“Innovation comes from experience. If you look
at most of the innovation in the world, it arose
from people engaged in an activity and finding
a need within that activity. You don’t get that
experience by just reading a book. You have to
be engaged, see the problem, and then create
the solution.”
That was Professor Brian Copeland, during an interview
conducted in 2014 for
UWI Today
,
when he was in his final
year as Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. Now, just mid-
way through his first year as Campus Principal, this message
is beginning to reverberate throughout the Campus.
Here’s the thing though - aren’t we in the Caribbean already
an innovative people? In Trinidad and Tobago, for instance,
the very existence of the steel pan is a constant reminder
that the ability to make something wonderful out of nothing
is part of our cultural legacy.
Truly, that is just half the story.
Innovation, by definition, is a product or process that has
been created anew and has begun to produce returns on
investment. Models show that innovation is necessary
for wealth generation; wealth generation is necessary for
sustainable development; and sustainable development
is necessary to improve the lives of people today without
compromising the prospects of the generations to follow.
Achieving sustainable development
requires five stages of activity:
1. cutting edge scientific enquiry;
2. product and process creation;
3. product development;
4. production and services; and, finally,
5. commercial activity, resulting in revenue and profit,
to re-fuel the cycle.
In the last five years, The UWI has consciously and
consistently strengthened its support for research and
innovation that impact critical regional developmental
goals. Numerous international publications and accolades
prove our capability for high quality knowledge creation.
Here then is the gap in the regional model: product and
process creation, and product development. Worse, profits
are generally syphoned out of the development chain,
starving rather than feeding it.
The problem isn’t new: a private sector built on the
plantation system’s model of guaranteed commodity
markets has long been identified by economists such
as Sir Arthur Lewis and Dr Lloyd Best. The system is risk-
averse, preferring a model of import, mark-up, and sale
of products as well as services, participating only in the
final stage of the model.
Given the current economic crisis facing the region,
it is past time to close that gap and UWI is on a
mission to lead the way to a new learned behaviour.
Just as risk aversion is learned, so too are risk-taking
and entrepreneurship. The St. Augustine Campus
has been on that track for some time. UWI’s annual
Entrepreneurship Bootcamp
,
in partnership with the
National Entrepreneurship Development Company
Limited and the Entrepreneurial Training Institute and
Incubation Centre, has over the years exposed students
to the basics of taking an idea to market and setting up
their own business. For longer term approaches, the MA
in Creative Design: Entrepreneurship, the Postgraduate
Diploma in Arts & Cultural Enterprise Management
are offered by the Faculty of Humanities & Education;
Entrepreneurship majors and minors are offered in the
Faculties of Food & Agriculture, and Social Sciences.
Evidence is growing that students are interested. This
year the Faculty of Food and Agriculture reported on the
popularity of its new undergraduate entrepreneurship
programme and, according to the Campus Office of
Planning and Institutional Research (COPIR), its 2015
survey of prospective students revealed that, while
just 8% of respondents came from homes where the
main income earner was “self-employed”, 49% said they
wanted and expected to acquire entrepreneurial skills as
UWI students.
Stand-alone courses, three-day boot camps, or even full-
fledged programmes are insufficient to make the change
really required – a complete cultural shift so as to create
an ecosystem that encourages and provides tangible
support for what Professor Emeritus St. Clair King calls “a
new embryonic entrepreneurial class for success”.
Under his leadership the Real Time Systems Group
(RTSG) was established in the 1980s within the
engaging
for innovation
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. RTSG
created the first electronic scoreboard in the Queen’s Park
Oval, an offshore data movement system for Trinmar, and
did work for the national provider, the Telecommunications
Services of Trinidad and Tobago. RTSG was meant to act as
an incubator or hub for product development as part of the
innovation process, a Stanford to a local version of Silicon
Valley that ultimately never materialised. They had the ball,
but no one to take it off the Campus and run with it.
Flash forward some 30 years and one of the members of
that fledgling RTSG is at the helm. The Campus is building
on that experience by establishing a Centre for Export
Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEEI) to foster an export-
oriented, entrepreneurial culture at the Campus, across
Trinidad and Tobago, and in the region.
The Centre, in fact, gives life to an idea Professor Copeland
expressed in that 2014 article:
“We need a process in this University that carries us through
the whole value chain, right through to commercial reality …
Somebody comes up with a brand new idea and within the next
two to three years, it is a saleable product through a company
that UWI has some kind of interest in. You build your students
by exposing them to that whole cycle. You encourage staff. You
have an alternate income stream. And you are adding to the
country and region’s economic landscape.”
Today the ingredients for the ecosystem are all being
brought together – the academic curriculum, facilities,
research and development focus based on market foresight,
together with internships across all disciplines which provide
students with work experience while helping them identify
innovation opportunities.
No one expects that every student will become an
entrepreneur or that every budding entrepreneur can be
prepared to take on an export market. For those so inclined
and with an innovative idea, the Campus is intent on
providing them with what they need to succeed. This will
influence others to either explore their own opportunities
for innovation or go against the grain by supporting and
investing in critical areas such as product and process
creation, as well as development. In this way, structured
support meets organic growth and becomes a Movement.
We are all winners.
