Small businesses with just a few employees are also important. Many governments
hope that the small businesses of today will become the multinationals of tomorrow, but
many owners of small companies choose to work that way because they find it more con-
genial and do not want to expand.
And then of course there are the sole traders, one-man or one-woman businesses.
In the professional world, these freelancers are often people who have left (or been
forced to leave) large organizations and who have set up on their own, taking the exper-
tise they have gained with them.
But in every case the principle is the same: to survive - the money coming in has to
be more than the money going out. Companies with shareholders are looking for more
than survival - they want return on investment. Shares in the company rise and fall in
relation to how investors see the future profitability of the company; they demand share-
