The new rags to riches

Probably 25 percent of his new clients are people seeking work in which they will be responsible for their lives, says Mr. Bowman.

"They're all interested in more security," he says. "And how do you get that? Well, don't you look within?"

Bowman cites one client, a senior production executive at a major entertainment studio who has developed new technology for television and film. The client, he says, is leaning toward taking his idea and running.

"There's so much churn in the entertainment industry, and he's experienced that churn in his career," says Bowman. "He's going for the brass ring, and he's one of many."

Bowman's clients in many ways represent the bold.

Cutting loose is not without its own set of hardships, he cautions, and only the well-prepared survive. Licensing, zoning, and insurance take time to master, even for those who buy into existing franchises. Plenty of would-be entrepreneurs, he says, ultimately slink back to corporate life.

Many displaced or "underemployed" white-collar workers also maintain solid bridges to corporate entities through part-time arrangements or consulting, according to Maria Minniti, a professor of economics at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., and coauthor of a recent report for the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.

Ms. Minniti maintains that the real driver of big-picture entrepreneurship in the US remains opportunity, not necessity, though she acknowledges that her statistics do show a slight increase in new entrepreneurs who "felt they had no better opportunity."

Minniti points to another trend: Many less-educated workers - including new immigrants - may have been forced into starting micro-ventures because of the lack of job opportunities. Often unregistered, she notes, these do not show up in official statistics.

Even among experienced mid-career workers, a certain danger lurks in the demographics.

Many of those who find corporate options closed are just not hard-wired for entrepreneurship, says Ed Pendarvis, founder of Sunbelt Business Advisors, a network of business brokers based in Charleston, S.C.

"By definition, an entrepreneur is a risk-taker," says Mr. Pendarvis. "If I'm 45 years old, and for the first time in my life I don't have a job, the last thing in the world I want to do is risk my life savings."

Pendarvis says these "forced entrepreneurs" keep burning through capital, having concluded that they need to make something happen on their own.

"It's been a big shift," he says. When he entered the business-brokering game in 1982, he says, no more than 3 to 5 percent of clients were looking to go into business for themselves.

"Now I would say 60 to 65 percent of folks over 40 who feel insecure in their jobs or have already been downsized look at going into business as a viable alternative to just getting another job," he says, "because five years from now you might be laid off from that job," and wind up close to retirement with no income.

Mr. Faley of the University of Michigan even sees this evolving approach to work as one that may mesh well with the future of US business. Brand-name corporations, he says, could essentially become distributors atop a "symbiotic, more relationship-driven" system - "more of an integration of isolated entities than these big behemoths."

For some, the move to self- directedness has already paid off. Dan Hill looks back on his corporate past with no animosity - and no regrets.

"It was a good training ground," he says. "I wouldn't say I'd never see myself there again if the right opportunity came along. But put it this way: I'm not looking."

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