By Emer­son John-Charles

The 2025 No­bel Prize in Eco­nom­ic Sci­ences was award­ed last week to three eco­nom­ic his­to­ri­ans who proved that in­no­va­tion, not nat­ur­al re­sources, is the true dri­ver of growth and pros­per­i­ty. Their work in­vites re­flec­tion on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment path com­pared with Sin­ga­pore’s.

In 1965, Trinidad and To­ba­go and Sin­ga­pore had sim­i­lar GDP lev­els. Sin­ga­pore, with a land area sev­en times small­er and vir­tu­al­ly no nat­ur­al re­sources, de­lib­er­ate­ly built a knowl­edge based econ­o­my pow­ered by tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion. To­day, its GDP is more than 15 time larg­er than ours, it ranks 5th on the 2025 Glob­al In­no­va­tion In­dex and in­vests over 2 per cent of its GDP in re­search and de­vel­op­ment (R&D).

In con­trast, Trinidad and To­ba­go ranks 114th, in­vest­ing on­ly 0.05 per­cent of GDP in R&D. Sin­ga­pore has al­so pro­duced more than 20 uni­corns, which are start-ups val­ued above USD $1 bil­lion, demon­strat­ing its abil­i­ty to turn ideas in­to glob­al en­ter­pris­es.

Mean­while, Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains tied to oil and gas. With oil pro­duc­tion de­clin­ing for over two decades and gas out­put falling for the last decade, the coun­try faces just ten more years of nat­ur­al gas re­serves. In an econ­o­my where the en­er­gy sec­tor pro­vides more than 80 per cent of ex­port rev­enue, all alarm bells should be ring­ing.

The mes­sage from the No­bel lau­re­ates is clear: eco­nom­ic re­silience de­pends on tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion. To achieve sus­tain­able pros­per­i­ty, Trinidad and To­ba­go must adopt a gov­er­nance frame­work that places in­no­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy at the core of na­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion.

In­no­va­tion’s Grow­ing Pains

Be­fore in­vest­ing heav­i­ly in fron­tier tech­nolo­gies such as AI, quan­tum com­put­ing, and ro­bot­ics, we have to delve deep­er in­to the work of No­bel lau­re­ates Philippe Aghion, Pe­ter Howitt, and Joel Mokyr. Aghion and Howitt’s ex­pan­sion of the the­o­ry of cre­ative de­struc­tion ex­plains how new and more ef­fi­cient tech­nolo­gies re­place old ones, dri­ving progress but al­so dis­plac­ing jobs and in­dus­tries.

We saw this in past in­dus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tions: com­put­ers re­placed type­writ­ers, the in­ter­net dis­rupt­ed trav­el agen­cies, au­toma­tion dis­placed fac­to­ry work­ers and cashiers, and now gen­er­a­tive AI is trans­form­ing knowl­edge work­ers, from con­sul­tants and re­searchers to de­sign­ers and ed­u­ca­tors. These tran­si­tions can be painful, which is why ed­u­ca­tion, reskilling, and so­cial safe­ty nets are es­sen­tial to cush­ion the im­pact.

How­ev­er, Howitt warns that re­sis­tance of­ten aris­es not just from work­ers but from pow­er­ful in­dus­tries. When in­no­va­tion threat­ens es­tab­lished in­ter­ests, they fre­quent­ly turn to pol­i­tics to block or de­lay change.

We al­ready see signs of this in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The draft Vir­tu­al As­set Ser­vice Providers Bill (2025) could ban cryp­tocur­ren­cy. En­tre­pre­neurs face dif­fi­cul­ty re­ceiv­ing in­ter­na­tion­al pay­ments through Pay­Pal, and lo­cal fin­techs strug­gle with slow, re­stric­tive reg­u­la­tion. Al­so, cloud com­put­ing poli­cies lim­it dig­i­tal ser­vice providers, and in­no­va­tors con­sis­tent­ly cite struc­tur­al and bu­reau­crat­ic bot­tle­necks that sti­fle growth.

Fix­ing the sys­tem that holds back in­no­va­tors

As Bob Mar­ley sang in I Shot the Sher­iff:

“Every time I plant a seed; he says kill it be­fore it grows.”

Too of­ten, our in­no­va­tors face that same fate, buried by bu­reau­cra­cy and cor­rup­tion be­fore their ideas can take root. To change this, we need strong gov­er­nance mech­a­nisms that el­e­vate in­no­va­tion to the high­est lev­els of na­tion­al de­ci­sion mak­ing.

The Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed Eco­nom­ic Re­silience Coun­cil, based in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, is a pos­i­tive step to­ward di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. How­ev­er, its scope should be ex­pand­ed to ex­plic­it­ly fo­cus on knowl­edge, tech­nol­o­gy, and R&D dri­ven growth.

Be­yond this, two new in­sti­tu­tions are ur­gent­ly need­ed:

* A high-lev­el Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Re­search, Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, and In­no­va­tion in Par­lia­ment to pro­vide over­sight and pol­i­cy co­or­di­na­tion across min­istries;

* A Na­tion­al In­no­va­tion Agency to man­age and im­ple­ment in­no­va­tion strat­e­gy, en­sur­ing align­ment across gov­ern­ment, acad­e­mia, and in­dus­try.

This frame­work should bring to­geth­er key min­istries: Plan­ning, Trade, Ed­u­ca­tion, Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion, Fi­nance, Labour, and AI, to en­sure co­her­ence and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

To sup­port this, both pub­lic and pri­vate en­ter­pris­es should adopt the ISO 56001 In­no­va­tion Man­age­ment Stan­dard, re­cent­ly adopt­ed as Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al in­no­va­tion stan­dard. This will give all ac­tors a shared lan­guage and process for gen­er­at­ing and com­mer­cial­is­ing ideas, fos­ter­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion and sys­tem­at­ic in­no­va­tion.

The Fourth In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion is our sec­ond chance

Sin­ga­pore’s trans­for­ma­tion was built on tim­ing; it rode the wave of the third in­dus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion, pow­ered by com­put­ers and the in­ter­net that start­ed in the late 1960s. Trinidad and To­ba­go now stands at the thresh­old of the fourth in­dus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion, de­fined by AI, ro­bot­ics, and dig­i­tal ecosys­tems.

Ac­cord­ing to UNC­TAD’s 2025 Tech­nol­o­gy and In­no­va­tion Re­port, fron­tier tech­nolo­gies gen­er­at­ed US$2.5 tril­lion in glob­al rev­enue in 2023 alone, a fig­ure pro­ject­ed to rise six-fold to reach US$16.4 tril­lion by 2033. The op­por­tu­ni­ties are im­mense.

With a well-ed­u­cat­ed pop­u­la­tion and strong dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture, Trinidad and To­ba­go is well po­si­tioned to seize this mo­ment, but on­ly if we re­move the reg­u­la­to­ry and in­sti­tu­tion­al bar­ri­ers that hold back in­no­va­tion.

By align­ing our gov­er­nance sys­tems with in­no­va­tion, we can di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my, gen­er­ate new sources of for­eign ex­change, and build a more re­silient and pros­per­ous na­tion be­yond oil and gas.

Emer­son John Charles is an ISO na­tion­al in­no­va­tion ex­pert and the chair of both the In­no­va­tion As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Na­tion­al Mir­ror Com­mit­tee for In­no­va­tion Man­age­ment at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Bu­reau of Stan­dards.