Change Agents 30 years ago, corporate was king--but the business landscape has changed. Here's a closer look at the forces that have shaped the face of entrepreneurship.

Of all the amazing changes the past three decades have brought, which were the most important? Five trends stand out as the entrepreneurial landscape's most transformative.

Technology
Travel back in a time machine to 1977, and you'd find few of the devices businesspeople rely on today. Into the early 1980s, most personal computers were bulky things such as RadioShack's notorious TRS-80, known to users as the "Trash 80."

As the '80s progressed, PCs and printers got cheaper and more reliable. Computer-processing power that had cost tens of thousands of dollars and taken up entire rooms could fit on an entrepreneur's kitchen table, says Kenneth Lipartito, history professor at Florida International University in Miami. Now a computer system could be had by any would-be business owner with a credit card or a sympathetic relative willing to lend some cash.