The Barbados National Entrepreneurship Summit took place at the Barbados Hilton early last week. It was designed to promote the idea that entrepreneurship is good for our national economic development and that Barbadians should bestir themselves to become involved in creating businesses in the changing and competitive economic environment.
It was held under the initiative of the Barbados Entrepreneurship Foundation whose chairman Mr Peter Boos spoke at the opening of the conference and set the aims of the gathering in perspective.
He declared that Barbados had done well with its economy based on the traditional sector, but that we live in a new age and needed to build strategies to come to grips with the changed circumstances.
His suggestion was that Barbadians needed to develop a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and the conference as a groundbreaking event was meant to create a sense of urgency to shift into new approaches in a globalised and technologically driven world.
Mr Boos and his colleagues are right on the money. This small island, barely 166 square miles, has traditionally punched above its weight in more ways than one; and the high standard of living which our people enjoy is as much a tribute to our national leadership over the years as it is due to the efforts of individual Barbadians, each putting in his two cents’ worth in uplifting this country.
But we now have to move that individual effort to a higher plane, which involves a clearer recognition to take advantage of new developments in exercising such a drive to business creation that we become the number one entrepreneurial hub by 2020.
We fully support this idea. It is close, indeed very close to home, for it is that kind of careful and planned risk-taking drive and effort that gave rise to the organisation of which this journal is part.
So we fully endorse the initiative, and given the economic profile of our small country and the ever present need to have hard currency, we urge the acceptance of suggestions coming out of the gathering that we use modern technology to enhance our ability at creating businesses that can become veritable foreign exchange earners.
But in all of this we need to create the enabling environment in which budding entrepreneurs can emerge, and for this to be done we need the active support of both the public sector and the private banks and other sources of capital.
Ideas alone cannot cut it, and neither Bill Gates nor Richard Branson, nor indeed any other entrepreneur, could have succeeded without injections of capital of one kind or another!
It was therefore a jolting reality check when successful businessman Mr Bizzy Williams told the summit that entrepreneurs were being hindered by some members of the public sector and by some jealous bankers.
According to Mr Williams while there are some exceptions, “in general the public sector in Barbados appears to act more as a body of controllers who are there to stop entrepreneurs rather than to facilitate them”.
Mr Williams also took a swipe at some bankers who when they “encounter a guy or girl who went to school with them and who was not so bright” become jealous of the achievements of the guy or girl and make them “grovel” to get financial assistance.
This kind of treatment will never help to create the enabling atmosphere in which the entrepreneurial spirit can thrive, and organisations like the Entrepreneurship Foundation must use it good offices to bring moral suasion to bear upon those who practise this kind of negativity.
If allowed to continue, the problems of which Mr Williams speaks will seriously undermine even the most sterling efforts of the Government and the private sector to encourage entrepreneurship.
Such awkward and regressive practices will not only deter budding risk-takers, but will harm our national development, and that is something which must not happen.
