Strange as it may seem, some of the world’s top companies were started in times of recession. A survey done by Frost & Sullivan’s Chief Economist shows that 16 of the 30 companies that make up the Dow industrial average can claim they started their concepts in a recession. Some of those companies include General Electric which started way back in the panic of 1873, Hewlard Packard which started during the Great Depression with more current companies like Microsoft emerging during the turbulence of the ‘70’s and Sun Microsystems, Compaq Computer and Adobe systems starting life during the recession of the ‘80’s.
It seems that in turbulent times, the normal flow of business is broken by setbacks and uncertainty and that’s when entrepreneurs start thinking out of the box and come up with alternate approaches that often are the start of dynamic new concepts and companies. Factors that are often conducive to new business successes are the cut-backs that existing companies make during a recession that allows a forward-thinking entrepreneur to take the gap, the opportunities that open up for alternate or cheaper alternatives and the ‘lateral’ thinking that is required during tough times to come up with creative solutions - often resulting in a brainwave that turns into a breakthrough.