Tired of working long hours as an owner manager? By taking a step back, you can improve your quality of life and will be in a better position to take the business forward.

Innovation is big business and many companies invest heavily in trying to generate new ideas. But is it worthwhile? According to some experts, most business already have enough ideas - they just need to get better at putting them into practice.

Corporate sponsorship of charities is on the rise and offers benefits for both sides – though choosing the wrong partner can damage reputations. Now research has cast new light on what makes a successful sponsorship deal.

Big data is the ability to capture and mine data to advance knowledge, predict behaviour and to engage public health and spending issues. And there’s a whole heap of other uses for big data that haven’t been discovered yet. What is big data?

What do businesses that grow fast have in common? If we knew that, we could bottle it.

850 million people are active on Facebook every month. 175 million tweets were sent in through Twitter every day in 2012. Our passionate affair with social media has not burned brightly then fizzled. It is developing all the characteristics of a relationship that is here for the long-haul.

Futurists meet a need. In the midst of relentless and constant change, CEOs are looking for tools to manage uncertainty and reduce risk. But that’s not all. Business leaders don’t simply want to prepare for change; they want to influence it.

“Innovation is imperative. But there’s no point being innovative just for the sake of it. You don’t want to re-invent the wheel. If you are doing something that works, keep doing it. But if you spot a gap, you get innovative.”

Ninety per cent of smart phone owners use their phones to look up local information. Sixty per cent then act on it to visit, buy from or interact deeper.