Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

The Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies of­fi­cial­ly launched the first Caribbean com­mer­cial busi­ness in­cu­ba­tor yes­ter­day at its Mt Hope cam­pus. The busi­ness in­cu­ba­tor, called the Biz Boost­er, pro­vides a cat­a­lyst for the de­vel­op­ment and growth of busi­ness­es that would in­crease na­tion­al and re­gion­al pros­per­i­ty.

Be­fore the of­fi­cial start of the launch, all key stake­hold­ers from the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with the busi­ness school, signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing seek­ing to unite their tal­ents and re­sources to ac­cel­er­ate the pace of suc­cess for the po­ten­tial pool of en­tre­pre­neurs.

Speak­ing at the launch, Prof Miguel Car­ril­lo said that the busi­ness in­cu­ba­tor was not a new idea, but the dif­fer­ence with their con­cept was it would be sup­port­ing an en­tre­pre­neur through all stages of growth. Car­il­lo said this new con­cept would fa­cil­i­tate en­tre­pre­neurs to grow their busi­ness three to five times more an­nu­al­ly.

In­cor­po­rat­ed in that new con­cept is a cus­tomised in­cu­ba­tor mod­el for en­tre­pre­neurs. "The most crit­i­cal chal­lenge for any en­tre­pre­neur is to achieve growth," Car­il­lo said. "So we would help them start up, as­sist them in mak­ing ac­cu­rate de­ci­sions and, most im­por­tant­ly, hold their hands un­til they have the ca­pac­i­ty not on­ly to be fi­nan­cial­ly in­de­pen­dent, but have the ca­pac­i­ty to de­sign and or­ches­trate growth and at­tract in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors."

Car­ril­lo said this ini­tia­tive is not lim­it­ed to grad­u­ates, but the wider com­mu­ni­ty who are tal­ent­ed and mo­ti­vat­ed. The en­tre­pre­neurs, he said, must poss­es the right at­ti­tude, so­cial and cre­ative skills, eth­i­cal with high en­er­gy, just to name a few. Their busi­ness must have the po­ten­tial to achieve glob­al sta­tus, em­ploy req­ui­site strate­gies, at­tract na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets and have re­source ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

In the first week of Ju­ly, Car­ril­lo said the Arthur Lok Jack GSB will host a com­pe­ti­tion called the En­tre­pre­neur Ven­ture Chal­lenge for in­ter­est­ed en­tre­pre­neurs to show­case their tal­ents and in­no­v­a­tive ideas. Some would then be se­lect­ed for Biz Boost­er.

The sec­ond event would fa­cil­i­tate six dif­fer­ent con­fer­ences in tech­nol­o­gy where en­tre­pre­neurs again would have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case their high-tech­nol­o­gy in­no­va­tion and be se­lect­ed. The aim of Biz Boost­er is to pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty for en­tre­pre­neurs with in­no­v­a­tive ideas to start growth-ori­ent­ed in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness­es. The aim is al­so to:

• grad­u­ate at least six com­pa­nies every year;

• gen­er­ate in the first 36 months rev­enue from grad­u­at­ed com­pa­nies of more than $9.5 mil­lion;

• gen­er­ate at least 100 new jobs in the first 36 months;

• grad­u­at­ed com­pa­nies must ex­port at least one-third of their to­tal prod­ucts and ser­vices.

Among the key stake­hold­ers: In­vestTT, Mis­crosoft T&T, Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd, Ice­house En­ter­prise Hub, First Cit­i­zens, Sam­dor Ser­vices Ltd.