The IT industry is driven towards ground breaking products by the work of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), it has been suggested.

Bigger firms may have more clout in the market, but they are less willing to take risks and so continue to adapt and upgrade products instead of innovating, according to the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta).

"One feels intuitively that small companies bear the brunt of innovation [in technology]," said Anthea Harrison, investment director for Nesta.

"I feel that some companies... are more interested in product enhancement... or ways of producing it more cheaply and probably are not interested in spending their hard-earned income on alternatives."

But being at the sharp edge of technology innovation is not without its drawbacks and Ms Harrison highlighted that many SMEs fall by the wayside.

"It isn't a perfect world and not every good idea gets funding," she said.

"If they don't get funding they don't turn into multimillion pound companies and we don't hear about them."