As Barbados began to feel the effects of the global economic recession, the call for increased emphasis on entrepreneurship and private sector growth became louder.
The private sector is believed to have the power to boost the sluggish economy. While many would be content to see the establishment of more small businesses and a more robust support system for new and potential entrepreneurs, one group has a vision.
For the Barbados Entrepreneurship Foundation (BEF), a group of well-established local and international entrepreneurs, their goal extends to making Barbadian the No. 1 entrepreneurial hub in the world by 2020.
BEF head Peter Boos reiterated that the private sector has to be the engine of growth for Barbados’ economy.
He noted that the economies with which Barbados usually did business – United States, Canada, Britain and, to some degree, Europe – were shrinking and the island could not predict that their economies would grow as they did during the “good years”.
“We need to find alternatives,” he said during a Press conference on the Barbados National Entrepreneurial Summit to be hosted by the foundation on November 16 and 17.
In the October 11, 2010 BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY Boos noted that Government’s medium-term fiscal strategy included debt shrinkage and reducing the fiscal deficit, which indicates that stimulation of the economy would be smaller than it had previously been.
“That means the private sector, really, is where the investment needs to be made and we have to run with the ball.
“I think the only way we’re going to do that is through entrepreneurship and across all sectors.
“Barbados’ wealth can only be created by engaging in international trade, so we’re looking both to facilitate and develop domestic entrepreneurs and invite international entrepreneurs to make Barbados their base and through that process, grow the economy,” he said.
The businessman stressed that Barbados could only become a more prosperous society by engaging in global trade.
“The market that we have to serve is not 300 000 people in Barbados,” he said.
The goal of the BEF is to support the critical foundations of developing businesses.
The focus is on growing sustainable entrepreneurship through advancing the key pillars of: finance, government policy, education and skills, mentorship and business facilitation.
Boos said the foundation, with the help of key stakeholders, would transform Barbados into a place where “entrepreneurs from all over the world converge to do business because of the facilitative eco-system that is to be built in the country over the next ten years”.
In the April 5, 2010 BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY the late Prime Minister David Thompson said a rapid and successful expansion of entrepreneurship in Barbados would require a “total change in thinking”.
Key to that change, he said, would be for mentors – successful business executives – “to hold” the hands of budding entrepreneurs.
Of course, he said, “getting the resources” to start the business was also crucial. But the Prime Minister contended that the issue was not the exclusive preserve of young people. Retirees can do it just as well.
“Somebody can retire from the public service at 60 or 65 years and become an entrepreneur, and a very successful one at that,” he said. “It is just that this dream has been latent and the opportunity to awaken it arises only when they retire.
“So you can’t only see entrepreneurship as a young person’s thing. People can come up with brilliant ideas at any stage of their life. And getting resources and being able to get the idea on the road and being able to find people who can help them by holding their hand through that process is really what is very critical. That requires a whole change in culture.”
The change, he argued, would stretch from Government and the banks to parents’ attitude to investment.
“You need to get that combination right,” the Prime Minister insisted.
Meanwhile, Damian McKinney, one of the founding members of the BEF and chief executive officer of McKinney Roger’s International acknowledged that the Foundation’s vision would be hard to accomplish.
But he added, in accomplishing it, it will show the world what Barbados can achieve.
“If you are an entrepreneur in the world and you want to set up business, then we want that you think first of Barbados, in the same way IT people think Silicone Valley.”
“The big paradigm shift would be to stop thinking of how we can make it here in Barbados, but to think of the world as our opportunity, and Barbados a hub from which we work”, McKinney said.
McKinney stressed that in the current environment Barbados had no choice but to move towards being a hub for entrepreneurs.
He said this is necessary not only to increase market opportunity and to exploit the power of the market place of the world but also to leave an important legacy.
He suggested, “We have to shape our destiny rather than someone else.”