> The (small business) owner. The small (business owner). Your second formulation doesn't work. Words in parentheses should be able to be omitted without loss

> The (small business) owner. The small (business owner). Your second formulation doesn't work. Words in parentheses should be able to be omitted without loss of grammaticality. Instead, The small (business) owner would be a better contrasting formulation to the first one.