Oli Hyatt, Tom Box and Adam Shaw have jobs that most small children would dream of having. The founders of animation company Blue Zoo make TV cartoons for a living. Their hit shows include Alphablocks and Tree Fu Tom for BBC kids’ channel CBeebies and Olive The Ostrich for Nick Jr.

Which industry is worse than any other at paying its suppliers on time? The answer will not come as a surprise to readers who have followed recent efforts of companies such as Selfridges and John Lewis to squeeze more margin out of their supply chains. Retailers, it turns out, are the only companies who are paying more tardily today than a year ago.

Necessity has been described as the mother of invention but it can also be the maker of fortunes. Judy Niner, founder and chief executive of the MondaytoFriday.com rent-a-room website, hit upon her business idea back in the late Nineties when her job as marketing director of the Science Museum in Kensington meant she needed a home from home in the week in London while renting out her place on the same basis in Oxford.

Asked to imagine the heart of David Cameron’s much-touted digital economy, most would be likely to think of Old Street’s Silicon Roundabout, home to a hub of trendy technology and media companies. But away from the hype of east London, more traditional small businesses are embracing the digital economy in some unusual ways, and in an unusual location — Richmond upon Thames.

Many SME's leave their internet presence as an afterthought, and websites too often are not multiple browser or operating system compatible. This problem is compounded when introducing the emerging smart-phone and tablet market. A company website should not only function seamlessly across the main browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari) and operating systems (IOS, Android, Windows) it also needs to be compatible with an ever increasing variety of screen sizes and resolutions introduced by these new devices.

When the Government launched the Tech City initiative back in 2010, East London’s Shoreditch was billed as the next Silicon Valley. The plan was to tempt the brightest minds in the start-up community to base their operations in and around Old Street to drive economic growth in years to come.

How much time do you and your employees spend on Facebook, other online activities not related to their work, or even personal emails? If the answer is any time at all, more than your business’s productivity levels may be at risk – potentially even more dangerous is the threat to the company’s IT security potentially posed by staff going online for non-work related purposes.

Social Media Week London kicks off on Monday and it’s a great opportunity for small businesses to get practical advice on how to get the most out of social media.

This week: The easy way to make hardware savings. It can be a hard job searching for hardware bargains. But you don’t need to be a technical wizard to conjure up some savings. Below are some money saving top tips to take a ‘byte’ out of your bill for anything from computers and laptops to printers and scanners.

Growth Capital: Anyone who walks into Pavegen’s headquarters near King’s Cross railway station will find their footsteps triggering the tinkling of piano keys. It’s not exactly what you’d expect when entering the offices of a renewable energy business. The company’s founder, Laurence Kemball-Cook, explains: “It’s your movement that’s playing that piano.”

Edward Saatchi talks social. Described as the British Mark Zuckerberg, Edward Saatchi has packed a lot into his 26 years. Whilst still a student, the son of advertising tycoon Maurice flew to the US to help Barack Obama with his first presidential campaign.

The following scenario for a small business was taking place as recently as five years ago: Set up a Hotmail account. Expand to a company e-mail system and document storage. Find IT support through a mate or Google search to install and maintain a server, spending several thousand pounds of capital in the process. Realise you need to backup data and expand software to handle HR, CRM and accounting needs.