Caribbean urged to be more innovative

Innovation is no longer part of luxury terminology, but a requirement for the region’s small business economy if it intends to reposition itself for growth.

According to the Executive Director of the Shridath Ramphal Centre for International Trade Law, Policy and Services (SRC),  trade specialist Dr. Keith Nurse, the Caribbean can do much better when it comes to being more innovative.

“The region continues to rank low on the global innovation indices... yet this is really one indicator for the future, whereas a lot of the indicators are backward looking,” he stated, recommending that we keep our eye on where the global markets are going to be in the future and how we could position our firms to participate in that process.

Dr. Nurse also maintained that we are still trying to operate too many “mom and pop” operations that were purely locally-based and dependent on specialised markets at home alone. He suggested that our businesses needed to focus on diversifying their product range so that we could be able to tap into broader market spaces.

Even when companies succeed in emulating the operations of a firm or organisation elsewhere, Dr. Nurse encouraged that companies seek to make themselves more identifiable by adapting their concepts to incorporate more local input.

“Emulation is actually the best form of market research … [but] the key challenge for many of our firms in the Caribbean is being able to add that creative element where you do the adaption. [That is] using local goods as opposed to incorporating products from abroad, and many of the firms who are just engaged in pure importing are finding times increasingly difficult... and so the opportunity presented by the crisis is to switch from … highly expensive imports to locally available inputs that provide new goods and services and new clientele,” Dr. Nurse explained.

In fact, research suggests that a growing number of countries are increasing their use of domestic content. Leading to increase in jobs and the growth or protection of local industries, Dr. Nurse added that a lot of entrepreneurs are spotting the opportunities. “This is why market intelligence becomes more and more important, where we move away from what is a supply-push trade, to one that is more demand-driven,” he continued. Two areas of business development opportunities which he mentioned was in agriculture and renewable energy.

Fragmented support services for non-traditional sectorsDr. Nurse further pointed out that support for non-traditional areas of business remained highly fragmented and therefore we struggled to catapult competitive firms into the global market space.

“We are really now stuck between an old framework that has declined and a new emerging framework that is under-resourced and under-utilised. We are stuck!” was the academic’s opinion.

A call was made to pursue innovative mechanisms of financing, whether that be crowd funding or pairing businesses with angel investors. His direction in this area came weeks after Caribbean Export Development Agency, with scarce funds being offered by conventional financing agencies in the region, disclosed that it was looking to set up an angel investor bank which would bring together venture and joint venture capitalists, angel investors, distributors and crowd funding investors in an effort to bring further investment into the region.

Dr. Nurse also pointed out that the University had a critical role to play in rearing innovative enterprises by creating the incubator-type experience to help firms that were “going to be at the cutting edge [and] be global players”. He said “that helps to diversify the economy away from its traditional points, that’s really where the opportunities lie for us to grow our business sectors”. (RA)