Constant innovation needed

Today’s business world is one of change. According to Lisa Cummins, what is needed is constant innovation; constant transformation.

The Executive Director of the University of the West Indies (UWI) Consulting Company, however, believes that there is complacency. 

“Barbados got comfortable with the notion that we are Barbados… and there was a notion that we were always going to do well. We were the gem of the Caribbean, we would always thrive, we had a strong development model; and it would always be so. We live in Barbados now, is that true? That is far from the truth. We have our challenges... there are those barriers,” she said.

Addressing the Caribbean Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (CARAIFA) 31st Annual Sales Congress on the topic “Smashing the Barriers”, she compared Barbados’ Sugar Industry to that of Mauritius, a small country just like Barbados, open-economy, former colonial nation, predominately driven by sugar, also producing a limited range of goods.

“But, they did something that was very different from Barbados. They understood that visioning is incremental and has it to be dynamic, and that new barriers will present itself even where there is apparent success. When we, just like Mauritius, were exporting sugar to the European Union, generated price and quota every year, we emerged at the end of the review as one of the most uncompetitive sugar producers not in the Caribbean, but in the world.

“We weren’t exporting to anyone else; we weren’t adding any value to sugar production – we remained in the same place, same time, over time. There was no visioning for transformation… Mauritius was one of the few countries in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group that exported beyond the EU and competed at world market prices. They did not hide behind preferences, they didn’t get complacent,” she pointed out.  

“Countries and businesses constantly are on the cutting edge of innovation. There are constantly looking to see what comes next, they are constantly looking to see what barriers are in front of them and are to be anticipated – and then craft new strategies to address them.”

Cummins, an International Trade Specialist, observed that 85 per cent of entrepreneurs in the Caribbean are either in retail or technology enabled retail. She also told the Insurance and Financial Advisors gathered at the Hilton Resort that not enough transformational businesses are coming out of the region.

“We are not imagining enough, we are not dreaming big enough. We are not looking at barriers as an opportunity for the use of our imagination, but our Caribbean development trajectory requires it of us; it demands it of us,” she stressed.

“We need to have what I call the success imperative – success individually, success professionally, success in business, but most importantly ,success as the collective in this Caribbean space. It means the development of a new development paradigm; education sector reform – youth to adult; innovation, innovation and transformation; and community engagement.”