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Just under three-quarters of respondents admitted to only recording ideas in their head, while 43% went as far as telling someone else and a mere 13% committed pen to paper. As a result, 23% of male respondents said their idea was seized upon and exploited by someone else. The same was said by 16% of female respondents.

Charles Kitchin, regional marketing manager for the EEDA, said: "With innovation being heralded as the new currency for business success, these statistics should cause concern to the business community. "It is clear that people have the ability to come up with great ideas, but they are not being helped or encouraged to capitalise on them."

However, earlier research shows that thousands of people in the UK are acting on ideas. Figures contained in this years' global entrepreneurship monitor show that 6.3% of working adults were involved in a business venture.

Commenting on today's figures, Mike Southern, co-author of 'The Beermat Entrepreneur', said: "People have business ideas every day without realising it. What sets the entrepreneur apart is that they acknowledge their ideas and then put them into practice.

Some 39,895 companies turned to debt factors, which buy invoices from businesses and allow them to draw loans against the money owed, as an alternative to more traditional funding options. SMEs accounted for 94%. The factoring sector is now worth £132 billion and is most popular among manufacturers. Some 12,500 used it during 2004 to improve cashflow or cut back on administrative overheads.

Separately, FDA also found the problem of late payment had worsened in the UK. Businesses using invoice discounting and factoring complained customers were taking longer to pay than they did in 2003. The average number of debtor days increased from 57 days in 2003 to 60 days in 2004.

Kate Sharp, FDA chief executive, said: "What is very encouraging is that more and more SMEs see the benefit of using innovative funding solutions to inject cash into their business. "However, it is worrying that the UK late payment culture has worsened and the introduction of late payment legislation has failed to improve payment terms."

A survey, commissioned by Dell, found that one-third of businesses have had to invest in new technology simply to meet compliance demands, with more than half of respondents saying that they do not expect to see any return on the investment. On average, over one-tenth of the annual technology budget is spent complying with legislation