Why innovation and creativity will help UK entrepreneurs thrive in 2025
We look at how Britain’s entrepreneurs are responding to current challenges and making the most of opportunities with passion, resilience and invention
Rob Waugh
Thanks to amazing advances in technology it has never been easier to launch, market and run a business in Britain – and British entrepreneurs are forging ahead using every innovation that becomes available. Whether turning a ‘side hustle’ into a full-blown business, or launching a business from scratch, British businesses told Telegraph Media Group how they are rising to the challenges of creating growth and success. When you consider that businesses that embrace a design-led approach reportedly have a larger market share, a more loyal customer base and increased growth over the long term, it’s no surprise that a need for a creative approach is becoming a requirement for forward-thinking enterprises. But with Britain’s small business sector having grown in the past year (in contrast to a decline in the number of businesses across the economy), it’s clear that Britain’s entrepreneurs are highly resilient. British small businesses face challenges, ranging from energy prices (56 per cent) to competition (48 per cent, up from 41 per cent in 2022) – and many small businesses cite problems with recruiting staff and skills (40 per cent), according to the Office for National Statistics. The number of businesses using technology to sell to customers has grown to 61 per cent from 50 per cent in 2022, with 54 per cent of small businesses now using technology to manage their business. Technology is also an important ‘enabler’ for small businesses when it comes to marketing and social media, as celebrated in our Express Your Innovation competition in partnership with Adobe Express, an app which helps entrepreneurs to create everything from promotional videos to flyers to social media campaigns in seconds – with its quick and easy-to-use creative features, such as its text to graphic and drag-and-drop video functions. Celebrating the creativity of British businesses and highlighting their resilience were among the reasons behind the Express Your Innovation competition (March-April 2025). The prize consists of business mentoring from our expert judges, investment to give entrants’ ideas lift-off and time with a design expert on how to maximise the advantages of Adobe Express. We asked our expert judges for tips on dealing with some of the current challenges companies face.
56%
British small businesses cite the main obstacle to growth as energy prices
48%
Competition is another frequently mentioned obstacle (up from 41 per cent
in 2022)
40%
British small businesses say another barrier is recruiting staff and skills
Celebrating the
creativity of
British businesses and highlighting
their resilience
were among the
reasons behind the Express Your
Innovation competition
Celebrating the
British businesses and highlighting
their resilience
reasons behind the Express Your
Innovation competition
were among the
creativity of
Celebrating the
British businesses and highlighting
their resilience
reasons behind the Express Your
Innovation competition
were among the
creativity of
54%
of small businesses now using technology
to manage their business
61%
The number of businesses using technology to sell to customers has grown to
61 per cent from 50 per cent in 2022
Meet the Express your Innovation judges
Our esteemed judging panel comprises UK leaders who have earned their business stripes
Natalie Campbell
Natalie Campbell is an award-winning purpose-led social entrepreneur and co-chief executive of Belu Water, a company supplying water and filtration systems to UK businesses, with profits going to WaterAid in other countries. She is our judge for the Community category.
Paul Lindley is judging the Rising Star category. In 2004, he founded Ella’s Kitchen, which is the largest baby food company in the UK with global revenues of over £87m. He now campaigns for young people and children’s welfare and wellbeing.
Paul Lindley
Julie Lilley is the voice of small companies in the UK in her role as chief executive of the Federation of Small Businesses, and is our judge for the Small Business category. She is an award-winning executive role model for women and has leadership experience in both public service and private enterprise.
Julie Lilley
Reasons to be cheerful
Natalie Campbell
Paul Lindley
Julie Lilley
Community judge Natalie Campbell says:
“With so much technological opportunity, you can build a business that looks like a multi-million-pound enterprise, literally from your bedroom, with a laptop. When I started you could not have an ecommerce site – I had a CD-ROM for my accounting software. It's totally different now, and that's what's unique about this moment. I believe more entrepreneurs, especially creative entrepreneurs, and people focusing on community, will be made in this moment than in any other moment.”
Natalie Campbell
Paul Lindley
Julie Lilley
Rising Star judge Paul Lindley says:
“In life, you regret things that you don’t do, more than things you do. Entrepreneurship is an amazing journey – you can literally change the world – and even if it doesn’t take you quite where you think you are going to go, you’ll learn about yourself and about life. You can also be optimistic about the support you will get from fellow entrepreneurs, so never be embarrassed to ask.”
Natalie Campbell
Paul Lindley
Julie Lilley
Our Small Business category judge Julie Lilley says:
“There is a lot of doom and gloom, but I do think that businesses can be cheerful about digitalisation. The fact that you don’t really need an office, that you can advertise your business on the global shopfront of social media and the way that we can get our businesses out to market so cheaply and so easily is something to be very cheerful about.”
Adapting to challenges
What makes a successful business founder? Recent Oxford University research highlighted that successful entrepreneurs tend to share traits such as openness to adventure and being exuberant.
With those traits, in 2025 it’s never been easier for founders to get involved in everything from marketing their business to creating videos, thanks to apps such as Adobe Express.
Creativity, passion and resilience have grown in importance as technology has made it easier to build and launch businesses, says Øyvind L Martinsen, professor in organisational psychology at BI Norwegian Business School.
“Entrepreneurs are resilient, tolerate stress, recover fast, are confident and are realistic,” he says. “They don’t worry about things and are risk-tolerant, which is necessary for entrepreneurs. They don’t perceive failing as a danger, or even perhaps a realistic outcome.” “A strong attribute in entrepreneurs is openness to experience, because you need to have an idea in order to build up something. With openness to experience, entrepreneurs are inventive, very curious, have a liberal point of view and hate rules. One of the most important dimensions of entrepreneurship is that you need to have an idea and be able to solve problems in novel ways.”
Øyvind L Martinsen
For entrepreneurs hoping to launch a business in Britain today, it’s essential to be resilient and disciplined, as well as relentlessly creative, says Pete Everett, founder of business support service GrowBe. “Thomas Edison’s words still ring true – running a business can be one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration,” says Everett. “How ever great your idea is, it’s going to be harder – and take longer to achieve – than you think. So the ability to stick at a task and keep going is one of the most important attributes a founder can have. “You will need some luck, too, and for external factors to swing in your favour, but the longer you can stay in the game, the more of that there will be.” That passion and sense of mission needs to come through in all of the business’s communications, both internal and external, Everett says. “Creativity is required, because your first job is to have a vision for the business, and that needs to be concrete and clear,” says Everett. “Founders need to be able to communicate what their business, product or solution can do for the world. “Discipline is essential. It’s the power to keep doing the things you don’t want to do. Doing the things you do want to do is not discipline, it’s just hard work.” It is these personal qualities that see entrepreneurs succeed and our expert judges had some ideas about how they are well placed to seize opportunities that present themselves.
Pete Everett
Ready-to-grasp opportunities
Community judge Natalie Campbell says:
“Most entrepreneurs are made during moments of uncertainty. We as entrepreneurs thrive during those moments, because we don't need things to be the status quo. We need the windows to slightly be ajar. We need gaps in service provision. We need situations such as we have now. In times of crisis, there's more need for purpose-driven organisations than ever. What it also means is that actually, as opposed to being frustrated, most of the entrepreneurs that I see who are serving communities feel compelled to want to help."
Rising Star judge Paul Lindley says:
“We live in a world of huge free research access. So there is every opportunity to fully understand your market, your approach and your competitors. Finding that out used to be prohibitively expensive but now you can do market research with Mailchimp and X. There is support to get started and grow – there are tax incentives and we have a skilled economy. English is the international language of business and we are in the same time zone as many key markets. Entrepreneurship is in our DNA in the UK – we invented the Industrial Revolution, and consumers in the UK adopt new services and brands more easily than they do in some other countries.”
Small Business judge Julie Lilley says:
“At present, the economy is really against small businesses in every possible way. Small businesses are always very passionate – and that’s what we were looking for in this competition. What I look for is innovation and what stands them apart. They are very capable of seeing an opportunity and filling that gap. So I like to see what that opportunity is that they’ve identified, and how through innovation they feel they can fill that gap.”
Despite gloomy headlines around the economy in 2025, Britain’s business community is actually confident, according to research.
Almost all British small businesses are positive about their chances in 2025, with 92 per cent of small businesses expecting to grow this year, according to KPMG, which surveyed 1,500 privately owned companies spanning sectors such as retail, finance, manufacturing and technology.
A time of opportunity
Lucy Street, brand identity designer, Adobe Express evangelist and founder of Lugi Design Studio, says using Adobe Express can benefit entrepreneurs by helping them stay ahead of the game. “The ability to stay ahead of trends, to adapt quickly and experiment with new ideas is crucial for entrepreneurs,” says Street. “Adobe Express is brilliant for easily tweaking designs, trying out new concepts, and creating fresh, relevant content in response to changing market conditions. This agility helps entrepreneurs stay innovative and respond effectively to the needs and preferences of their customers, helping them become leaders in their field. “An easy-to-use platform such as Adobe Express opens the doors for entrepreneurs to tap into their creative potential, build a strong brand identity, and connect meaningfully with customers in order to help their business thrive,” adds Street. “Whether it’s crafting visually compelling content, telling an authentic story, or brainstorming new ideas, creativity and the right features make all the difference. “By infusing creativity into their campaigns, businesses can stand out and create memorable experiences that drive sales and encourage customer engagement.”
Lucy Street
Getting ahead is important but, above all, entrepreneurs need to draw on attributes such as ingenuity and persistence when it comes to day-to-day challenges – and be unafraid to ask for help. “A sense of self-awareness is vital,” says GrowBe's Pete Everett. “Leaders need to know their own strengths and weaknesses, otherwise they won’t be able to find others to complement their skills. “That means getting advice as early as possible. Chuck your pride in a bin and ask someone – whether that’s your peers, a mentor or a coach. You’ll be amazed how many people want to help you and share the tricks they’ve learned along the way. “Getting another viewpoint is essential to get rid of the inevitable feeling of loneliness in trying to create something.” Technology has made it easier for founders, because they have been able to employ a ‘tech stack’ of software that integrates to drive their businesses forward.
Tech can also help founders get involved in the visually creative side of business, even if they have scant design experience. Adobe Express is one such app, offering a set of features including drag-and-drop video creation and AI ‘text to image’ generation, with a view to allowing non-designers to create content quickly and easily. Adobe Express helps founders communicate their brand visually in a crowded, competitive market – this could be through engaging social media posts, eye-catching logos and flyers, or through punchy videos and presentations.
Features including AI-powered Generate Template make it easier to create content from scratch. Users can simply type into a text box to instantly remove or add objects in images. Paired with a vast library of ready-made templates (and the option to create your own using text prompts) Adobe Express makes it easy to create everything from social video to flyers to documents, to graphics for social media posts.
Julian Boaitey
For entrepreneurs on the go, Adobe Express is available on both mobile and desktop, meaning it’s easy to target social media campaigns from anywhere. Having creativity on tap from Adobe Express was helpful in launching pioneering skincare brand Yendy, explains Julian Boaitey, its founder and managing director. The brand pairs African superfoods with active ingredients, working directly with small-scale female farmers across sub-Saharan Africa – aiming to improve their lives and improve transparency around where ingredients come from. Raising awareness was a key challenge for Boaitey.
“From a marketing perspective, we are a small start-up,” he says, “so we’ve had to be smart and be nimble and agile. “Our inspiration obviously comes from Africa. We wanted to create a brand that was able to celebrate Africa without being typical in our approach. So we wanted to show its bright colours and its ethos, and that’s the approach that we’ve taken when it comes to branding. Adobe Express has been super helpful, because it’s made it easier to do this.” It’s incredibly hard to stand out in the cosmetics market, Boaitey says – but his own Ghanaian heritage helped him to build Yendy’s story. “So the mission really is to revolutionise the supply chain for small-scale female farmers across sub-Saharan Africa,” he says. “We want to do so by not only paying a premium to our suppliers, but by documenting their lives and their journeys. Our customers are increasingly conscientious about where their products and ingredients in those products come from and, more importantly, the people who are involved in the supply chain.”
The mission behind Yendy Skin is to revolutionise the supply chain for small-scale female farmers
Yendy's brand celebrates the vibrant colours of Africa, and Adobe Express has made it easy to do this
Yendy’s brand continues to evolve, and creative tools such as Adobe Express are key to that, Boaitey says. “What it looks like today wasn’t what it looked like on day one. We’ve continued to try and move the needle when it comes to our branding. I think for us, we were quite fortunate that there was a unique story in terms of going back and forth to Ghana. Because beauty is so saturated, it was important for us to try and figure out a way to stand out in a crowded market. So the brand was incredibly important for us.” Boaitey’s determination to continuously improve is something that Lilley says is a recurring feature she sees time and again in small business owners. “Small businesses are dealing with challenges ranging from cash flow to changing legislation, but what keeps them going is they are always very passionate about what they do,” she says. “That and innovation is what sets them apart. Small businesses can be quite quirky, to find that edge. The passion often comes first (it might be a hobby that becomes a business) but I think that’s what gets them through tough times, because they are so passionate. It’s an ensuring driver. You’ve got to be incredibly resilient: people don’t understand the work that goes into a small business. It’s tough: something has to drive them, and it’s that passion.”
Learn more about the quick and easy create-anything app at
Adobe Express
Yendy’s brand continues to evolve, and creative tools such as Adobe Express are key to that, Boaitey says. “What it looks like today wasn’t what it looked like on day one. We’ve continued to try and move the needle when it comes to our branding. I think for us, we were quite fortunate that there was a unique story in terms of going back and forth to Ghana. Because beauty is so saturated, it was important for us to try and figure out a way to stand out in a crowded market. So the brand was incredibly important for us.” Boaitey’s determination to continuously improve is something that Lilley says is a recurring feature she sees time and again in small business owners. “Small businesses are dealing with challenges ranging from cash flow to changing legislation, but what keeps them going is they are always very passionate about what they do,” she says. “That and innovation is what sets them apart. Small businesses can be quite quirky, to find that edge. The passion often comes first (it might be a hobby that becomes a business) but I think that’s what gets them through tough times, because they are so passionate. It’s an ensuring driver. You’ve got to be incredibly resilient: people don’t understand the work that goes into a small business. It’s tough: something has to drive them, and it’s that passion.”
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Thanks to amazing advances in technology it has never been easier to launch, market and run a business in Britain – and British entrepreneurs are forging ahead using every innovation that becomes available. Whether turning a ‘side hustle’ into a full-blown business, or launching a business from scratch, British businesses told Telegraph Media Group how they are rising to the challenges of creating growth and success. When you consider that businesses that embrace a design-led approach reportedly have a larger market share, a more loyal customer base and increased growth over the long term, it’s no surprise that a need for a creative approach is becoming a requirement for forward-thinking enterprises. But with Britain’s small business sector having grown in the past year (in contrast to a decline in the number of businesses across the economy), it’s clear that Britain’s entrepreneurs are highly resilient. British small businesses face challenges, ranging from energy prices (56 per cent) to competition (48 per cent, up from 41 per cent in 2022) – and many small businesses cite problems with recruiting staff and skills (40 per cent), according to the Office for National Statistics. The number of businesses using technology to sell to customers has grown to 61 per cent from 50 per cent in 2022, with 54 per cent of small businesses now using technology to manage their business. Technology is also an important ‘enabler’ for small businesses when it comes to marketing and social media, as celebrated in our Express Your Innovation competition in partnership with Adobe Express, an app which helps entrepreneurs to create everything from promotional videos to flyers to social media campaigns in seconds – with its quick and easy-to-use creative features, such as its text to graphic and drag-and-drop video functions. Celebrating the creativity of British businesses and highlighting their resilience were among the reasons behind the Express Your Innovation competition. The prize consists of business mentoring from our expert judges, investment to give entrants’ ideas lift-off and time with a design expert on how to maximise the advantages of Adobe Express. We asked our expert judges for tips on dealing with some of the current challenges companies face.
The number of businesses using technology to sell to customers has grown to 61 per cent from 50 per cent in 2022, with 54 per cent of small businesses now using technology to manage their business. Technology is also an important ‘enabler’ for small businesses when it comes to marketing and social media, as celebrated in our Express Your Innovation competition in partnership with Adobe Express, an app which helps entrepreneurs to create everything from promotional videos to flyers to social media campaigns in seconds – with its quick and easy-to-use creative features, such as its text to graphic and drag-and-drop video functions. Celebrating the creativity of British businesses and highlighting their resilience were among the reasons behind the Express Your Innovation competition. The prize consists of business mentoring from our expert judges, investment to give entrants’ ideas lift-off and time with a design expert on how to maximise the advantages of Adobe Express. We asked our expert judges for tips on dealing with some of the current challenges companies face.
Natalie Campbell
Paul Lindley
Julie Lilley
Natalie Campbell
Paul Lindley
Julie Lilley
Pete Everett
Øyvind L Martinsen
Pete Everett
Lucy Street
