SCORES of secondary school students have been advised to focus on becoming entrepreneurs upon finishing their studies.
This recommendation came from Steve Fung, a director of Flying Fish Studio, during the Small Business Association’s (SBA) annual Youth Forum last Wednesday at the Pelican Industrial Park.
His focus was on technology and mobile applications. Youth Forum forms part of the association’s small business week of activities which was held under the theme Embracing Technology As The New Frontier.
Fung told eager fourth and fifth form students that not many jobs would be available by the time they finished their studies. He further advised that they should not think about operating a business in Barbados only for the local market.
“Your ideas need to be from a global perspective,” he said.
“As much as you are a resident or citizen of Barbados, you are also residents of the world. There is a cap to how much money you can make from the Barbados public in terms of consumption. Build your ideas to target the world; make a product that you can sell to every government and every country on Planet Earth,” advised Fung.
He argued that Barbados was a consumer-driven society since a lot of the items used were imported, and encouraged the youth to change that.
“We need our youth to be developers. We need to make our own stuff. We need to develop our own products and services and have them exported around the world,” he said, and Barbados was quickly becoming a “big brand” around the world.
He further noted that the youth were growing up in “a more advantageous period where technology is seated in our everyday lives”.
“Everywhere you look you are going to see a smartphone. Everywhere you look you are going to see a computer, you are going to see a tablet, you are going to see some form of technology.
“What this means is that we are all connected to one network and . . . it creates many opportunities from a business perspective. You can make apps . . . and then we have games,” said Fung.
During the day-long event, the students were introduced to various areas in business. They were also treated to a fashion show and pep talks.
