"In­no­va­tion leads to bet­ter pro­duc­tiv­i­ty which leads to bet­ter com­pet­i­tive­ness," says Dr Rikhi Per­manand.

"As much as we speak about these things sep­a­rate­ly, they're all re­al­ly in­ter­linked."

This is the core mes­sage of the Coun­cil of Com­pet­i­tive­ness and In­no­va­tion (CCI), on which Per­manand serves as in­ter­im ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor.

The coun­cil, es­tab­lished in Jan­u­ary 2011, is an ad­vi­so­ry body to the Min­istry of Plan­ning and the Econ­o­my.

One of its main goals of to sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove T&T's rank­ing on the Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness In­dex (GCI).

The GCI is a glob­al barom­e­ter used to mea­sure the com­pet­i­tive­ness of an econ­o­my. Eighty per cent of a coun­try's score comes from the re­sults of an ex­ec­u­tive opin­ion sur­vey where com­pa­ny ex­ec­u­tives asked to as­sess the health of the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment in which they op­er­ate. The oth­er 20 per cent comes from hard da­ta: so­cioe­co­nom­ic sta­tis­tics col­lect­ed from in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies and ac­cred­it­ed lo­cal bod­ies.

Ten years ago, T&T placed 35th in the glob­al rank­ing. How­ev­er in 2012, the coun­try ranked 84th out of 144 coun­tries.

Ac­cord­ing to Per­manand, it's nor­mal for a coun­try's score to fluc­tu­ate, but T&T's score has ex­pe­ri­enced a poor up­ward trend for some time now.

The coun­cil's role is to pro­mote in­no­va­tion as one of the key cat­a­lysts that can jolt our com­pet­i­tive­ness for­ward. In fact, the need for in­no­va­tion in in­dus­tries oth­er than oil and gas has be­come par­tic­u­lar­ly cru­cial now be­cause of new threats to T&T's en­er­gy in­dus­try.

"Glob­al­ly, the oil and gas pic­ture is chang­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly" says Per­manand. "The glob­al sys­tem of en­dow­ment that we've been liv­ing in is chang­ing."

One of the fac­tors fu­elling this dra­mat­ic change is the emer­gence of cheap­er sources of en­er­gy on the glob­al mar­ket, such as shale gas. Shale gas has be­come an in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant source of nat­ur­al gas in the Unit­ed States which has tra­di­tion­al­ly been the largest im­porter of nat­ur­al gas from T&T.

In 2000, shale gas pro­vid­ed on­ly one per cent of US nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion. By 2010, it was more than 20 per cent. The US En­er­gy In­for­ma­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion pre­dicts that by 2035, 46 per cent of the Unit­ed States' nat­ur­al gas will come from shale gas.

On the oth­er hand, US im­ports of T&T's nat­ur­al gas have de­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly in re­cent years. In an 2011 in­ter­view with Bloomberg mag­a­zine, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said the share of LNG ex­ports from T&T to the US dropped from 75 per cent to 25 per cent be­tween 2008 and 2011. Chi­na al­so po­ten­tial­ly pos­es a threat to TYT's mar­ket as it has the largest shale de­posits in the world.

It seems the need to di­ver­si­fy away from oil and nat­ur­al gas has nev­er been more ap­par­ent.

In 2012, CCI launched its first ma­jor ini­tia­tive called the I2I: Idea to In­no­va­tion com­pe­ti­tion. The ini­tia­tive sought to cap­i­talise on the in­no­v­a­tive and cre­ative ca­pac­i­ty of T&T to cre­ate sus­tain­able ideas that not on­ly en­cour­aged so­cial ad­vance­ment, but were al­so com­mer­cial­ly vi­able.

"We're a cre­ative na­tion," says Per­manand. "But many peo­ple do not have the fi­nan­cial back­ing to re­al­ly fol­low through with their ideas."

In ad­di­tion, banks aren't al­ways will­ing to risk on star­tups that are in­tro­duc­ing fresh ideas in­to the mar­ket­place but don't have a proven path to suc­cess.

From the 400 peo­ple who en­tered, en­tries were whit­tled down to 50 win­ners, who each re­ceived a grant of be­tween $75,000 to $200,000 to help turn their in­no­v­a­tive ideas in­to re­al­i­ty.

Per­manand is quick to stress the prize is a grant not a busi­ness loan.

"It's a year-long pro­gramme that's all about ca­pac­i­ty de­vel­op­ment."

Grant win­ners will work with Cariri de­vel­op a busi­ness plan and es­tab­lish key mile­stones to eval­u­ate the suc­cess of their busi­ness idea. It's on­ly af­ter achiev­ing the first mile­stone that mon­ey is re­leased to achieve the sec­ond. There­fore, grant win­ners must achieve proof of con­cept, name­ly proof that your busi­ness is sus­tain­able.

One of the grant win­ners work­ing to­wards achiev­ing proof of con­cept is Cordell Lawrence, cre­ator of Map Nin­ja, an on­line plat­form that makes it eas­i­er for com­pa­nies to com­pile and vi­su­alise ge­o­graph­i­cal da­ta col­lect­ed via a GPS-en­abled smart­phone.

"If you do a search on Google Maps, you get a map with icons that will show you where the restau­rants, school, hos­pi­tals, etc, are" says Lawrence. "Our ap­pli­ca­tion will help you to cre­ate maps, like that us­ing GPS co­or­di­nates you've col­lect­ed, and in­clude pic­tures and in­ter­ac­tive me­dia."

This ap­pli­ca­tion, he says, will be par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful to or­gan­i­sa­tions like the Min­istry of Tourism which may be in­ter­est­ed in cre­at­ing maps of tourist at­trac­tions that are more com­pat­i­ble with smart­phones and tablet com­put­ers.

Star­tups like Map Nin­ja, which have em­braced dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy as the foun­da­tion for their busi­ness ideas, have be­come more and more com­mons, says Per­manand.

"CCI has re­alised that en­tre­pre­neurs are us­ing dig­i­tal as the ve­hi­cle that push­es their en­tre­pre­neur­ial ideas for­ward."

Most re­cent­ly CCI has signed on to be the ti­tle spon­sor of the Caribbean Dig­i­tal Ex­po, the on­ly con­fer­ence of its kind that fo­cus­es on dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and how it can im­pact ca­reer and busi­ness out­comes.

The coun­cil saw an align­ment be­tween its man­date and the vi­sion be­hind The Caribbean Dig­i­tal Ex­po 2.0, which takes place at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, on April 10 and 11.

This year's ex­hi­bi­tion will fo­cus heav­i­ly on the im­por­tant role that tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion can play in en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

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