The world is hopefully ending its worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.While the recession has impacted various countries and various sectors within those countries in different ways, small business has typically been one group that has been seriously, adversely impacted. But, how much? And, in what ways? The purpose of this year's ICSBpolicypre-conference was to begin developing a record of the impact of the Great Recession on new and small businesses and government's response in the face of it.The initial appearance suggests that small businesses were often swamped and their interests ignored or lost in the pressing need for government to address overarching economic and financial issues. Yet, that may not be the case, or at least not totally so.And, that may not be bad, or at least not totally so.While our collective memory is fresh, it is well that we start to answer these questions and initiate the process of learning the lessons the Great Recession should have taught us.

This year’s session established that the Great Recession impacted individual countries and the businesses very differently. However, most suffered serious adverse consequences. Panelists in the morning session, Kristie Seawright of GEM and Svetlana Bagaudinova of the World Bank,adressed ‘The Setting’ while the afternoon panelists each presented a ‘Country Overview’ for their respective regions – Argentina, Canada, China, Japan, and the Netherlands. The final part of the agenda focused on the ‘Issues’ with presentations by Brian Gibson (Governance), Denny Dennis (Real Estate and Finance) and Paul Reynolds (Job Creation). The information presented during the day showed attendees that individual government efforts to cushion the blows had greater and lesser effects, but all of those efforts were swamped by macro-economic events. Anyone include macro-economic effects and the business cycle in their management syllabus?