Chief executive officer of the Small Business Association, Lynette Holder, has suggested that an entrepreneurial culture needs to be adopted by not only the business community but also the state and civil society.
During the Barbados chapter of the Caribbean Institute of Certified Management Consultants’ inaugural lecture and panel discussion at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre last Monday, Holder said innovation would play an integral role in how Barbados structures and repositions its economy.
She said people at all levels of society had to understand the importance of seizing opportunities and taking risks.
“If you’re working in the public sector and . . . you’re tasked with providing a service to the general public, if you’re able to bring to bear that entrepreneurial way of doing things . . . of wanting to act in the interest of your employer [and] your customer . . . I think that this is the kind of behaviour that we need now to begin to birth and encourage across all spheres of our society,” she added.
Holder said that the Global Competitiveness Index had indicated that the business community in Barbados, especially the small business community, was not “sophisticated” enough.
“I think that if we can help our business sector . . . to really begin to understand and appreciate the need to improve from an efficiency and productivity perspective . . . that we can also help in the process of development,” she said.
Holder went on to say that Barbados could not be efficient and effective going forward as a stand alone state and the business community needed to work with the state to help fast track the regional integration project. (NB)
