ENTREPRENEURSHIP MUST BE more than a buzzword if it is to be meaningful, says Small Business Association (SBA) president Dalton Medford.
In an interview with BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY at the SBA’s Pelican Industrial Estate offices, Medford said being an entrepreneur was not something that could happen overnight.
“You don’t wake up one morning and suddenly everybody is an entrepreneur. It has to be a plan. There are micro businesses, small businesses and there are well defined small businesses in my view because you can get a micro business without structure where a guy sets up a shop because he needs to feed his family,” Medford said.
“That’s the difference between an entrepreneur and somebody who has gone into business. An entrepreneur in my view is somebody with a creative mind, somebody that will look at things and take a chance, take risks, and that’s the difference. Because a fellow has gone into business doesn’t mean he’s an entrepreneur.”
The SBA president said there was a need to “clearly define” what was being done, what had to be done, funding for the specific sectors and noted that funds were “being channelled in the wrong areas”.
“You need to help micro businesses. There are no two ways about that because there may be some of those, and there are entrepreneurs, [people] using computers, developing software programmes, developing apps than can do all kinds of stuff; those are the guys that need funding because you’re talking about something creative that doesn’t happen overnight. Some of it will take years to develop and there’s nobody funding it or people are saying, ‘Go to the bank’,” he lamented.
“The bank wants returns, it wants to ensure that ‘what I give you can give me a return’, because it has to get back the people’s money. You need development funding. You need a government that says ten years from now, the cellphones is where it is happening so we need our people in that direction.
“Somebody has to take money and put it in there. The return will come years down the road, probably not in our lifetime, but it will come,” he said.
Medford added that micro business development and start-up funding had to be defined. (Green Bananas Media)