A third of UK entrepreneurs are too busy to come up with new ideas
British entrepreneurs are so pushed for time they have little opportunity to come up with new ideas for improving business, according to a new study by technology company Sage.
In a survey of over 2,600 small and medium-sized company owners, 34 per cent said their busy schedules were a “block to innovation”. In fact, of all possible areas of neglect when building a business, this was ranked as the most common among Britain's entrepreneurs.
They said competing business priorities and a lack of appropriately skilled workers were the biggest causes of a shortage of free time.
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Other areas of growth that ended up falling to the bottom of the priority list due to time pressures included customer contact, staff development and bill payments. One in three UK small business owners said time pressures resulted in losing customers and clients.
But it's not just business that suffers at the hands of a long to-do list – it also costs entrepreneurs down time, with 32 per cent saying they have had fewer than five days of holiday over the last year. In a separate survey, Sage also found that the majority of British entrepreneurs work more than 40 hours each week.
When asked what would need to be done to make work more efficient and therefore innovative, three things stood out among entrepreneurs: improving employee skills, having better administrative processes in place and adopting better, more advanced technologies.
Stephen Kelly, chief executive of Sage, said: “Small businesses around the world are the true heroes of the global economy and we need to support them in helping them find the time to develop and grow.”
When so many businesses create a dream business from a great idea, it’s heart-breaking to see business owners forced to let that innovation fall by the wayside. We know how hard they work, and we want to help entrepreneurs carve out some time to keep their innovative spark alive.