Entrepreneurship is a good community development strategy for several reasons. First, entrepreneurship enables communities to build on their existing assets. "Home-grown" businesses frequently emerge from the business operator's talents and interests. Most of these businesses are developed in places where the business operator finds the quality of life high. These small businesses are unlikely to relocate to other communities.
Second, small businesses are very important to the American economy. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses constitute more than 99 percent of all employer firms, create 60 to 80 percent of new jobs annually, and pay more than 45 percent of the U.S. payroll every year.
Third, traditional community and rural development strategies are not as effective as they used to be. Rural areas, especially those in the South, used to attract business and industry because of the low cost of labor. Today, they cannot compete with the lower costs of land and labor in other parts of the world.
