Small Business Dilemma

Many of my colleagues and/or competitors would include education institutions, government agencies and even non-profits.  It is very difficult to compete as a for-profit company when most of my competitors are not-for-profit, which makes them eligible for many grants and contracts for which I am not.  You would think this might be the biggest challenge, but it is not.

As a small for-profit consulting agency, I am not restricted by bureaucracy, branding or a traditional way of doing things.  This, as many of you probably know, allows for some outside the box thinking.  But here’s an example of what happens.  At the end of 2012, as a courtesy, I approached a large government training institution about a concept to conduct a virtual workforce development conference, but was basically told they were not interested.  So, my company launched the project independently.  It turned out to be relatively successful, but not as successful as it could have been had I had an institutional partner to co-sponsor the conference.

Yesterday, I received an announcement that the same agency who told me they were ‘not interested’ will be conducting a virtual workforce conference this summer!  This happens all of the time in my business.  Large, non-innovative agencies will just wait for the little guy to be creative and then steal their concepts.  I’m curious.  Is this just specific to the workforce development industry or do other small businesses experience the same thing?