Why the Future Belongs to MSMEs

Written By Irene Ng

For centuries, human progress has been measured by the rise of industries, the productivity of nations, and the growth of wages. Yet today, we are living through a profound shift: technology and artificial intelligence are accelerating faster than wage-based labor can keep up. The construct of the “job” — the foundation of modern economies — is no longer sufficient for humans to flourish.

The only construct left is the firm.

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From Hustle to Firm

Some years ago, I saw this shift emerging. In my paper “Mimicking Firms: Future of Work and Theory of the Firm in a Digital Age” (Ng, 2018), I argued that individuals must increasingly take on the characteristics of firms if they are to thrive in this new economy. That shift is now accelerating.

I also shared in my Crunchbase article, how growing up in a border town taught me the difference between hustling and levelling up to building, owning, and accumulating equity. Firms are not just legal entities; they are vehicles of human agency, flexibility, and resilience.

Through my family office, I created an equity-building fund to support this transformation: helping individuals become micro-firms, then grow into businesses that accumulate equity for succession, financial security, freedom of mobility, and a dignified retirement. This is not just a project for wealthy economies. It is a powerful leveller for poorer nations too.

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The Global Scale of MSMEs

MSMEs are not a niche. They are the majority.

  • MSMEs account for over 90% of all formal businesses worldwide

  • They employ around 70% of the global workforce  , rising to as high as 77% in emerging economies.

  • In total, MSMEs generate 7 out of every 10 jobs in the business sector of developing economies.

  • Collectively, MSMEs contribute about half of global GDP.

  • Yet, an estimated 80% of MSMEs operate informally, outside the visibility of investors, regulators, or capital markets

This is both their strength — adaptability and reach — and their challenge.

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The Everyday Face of MSMEs

MSMEs are everywhere, in every generation:

  • Young consultants striking out on their own, turning knowledge into boutique advisory firms.

  • Influencers and creators building micro-enterprises from personal brands and community reach.

  • Coders and designers freelancing across borders, forming agile software shops and creative studios.

  • Farmers and food producers running smallholder farms supplying local and regional markets.

  • Craftspeople and artisans selling handmade goods in villages and online platforms.

  • Teachers and tutors launching digital classrooms and community academies.

  • Healthcare practitioners running independent clinics and practices.

  • Retirees starting consultancies, mentoring or opening micro-businesses to stay engaged and economically independent.

MSMEs are not just “small businesses.” They are every individual who takes control of their economic life by becoming a firm — whether 18 or 80.

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The Rise of MSMEs, and the Challenges Ahead

Across the world, workers are shifting out of large corporations and into MSMEs. But this shift creates four critical issues:

  1. Loss of Productivity — every MSME must struggle with the same back-office burdens: administration, compliance, HR, finance. What a large corporation centralises, a micro-firm must duplicate.

  2. The Hustle Trap — many start as hustlers: nimble, quick to find deals, accustomed to resource constraints. But without the know-how to build a business — legal form, governance, strategy, scaling — that hustle becomes a ceiling.

  3. Lack of Visibility and Collective Power — MSMEs are fragmented, invisible to capital markets, and unable to wield collective bargaining or attract structured capital. They are vital but underrepresented, investable only in fragments rather than as a systemic force.

  4. The Frog-in-Soup Problem — those never exposed to entrepreneurship can feel like frogs in warming soup. The world around them changes rapidly — automation, AI, shifting supply chains — but they lack the awareness, skills, or support to adapt. Instead of levelling up, they slip downwards into subsistence, unable to keep pace with a transforming economy.

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My Mission

As an entrepreneur from the age 17, empowering MSMEs has been very much my mission.

  1. To educate and equip — by giving MSMEs the knowledge, skills, and pathways to evolve from survival to growth, and from growth to equity-building enterprises.

  2. To improve productivity — by digitising and automating the back office, and by enabling MSMEs to graduate from hustling into structured business-building.

  3. To make them visible and investable — by transforming their activities, relationships, and trust into digital assets that can flow into capital markets.

  4. To channel capital directly to them — by designing capital markets for new types of funds to flow directly to MSMEs, unlocking sustainable finance at scale.

    The Dataswyft Wallet is one such infrastructure that can enable MSMEs: a foundation for MSMEs to own, control, license their data and be visible. And through my investment group Innovorsa, I drive the capital strategy — building vehicles that allow these funds to flow efficiently and transform MSMEs into investable classes. Education ties it all together: for without it, many remain unaware of how to build lasting businesses in a fast-changing economy.

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Capital Markets for MSMEs

To unlock the power of MSMEs, we must create new kinds of funds — purpose-built for them, not retrofitted from large corporate finance. Imagine:

  • Agriculture Yield Funds — smallholder farmers pool crop and soil data to back funds that finance equipment, irrigation, and logistics.

  • Creator Economy Funds — influencers, musicians, and digital creators securitise their engagement metrics to access growth capital.

  • Gig Worker Income Funds — ride-hailing drivers, delivery workers, freelancers collateralise transaction histories to smooth incomes and build credit.

  • Artisan & Craft Funds — makers and micro-exporters form equity pools that connect them to global demand without being swallowed by intermediaries.

  • Healthcare Practice Funds — independent clinics or therapists securitise patient volume and reputation badges to finance expansion.

  • Senior Entrepreneur Funds — retirees who form consultancies or mentorship ventures can access vehicles tuned to their risk-/time horizon.

These are not abstract ideas. They are the building blocks of a new financial infrastructure — markets designed to value the productivity, creativity, and trust of MSMEs, and channel global capital into their growth.

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A Call to Action

We must redesign our economic systems around the firm-as-individual and the individual-as-firm. We must treat MSMEs not as the periphery of the economy but as its core. And we must build the infrastructures — digital, financial, and institutional — that allow them to flourish.

The age of wage-based growth is fading. The age of equity-based flourishing is here. The firm — the MSME — is humanity’s greatest chance to reclaim agency in the 21st century.

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References

Irene Ng
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The Horizontal (informal) Economy