Thomas Dodd, Commercial Director: On Thursday, 24th September 2025, I attended a roundtable entitled “Technology to Drive Business Growth”. The event brought together leaders from across the South of England in Managed Service Providers (MSPs), AI innovators, software companies, and finance.

What followed was an honest and at times challenging discussion around how technology can drive growth in business. Below, I’ve captured some of the standout themes from the conversation.

Fostering Innovation: From Customer Pains to Risk Tolerance

A central point that resonated with everyone around the table was this: technology is only valuable when it solves real customer problems. Too often, businesses build shiny tools in search of a problem to fix. The message was clear—listen to your customers, then map your tech stack directly to their business outcomes.

To foster innovation, several approaches stood out:

• Partnerships and clusters – Companies working together in growth boards and idea-sharing groups often accelerate innovation faster than isolated efforts.

• Workgroups and use cases – By embedding both staff and customers into workgroups, firms can test real-world use cases rather than hypothetical solutions.

• Culture of failure – The UK’s risk aversion was contrasted with the US model, where failure is tolerated as a stepping stone. We need to shift towards seeing failed experiments as valuable learning.

• Cross-department experimentation – Allowing people across functions to trial new technologies—then report findings—creates a pipeline of grassroots innovation rather than a top-down directive.

Innovation, then, is less about eureka moments and more about structured listening, collaboration, and cultural tolerance for failure.

Securing Investment: Scalability, Process, and Vision

The conversation quickly turned practical: how do businesses make themselves attractive to investors? Several themes emerged.

First, process discipline. Investors look for businesses that have documented, repeatable, and scalable processes. It’s not enough to rely on a founder’s vision. Leaders were reminded: if the business can’t survive your two-week holiday, it’s not investable.

Second, tooling and specialisation. Like Ryanair’s “one plane” strategy, firms need to cement a core tech stack and become true experts in it. Tools must be evaluated not just on raw capability but on how well they integrate and how easily teams adopt them.

Third, financial predictability. Building recurring revenue models, enforcing inflation-linked price increases, and ensuring margins aren’t eroded by overstaffed leadership roles (sometimes equating to two or three full-time equivalents) were all highlighted as critical steps.

Finally, leaders must balance vision with scalability. A founder’s charisma may start a business, but only process, discipline, and a robust financial model will scale it.

AI in 2025: Opportunity, Threat, and the Human Element

Unsurprisingly, AI dominated much of the discussion. One striking insight was that while the UK has led in cloud adoption, it risks being outpaced in AI by the US, which is surging ahead with bolder experimentation and lighter regulation.

Several practical observations stood out:

• The role of AI in staffing – Initial attempts to replace frontline staff with AI were met with customer resistance. The trend now is to retain and invest in frontline staff while using AI to enhance back-office efficiency.

• AI as an enabler, not a replacer – The best use today is empowering existing staff to make quicker, better-informed decisions, not eliminating them.

• Mitigating unconscious bias – Properly trained AI can help challenge human biases, particularly in funding, where women-led businesses still lag behind.

• The cost race – With xAI undercutting OpenAI on price, the economics of large models remain uncertain. The likely future lies in “small language models” tailored for secure, business-specific contexts.

• Governance gap – Few SMEs currently have robust AI governance policies, a gap that must be addressed as adoption grows.

On regulation, the panel leaned towards the US-style “light-touch” approach. The EU’s heavier regulatory stance risks leaving it behind, while the UK has an opportunity to take a pragmatic middle ground that encourages innovation without sacrificing security.

Funding and Growth: The UK’s Missed Opportunities

The conversation closed with funding, where frustration was evident. Despite more private equity activity in the UK than ever, scale-up capital is still dwarfed by US availability. 

That said, there is optimism. Government plans to open up pension funds for domestic investment could unlock significant growth. The opportunity exists—what’s needed is ambition, both from the private sector and policymakers, to back homegrown businesses at scale.

Final Thoughts

This roundtable highlighted the twin realities of the UK tech sector. On the one hand, we are ahead of many global peers in cloud adoption and have an abundance of entrepreneurial talent. On the other, risk aversion, patchy investment structures, and slow AI adoption threaten to blunt our competitive edge.

The themes were clear:

• Ground technology in customer problems, not abstractions.

• Build disciplined, scalable processes to win investment.

• Use AI to empower people, not replace them, and prepare governance now.

• Push for bolder funding mechanisms if the UK is to compete with the US and Asia.

The future belongs to those willing to take calculated risks, invest in talent, and make bold decisions on technology adoption. The UK has the tools—it now needs the ambition.