Micro, Small & Medium Enterprise Development in the Caribbean: Towards A New Frontier - | 118
5.4.4 Conclusions about the Caribbean’s Innovation Framework for MSMEs
A policy framework has to be developed and innovation in services has to be deliberately promoted and rewarded at national levels.
The preceding findings on innovation in the Caribbean can be summarised as follows:
Therefore, considerable work has to be done in communications and education to successfully restructure national innovation efforts towards Services.
1. Generally, the larger and/or more developed countries are aware of the importance of innovation to future economic growth. However, basic support structures are incomplete and are not as well organized as they could be in terms of their comprehensiveness in supporting MSME innovation initiatives. In particular, Caribbean countries do not have the equivalent of the BayhDole Act, which fosters collaborative research between educational institutions and MSMEs in the United States. 2. For the most part, Caribbean countries’ innovation programmes are mis-aligned with regional economic trends, and development of innovation is seen much more as an industrial rather than a service sector initiative. 3. The importance of directing innovation support to Services cannot be over-emphasised. Although Services is the leading economic sector in the Region, its low productivity is depressing overall productivity and competitiveness, which ultimately affect GDP growth. Therefore, innovation frameworks that are directed at this sector are exceedingly important mechanisms for addressing competitiveness and growth in the Region. 4. There is no coherent roadmap for re-aligning Innovation policy towards Services Innovation. Essentially the Region is almost at “ground zero” in terms of the establishment of a policy framework to support Services Innovation Policies. 5. Services Innovation is not going to emerge or happen simply because Services is the dominant sector in the Caribbean.
Notwithstanding these observations, there are promising signs of a growing enthusiasm in the private sector – especially among younger entrepreneurs– for promoting their innovative ideas as sustainable business models. For instance, the innovative Ignite Project in Jamaica recently received more than 300 MSME responses to a Call for Proposals for creative and unique projects in Jamaica. But the rethinking of Innovation Policy priorities, especially in support of MSME initiatives in Services, will require considerable technical assistance from international and regional donors, given the limited knowledge that is “on the ground” on this subject in the Region. Commercial progress is also being made at the business level. The Caribbean is experiencing growth in CCIs, in offshore education and in BPO services. There are also promising signs at the digital level. Bitt, the Barbados-based digital asset exchange/remittance channel/merchant-processing gateway, is the front-runner in the Caribbean’s crypto-currency eco-system. It received USD1.5 mn from Avatar Capital, a Caribbean investment group based in Trinidad and Tobago. The Bitt Exchange is a cornerstone project for digital finance in the Caribbean. It facilitates trade between traditional and digital currency markets. According to Gabriel Abel, Bitt’s CEO, “the company is creating the platform for very low cost international commerce and remittances between the people who need it most – the millions of unbanked and under banked citizens of the Caribbean”. Admittedly, similar initiatives that arise in other countries tend to be one-off success stories and are not yet representative of the outputs of cohesive national innovation systems.