New inventions and new technology help our big businesses grow and develop during the Industrial Revolution. Many of the new inventions were machines that made it easier and quicker to produce products. Inventions like the spinning jenny, the sewing machine, and the refrigerated railroad car are examples of inventions that helped produce and helped transport products quicker. These machines were very expensive. It was very difficult for an individual to purchase these machines. This led to the development of corporations. Corporations were able to raise money much quicker since they sold stock. There were often many owners in a corporation. Plus, the corporation owners couldn’t be sued personally if a problem developed.

The development of the Bessemer process made it easier and cheaper to make steel. This helped the transportation industry. As a result, business owners could get their products to market much quicker than in the past. Improved communications also made it easier to do business. The invention of the telegraph and the telephone made communication much easier and much quicker. This allowed companies to process orders faster than in the past.

New inventions and new technologies aided the growth of big businesses during the Industrial Revolution.

The rise of these things helped big business to arise in at least two ways.

First, inventions and technology allowed some of the first big businesses to get started.  For example, the railroad industry was able to grow because of things like cheap steel (due to the invention of the Bessemer process) and new technologies like refrigerated cars, the air brake, and the telegraph.

Second, there were business technologies that made it easier for businesses to organize themselves even as they grew bigger.  For example, the typewriter made it much easier for large businesses to keep the kinds of records they needed.  The telephone allowed different parts of large firms to communicate with one another easily.

So, one set of innovations helped the big businesses make their products and another set helped them to organize their firms as they became larger.