Guest post by Rieva Lesonsky
Barry Moltz has been blogging for 10 years (happy anniversary, Barry). Who could have predicted that? Not I, but for some reason Barry asked me to gaze into my crystal ball and predict what the world of small business will be like 10 years from now. (Maybe he thinks all women from Long Island are mediums.) 
But for Barry I’ll give it a shot.
In the year 2023 there will be two kinds of businesses: local and global. Local businesses (mostly restaurants and service businesses) will continue to occupy Main Streets across the country, while many retailers will be global since it’s now just as easy to connect with customers around the world as around the corner.
No one ever (or practically ever) will be offline. Everyone on the planet will be wired 24/7. We will be able to instantly connect to people and information from tiny devices or maybe with some kind of “mind” power. I’m not talking about the “quaint, old-fashioned” watch that lets us surf the web, but about touching a button on a watch or bracelet, earring or body part and connecting instantaneously.
The also quaint notion of the consumerization of IT will have vanished years before. For most people—and most businesses—the technologies used are now one and the same. Employees will get to use the tech devices of their choice—and won’t need to juggle work and personal phones, tablets, or laptops. Security concerns will be a thing of the past (for this—hackers are still hard at work disrupting business as usual).
Coding (and other IT subjects) will be integrated into the elementary school curriculum, making it easier for everyone—even 7 year-olds—to have his or her own website.
Hopefully (and this is part of my Utopian vision) sometime in the next 10 years, American society will realize that when people are not paid at minimum a living wage, it hurts all of us. When consumers have money, they spend it—and everyone benefits. After all, a rising tide lifts all boats. And luckily since we took action to combat climate change, the tides are no longer rising at alarming levels.
Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media and custom content company focusing on small business and entrepreneurship. Email Rieva at [email protected], follow her on Google+ and Twitter.com/Rieva and visit her website, SmallBizDaily.com, to get the scoop on business trends and sign up for Rieva’s free TrendCast reports.
