Speaking at the DaisyWired14 technology event on May 7th, CBI Director General John Cridland called on the government to give more help to growing businesses.
He said that mid-market companies have often been overlooked by government policy in favour of small businesses, but Cridland identified them as the true engines of future economic growth in the UK.
The Director General was speaking to an audience of 200 businesses at Daisy Group's industry summit, which brought together some of the UK's best known and most entrepreneurial companies to debate the global impact and influence of technology on business.
Cridland also called on the entrepreneurial community to take advantage of the ubiquity of technology available to deliver a steady growth period.
Cridland said: "Some businesses, with a turnover of £100-200m, have the potential for gazelle-like growth and could be worth £500m in about five years time. They are our true national champions - but we don't have enough of these companies making that growth spurt in Britain. We need to concentrate on nurturing the £20m, £40m or £100m turnover businesses so that they become the future national champions we can be proud of.
"We cut off the support for businesses when they get to around £10m turnover, but why are we doing that? We need to focus on this 'forgotten army' of entrepreneurs and help them make that progression. This medium sized group makes up less than 10,000 of the 3m business of the UK but it is worth 23% of the UK economy.
"Daisy represents a perfect example of these companies that, with a helping hand, are more likely to innovate and create more jobs than either the small or large businesses."
Cridland went on to draw a contrast with Germany, which he said had managed to support the continued growth of a much larger number of mid-size businesses, contributing significantly to real strengths in its economy.
Cridland continued: "All industries have the potential, particularly in the exports market, to make this decade the UK's, just as the previous one belonged to Germany. We need to nurture these companies with capital and management systems to help them break into the markets around the world which want to buy our products and services, but are not particularly easy to get into."
Cridland also called for the term SME to disappear, claiming that it now describes an obsolete concept. Small businesses and growing businesses that have become medium-sized businesses have different policy requirements.
Matthew Riley, Daisy Group's Chief Executive Officer, said: "Businesses today are using combinations of cloud computing, social computing, big data and mobile to innovate and achieve their business goals. This is changing business models, creating new markets, transforming customer service and accelerating product innovation. It is quite simply affecting every business, particularly those mid-market companies who have the resources and the courage to move quickly and invest in working these technologies to their advantage.
"Daisy itself has grown from a small team operating out of my garage to a £350m turnover business employing more than 1500 staff around the country. We were a small business; we're now a medium sized firm and technology is both what we do best and what has propelled us into this position."