I am a frequent flyer on Delta Airlines. Fortunately I did not travel this week and avoided the system outage that resulted in hundreds of cancelled flights. Everyone is talking about how the disruption of service affected travelers and there is no doubt that the impact was significant. Others are speculating how this incident, and a similar one at Southwest, will impact these companies in the long-term.

You might think that the numbers say it all but I believe we need to look deeper. According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), there are 27.9 million small businesses in the United States and they make up 99.7% of U.S. employer firms. These businesses employ about 50% of the country’s private sector workforce. For a time, small business was one of the few bright spots in the economy –growing and creating jobs. But recently the positioning of small business as the “little engine that can pull us out of the economic downturn” has stalled.