Barbados minister says more needed to develop entrepreneurship in region

Minister of Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Development Donville Inniss said a bigger effort had to go into ensuring that services provided to develop entrepreneurship are coherent, effective, cutting edge, outward looking and positioned entrepreneurs to break into the new markets. He threw out the challenge as he addressed the Accelerate Caribbean’s Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Development Forum earlier this week. “It is my understanding that the Accelerate Caribbean project will not only facilitate the generation of business support services to Barbados and the wider Caribbean but will bring a model of support for entrepreneurship through an expanded incubator and accelerator institutional framework,” he said.

Inniss noted that as the region seeks to build out a viable entrepreneurship ecosystem, it must be cognizant of the fact that while there are formal entrepreneurs whose businesses are officially registered and therefore have access to legal and financial protection mechanisms, there were also informal entrepreneurs who had hardly any access to the same institutions. “It must be noted that entrepreneurs, whether categorized as traditional or social, formal or informal do not operate in a vacuum. Entrepreneurs work within the framework of the opportunities and constraints created by a variety of factors within their environment. Shaping these factors in a manner conducive to starting and growing new businesses, and encouraging innovation more broadly, is the essence of building regional entrepreneurship ecosystems,” the commerce minister said. Inniss stressed that the key components of the development and sustainability of an entrepreneurial class must also include identifying, training, connecting and sustaining, funding, enabling and celebrating entrepreneurs.

http://www.caribbean360.com/business/barbados-minister-says-more-needs-…