Export Barbados pushes entrepreneurship to industrialisation

The Barbados Investment and Development Corporation (BIDC), Export Barbados, wants to see entrepreneurs evolve from entrepreneurship to industrialisation to build productive capacity.

This was highlighted during the handover of a US$5 000 ($10 000) cheque to support the University of the West Indies International Undergraduate Students’ Leadership Conference and Entrepreneurship Exhibition, taking place in Jamaica from September 23 to 25.

Chief Executive Officer of Export Barbados BIDC, Mark Hill, said the sponsorship marks an investment not just in entrepreneurship, but in industrialisation.

“The two are connected, but they are not identical. The entrepreneur identifies an opportunity, takes a risk, and creates an enterprise. The industrialist goes further, organising capital, technology, energy, talent, machinery, supply chains, and markets into a productive system capable of operating at scale. The entrepreneur creates a business. The industrialist builds productive capacity. We need both.”

Hill explained that for the Caribbean to transform its economy, more entrepreneurs must grasp the opportunity to become industrialists.

He disclosed that this is the purpose of the International Food Science Centre developed by Export Barbados.

The Export Barbados head said he wants the investment to become the starting point of an industrial relationship between the investment development corporation, industry and the university.

“So our region does not suffer from a shortage of ideas or enterprising people. Our challenge is creating the pathway through which those ideas are moved from small transactions and even hustles and individual businesses into scalable production that produces new levels of intellectual property, new levels of employment at scale, experts, and exports, and sustainable industries.”

Hill also used the opportunity to reintroduce the concept of “GIGA”, which he said stands for green industrialisation.

“GIGA is developed as a bridge connecting new intelligence and entrepreneurship ideas to finance, technology, production facilities, certification, energy, and global markets. We want our university students to see themselves not only as future employees or business owners, but as a new generation of intelligence-driven industrialists. People who can build factories, laboratories, invest in science, commercialise science, intelligent farms, technology platforms, and globally competitive ideas and enterprises.”

He said the cheque was more than a sponsorship, describing it as an investment in new intelligence.

“It is an investment in new intelligence and in the possibility that the entrepreneur in this room, or who’s benefiting; that entrepreneur can be transformed into an industrialist.”

Deputy Principal of UWI Cave Hill, Professor Winston Moore, stressed that Barbados and other small states face particular challenges around research and development.

“Small states cannot compete with volume; we do so with ideas. The statistics aren’t on our side; the statistics suggest that we spend less than 1 per cent of GDP on research and development, and you can’t develop new ideas if you are under-spending on research and development.

“I think these types of investments are indicating what we need to see in Barbados and other smaller developing states. One of my real goals and visions for the university is that we have a portal where the private sector can identify the problems, and the university can allow our students to really go after these problems and solve those problems with their ideas. It’s one of those things I think we can do….I think it’s something we can really invest in.”

(LG)