science

Home business

Home business is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Home business rather than just read about it. In short: A home business or home-based business (HBB) is a small business that operates from the business owner's home office. In addition to location, home businesses are usually defined by having a very small number of employees, usually all immediate family of the business owner, in which case it is also a family business.

Key takeaways

Home business belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Home business to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Home business from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A home business or home-based business (HBB) is a small business that operates from the business owner's home office. In addition to location, home businesses are usually defined by having a very small number of employees, usually all immediate family of the business owner, in which case it is also a family business. Home businesses generally lack shop frontage, customer parking and street advertising signs. Such businesses are sometimes prohibited by residential zoning regulations. Remote work has increased. Home offices compete with small commercial businesses and are cheaper to operate. It may also be possible to tax deduct some home expenses while running a home based business. High speed internet connections and smartphones help to make a home-based business a reality. Earlier home businesses had been where families lived on the second floor of their house while converting the first floor into a store, where upon close of business they would secure the first floor and retire to the upper floors. This type of home business is still done in some rural areas. Many home businesses are started off in a much smaller capacity whilst the owner is still employed elsewhere, and then expanded once they are proven to be profitable.

Home-based business The concept of home-based business, as opposed to the previous terminology of "cottage industry", first appeared in 1978. The phrase was coined by Marion Behr, the originator of a study to find out what businesses women throughout America were carrying on in their homes. The preview edition of Enterprising Women wrote about the search to gather information pertaining to home workers throughout the nation. Numerous magazines and organizations helped to disseminate information regarding the study. Ultimately 40,000 letters were received, many indicating the problems the respondents experienced while carrying on businesses from their homes. The problems were analyzed and confronted in two ways. In 1980 the National Alliance of Homebased Businesswomen was founded to combat the isolation expressed by the respondents as well as to fight the laws which made conducting their businesses difficult. Then Women Working Home: The Homebased Guide and Directory by Marion Behr and Wendy Lazar was published. It contained the stories of many women who ran home-based businesses throughout the country in many diverse fields, as well as information on business formation, conduct and compliance with the law. It sold 50,000 copies. During this time many national magazines wrote about these issues. At the White House Conference on Small Business in 1986, one of the major resolutions was a recommendation favoring lifting restrictions on home-based business. Despite restrictions that continue to be in place women-owned businesses made up about 42% of all U.S. businesses in 2022, providing jobs for nearly 9.4 million workers and producing roughly $1.9 trillion in yearly revenue. The number of home businesses continues to grow due to the increases in technology. In Great Britain, 8 million people were running an online home-based business as of April 2013.Technology has significantly enhanced the economic benefits of home-based businesses by increasing productivity, reducing costs, and promoting innovation. Licensing requirements for home-based businesses in the United States vary based on industry and location.

Expanded home-based businesses Numerous businesses, initially started as home-based, have expanded to become significantly larger operations. These include:

Apple Inc., started by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak from Steve Jobs's garage Hewlett-Packard, whose original location is now a museum, the HP Garage Amazon.com, internet retailer founded by Jeff Bezos

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Home business

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Home business claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Home business before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Home business ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Home business

In research: Home business appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Home business in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Home business is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Business models, Home, Small business, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Home business outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Home business in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Home business means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Home business out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Home business in simple terms?

Why does Home business matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Home business?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Home business.