Better Business

By Autumn De Leon and Jon Goldstein

Driven by the glamorous high-tech economy and its entrepreneurs, the rock stars of the '90s, business culture has become about as quicksilver as molten silicon. In growing numbers, the corporate employees of yesteryear are going out on their own and becoming small-business owners. In fact, 7 million Americans are running small businesses now, up from 4.8 million just four years ago.

The shift in work culture is complex, but there's one really practical factor that accounts for the flourishing world of small business: you can do it fast and do it cheap. You can replicate all the functions of a fancy corporate office in your two-room quarters in the office park. This holiday season, computers are packed with such goodies as 333-MHz speed, fat hard drives, plenty of memory, bundled office suites that take you from spreadsheets to word processing to building your own website--all for under $1,000. Rube Goldberg-like contraptions that scan, fax, print and copy, like the Xerox Document WorkCenter 450CP and Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 3100 seen on these pages, stuff these common office duties into compact boxes that easily fit on a shelf and sell for less than $500. And traditional monitors nowadays are coming down in price; they're getting slimmer too.

The steady drop in cost and rise of swifter, sleeker products are pushing another trend as well: the expanding corps of small businesses that can act bigger than their size by going online. With quick 56K modems and low-cost servers, lots of businesses see the Web as an opportunity that has arrived.

Of the 3.4 million businesses expected to be online by the end of the year, half will have their own websites, according to industry estimates. "Selling online is the big dream," says Tom Miller of Cyber Dialogue, a technology market-research firm. That's not surprising, since e-commerce is expected to create a financial tidal wave of more than $300 billion early in the next century. The slight percentage of small-business online sales today--7%--suggests that a boom may be just over the horizon.

Still, for all its temptations, going it alone may not be your thing. But imagine this: it's Monday, 7 a.m. The big conference with the boys in Osaka is in 45 minutes. You've got to go through the spreadsheets again, rehearse your talking points and check your e-mail from the lawyers. Why are you lying in bed? Because you can. With 11 million telecommuters in the U.S. today, corporate America is sending a message: stay home. By the year 2000, the number of telecommuters are expected to reach around 30 million as the technology gets even cheaper and makes it easier to hang out and teleconference in your PJs.

A few years ago, Melissa Murphy was offered a job by a FORTUNE 500 company. There was only one problem: she was in her hometown, Kansas City, Mo., while the job was some 1,350 miles away in Phoenix, Ariz. "I said, 'I'll do it, but I don't want to move,'" Murphy recalls. "So I told them, 'Let's see what we can work out.'"

What they worked out was the typical home office: a PC wired to an Internet connection that stays on while she stays home. Sophisticated telephones; the digital equivalents of Swiss Army knives that fax, copy and scan (but don't do your laundry yet); and videoconferencing equipment, like the QuickCam Pro, all fill out the small office/home office (SOHO) market that has become hugely affordable.

It's a trend you may want to take up with your boss. And if you do, mention this figure: 71% of telecommuters say they've happily traded their business shoes for bunny slippers. Everything you need is on the shelves. You might even stay home and get your gear online.