MDP Osborne & alum Barroso on Small Business Retention

During the fall semester of 2016, Lillian Osborne (MDP ‘17) and Felipe Barroso (MDP ‘16) were part of a team of researchers from UMN Extension that investigated the impacts of the retirement of the “baby boomer” generation on rural communities in the Midwest, with a focus on small business ownership trends. The project found that successful business succession creates an opportunity for business expansion and that the main strategies adopted by the studied communities to tackle the retirement wave of “baby boomers” are to facilitate business succession planning and to provide access to resources to small business owners.

This February, the article was published on the Community Development Society Journal and can be accessed at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15575330.2017.1287110?journalCode=rcod20