Export Barbados pushes entrepreneurship to industrialisation

T he Barbados Investment and Development Corporation (BIDC), Export Barbados, wants to see entrepreneurs evolve from entrepreneurship to industrialisation to build productive capacity. This was highlighted during the handover of a US$5 000 ($10 000) cheque to support the University of the West Indies International Undergraduate Students’ Leadership Conference and Entrepreneurship Exhibition, taking place in Jamaica from September 23 to 25. Chief Executive Officer of Export Barbados BIDC, Mark Hill, said the sponsorship marks an investment not just in entrepreneurship, but in industrialisation. “The two are connected, but they are not identical. The entrepreneur identifies an opportunity, takes a risk, and creates an enterprise.

The industrialist goes further, organising capital, technology, energy, talent, machinery, supply chains, and markets into a productive system capable of operating at scale. The entrepreneur creates a business. The industrialist builds productive capacity. We need both. ” Hill explained that for the Caribbean to transform its economy, more entrepreneurs must grasp the opportunity to become industrialists. He disclosed that this is the purpose of the International Food Science Centre developed by Export Barbados. The Export Barbados head said he wants the investment to become the starting point of an industrial relationship between the investment development corporation, industry and the university. “So our region does not suffer from a shortage of ideas or enterprising people. Our challenge is creating the pathway through which those ideas are moved from small transactions and even hustles and individual businesses into scalable production that produces new levels of intellectual property, new levels of employment at scale, experts, and exports,…