BT’s Small Business Week off to a motivational start

Industry leaders today issued a rallying call to small businesses to maintain a stiff upper lip during the current economic crisis by continuing to share knowledge and innovate.

Today marks the first day of BT’s Small Business Week, a week-long initiative designed to champion and encourage small businesses in the UK.

“You turn on the TV and hear about banks… But there are 4.7 million small businesses in this country. It’s not just that there are tonnes of these things all over the place, they are very important. We’re not talking about a little niche, we’re talking about one of the fundamental drivers of all of our wealth,” said host of the event, BBC Working Lunch’s Adam Shaw.

To celebrate the launch, BT released its latest small business state of the nation report, which unsurprisingly revealed that technology is a key enabler for the smaller players. Some 81 per cent of research respondents said IT had positively impacted their company, more than a third (35 per cent) said it had enabled them to touch new audiences and 34 per cent said it had boosted productivity and aided administrative tasks.

The assembled panelists and speakers comprised BT Business’ managing director Bill Murphy, Dragon’s Den’s Peter Jones, Everywoman’s Maxine Benson, ACCA’s Wyn Mears, David Frost from the British Chambers of Commerce and Shadow Minister for Small Business, Mark Prisk MP.

While there is fear, uncertainty and doubt about what the future holds - with many larger companies putting a freeze on spending and, often, innovation - now’s the time smaller companies should act, according to those speaking at the event.

“It’s in a downturn that the next generation of entrepreneurs come forward,” said Prisk. “If you can do it in [tough] times, you have that inner confidence you can prosper in better times. It’s important that we listen and understand the practical nitty gritty that is holding small businesses back. When we get through these difficult times we can look back and say we built constructively for the long term and not just panicked in the short term.”

As well as highlighting the role that technology and in particular social networking can play in bringing smaller players together to share experiences, the focus was also on people.

BT plans to launch a mentoring service for smaller businesses, offering up senior executives like Bill Murphy to pass on their knowledge to others.

“I am hopeful that this pilot is successful and we will extend it out across BT,” he said.

Peter Jones also waded in with his thoughts on how he feels the economic crisis isn’t as bad as we thing it is and how small businesses should feel encouraged that credit lines have once again been opened up to them.

“In the past – the 1930’s particularly – the economy suffered a heart attack and didn’t see it coming… [Whereas today] we’ve had our full bypass operation and we will need to recover from that,” Jones said, controversially dismissing any talk of a depression as a “nonsense.”

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