Author(s):
Connie Evans

Connie E. Evans, President & Chief Executive Officer, Association for Enterprise Opportunity, USA What are the trends driving the importance of business development services to underserved business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs in this period of global economic upheaval? What challenges will they pose to current practice in the microenterprise development industry? And what opportunities will these big trends create for new approaches that dramatically increase the reach, effectiveness and efficiency of business development services? This paper is inspired by and uses the work and research, in part, conducted by the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO), the national association for U. S. microenterprise development, where our focus is on unlocking the potential of micro businesses for job creation. The potential is great but constrained by the complex challenges faced by the nonprofit organizations, and other institutions that seek to serve them. These challenges are significant but not insurmountable. They exists within an entrepreneurial ecosystem and to achieve real game change, must be addressed with coordinated actions among by all actors in the ecosystem—individuals, companies, nonprofits, foundations and government.