The relentless pace of technological change is making it easier for entrepreneurs to spot and exploit gaps in the market, a business audience in Bristol was told.

The gathering, part of Bristol Technology Festival, heard that the proliferation of data and artificial intelligence tools meant that barriers to entry in a whole range of business sectors have fallen.

The panel event - Leveraging Technology: Insights and Experiences For Growth – was held at the offices of wealth management and professional services group Evelyn Partners.

It was chaired by Tom Wood, assistant manager in Evelyn Partners’ business outsourcing services team in Bristol and featured Jenny Tragner, partner in the R&D tax team and her colleague Claire Burden, partner and head of advisory consulting, plus Logan Estop-Hall, founder and CEO of strategic growth consultancy Daleth and Tim Wright, head of operations at Xledger, the leading provider of cloud-based finance software.

“The pace of technological change has rocketed,” said Claire Burden.

“The massive amount of data available now is a real game changer and barriers to entry have fallen. This means that entrepreneurs can quickly fill gaps in the market.”

Jenny Tragner said: “It's difficult to see what the limit on the expansion of tech in areas like artificial intelligence will be. AI will change a thousand things that we do every day, although there is no doubt that training is an issue for some larger organisations in particular, and this is holding them back.”

Logan Estop-Hall added: “The key for entrepreneurs is validating those gaps in the market and their solution to filling them. Incumbent businesses won’t move until this has happened but once it has, they will come knocking.”

Tim Wright told the audience that he had worked with many businesses which were exploiting the potential of AI.

“I have only come across one case where a business has adopted AI with the intention of headcount reduction. In all the other cases this hasn’t been the case – the vast majority of businesses are looking to utilise AI to make efficiencies, not to reduce headcount.”