Mark Smith

Industry jargon is guilty of treating groups of organisations and individuals as a homogenous mass. We talk about “the public sector”, “enterprise” or even the “CIO” as if there is a single, monolithic definition for all entities that go by that name. To a certain extent, this is justified: at a certain size, an organisation has to lean on standardisation, and a common language helps us to identify common challenges and opportunities.

The risk of missing critical nuance is arguably highest when we talk about SMEs. The variety of scope, size and ambition covered by that moniker is vast and the challenges highly varied. Yet the language we use to discuss solutions is often still hedged in broad generalisations, more because it suits the providers’ needs to scale rather than the SMEs’ unique circumstances.