Growing Businesses in Digital Age

Fascinating facts on social media:

• Every minute there are 100K tweets, 2mn Google searches.
• 700K Facebook shares.
• 48 hours of video uploaded to You Tube
• 120 billion pieces of Facebook data loaded monthly
• Facebook would be the world's 3rd largest country if it were one
• 1.7bn apps are downloaded in a week
• There's as much computer power in a mobile today as NASA used when they put their man on the moon in the 1960s.
• For £600 you can buy a disk than can store all of the world's music.
• 92% of the entire world's data was created within the past two years.
• 1 in 5 men read their iPad on the loo! See more on what are responsive websites

Are we bold enough to seize these opportunities?

Generally not in the UK, according to Peter Ayliffe, (Chairman, Monitise plc and former President and Chief Executive Officer of Visa Europe), because of the way we invest in new technologies.

A survey asked “who would you trust to run a company to deliver on opportunities”

The choices included:

• A teenage hipster
• A data scientist
• A designer
• A technologist
• A marketer, entrepreneur
• Management consultant
• Accountant

The results included votes of 11% for Teenagers. 2% for Accountants and over 50% for the Marketer/Entrepreneur. But, 52% of the FTSE 100 companies are currently run by accountants.

It was 31% just 5 years ago, but has increased in the last few years of more difficult trading. Who better than an accountant to be a safe pair of hands for your business? But, are they bold enough to make an investment in future technologies?

The US mostly love companies working in new technologies. In the UK some have a short term outlook, often driven by quarter on quarter increase in profits. CMI have just kicked off a parliamentary commission to look at behaviours of business leaders who have invested and grown businesses v people who have managed their business but not shown any growth.