Too many small businesses in Barbados are being created out of necessity rather than strategy, University of the West Indies Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor Canute Thompson has declared, as he called for young entrepreneurs to build networks and grow their enterprises.
His comments came during the presentation of a US$5 000 ($10 000) cheque from the Barbados Investment and Development Corporation (BIDC), Export Barbados, to support the UWI International Undergraduate Students’ Leadership Conference and Entrepreneurship Exhibition, which takes place in Jamaica from September 23 to 25.
Professor Thompson highlighted the value of Export Barbados to the region’s business landscape, noting that more than seven of out ten Caribbean businesses are Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).
He said: “The data show that about 70 to 85 percent of the businesses which operate in the Caribbean fall in this category, and I’m suggesting therefore that as we seek to create a space for bold, innovative, and creative students to begin to develop their entrepreneurial skills and to undertake entrepreneurial ventures.
“We anticipate that most of them, eight out of 10 of them, possibly, will be entering the micro, small, and the medium-sized space, and certainly those who would be operating out of Barbados would no doubt be benefiting from the support, the further support of the BIDC, and within the context of our Caribbean community, and the the and mindful of the philosophy of the government of Barbados to support development regionally.”
He underscored the importance of the collaboration between the BIDC and UWI to the success of the leadership conference.
“There is a shared DNA between what Export Barbados is seeking to do in its primary mission, and what we’re seeking to do through this conference, which is not a one-off event, but will become a biennial undertaking designed to give that space for new and emerging entrepreneurs to have an opportunity to reflect critically, to build networks, and to discover ways in which they can grow their enterprises.”
The Pro Vice-Chancellor also suggested that entrepreneurs elsewhere in the Caribbean could benefit from BIDC’s intellectual and other forms of support.
But Professor Thompson raised concerns that entrepreneurship is not something graduates are necessarily drawn to, but rather something they fall back on as a means of survival.
“Part of the reason is that there are so there are structural hurdles that they must overcome …what we find sociologically is that many small businesses are operating at what may be described as a survival mode, and because of that survival mode mentality, I might have put it this way: this survival mode disposition emerges very often out of a necessity decision to go into entrepreneurship.
“I can’t find a job, and therefore I’m going to try a thing. So it goes out of necessity, not strategy.”
The conference seeks to encourage students to view entrepreneurship as part of what they can become, rather than simply a means of survival.
“One of the things that this conference is seeking to do is to create that worldview to invite our students to imagine a world in which entrepreneurship is part of what they do, is part of what entrepreneurship is part of what they seek to become alongside other things they desire to become, and what this will mean is that there needs to be a scale from survival-based operations to scale, where they are not only selling within Barbados or within Grenada or within Jamaica, they are selling across the Caribbean, and they are selling outside the Caribbean.”
Professor Thompson said he wants UWI to become a place where students create jobs, undertake bold initiatives, use their creative imagination and innovate.
(LG)
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