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Risk 'impossible to separate from innovation'

May 16 2008

Business innovation is impossible to divorce from a certain degree of risk, according to the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

Hector Sants, chief executive of the FSA, told Channel 4 News that innovation should not be stifled with over-protective financial regulation.

Sants says risk is an unavoidable side-effect of innovation.

He explains that with risk inevitable, it is impossible to ask a regulator like the FSA to make sure that "nothing ever goes wrong" in the development of business.

'If you make sure nothing ever goes wrong, nothing will ever happen,' he comments, adding, 'If nothing ever happens nothing good will come out of the marketplace for the benefit of the users and the marketplace.'

The Annual Small Business Survey 2006-07, published earlier this year, found that there was an increase of 16 per cent in the proportion of SMEs with employees engaged in innovation and 65 per cent of small businesses were planning to grow over the next two to three years.

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