym memberships and, of course, their smartphones, many surveys suggest. Of course, this is not a new trend.

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