Internet Gives Small Companies A New Global Leg Up.

Despite the launch of the enterprise culture in the UK and Western Europe during the 1980s there has been a failure to grow small businesses into larger firms. Key reasons for this have been the lack of access to funding, cash flow issues and general resource constraints. The recent downturn in the UK and Eurozone economies has served to compound these difficulties thereby threatening the very survival and success of start-up ventures and established small businesses, as well as stymieing potential future growth. \ud This article explores the extent to which start-up ventures and established small firms are able to overcome resource-constraints and run asset-light business models using the Internet as a digital ecosystem. The digital ecosystem of a small business is defined as the combination of all the relevant digital technologies that the firm interacts with and the technology platform (the Internet) that supports this