By Emer­son John-Charles

Ask the av­er­age econ­o­mist about the key dri­vers of eco­nom­ic growth and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and you will like­ly hear about prices, labour, cap­i­tal mar­kets and mon­e­tary pol­i­cy. Rarely will cre­ativ­i­ty, knowl­edge, tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion and re­search and de­vel­op­ment (R&D) make the list. When in­no­va­tion does en­ter the con­ver­sa­tion, it is of­ten through the pi­o­neer­ing 1942 work of Joseph Schum­peter, who in­tro­duced the con­cept of cre­ative de­struc­tion which ex­plains how waves of in­dus­tri­al com­pe­ti­tion and tech­no­log­i­cal change trans­form economies. His ideas helped ex­plain the dy­nam­ics of the Third In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion dri­ven by com­put­ers and the in­ter­net and re­main a use­ful lens for un­der­stand­ing to­day’s trans­for­ma­tive wave pow­ered by Gen­er­a­tive Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence.

In­no­va­tion wins glob­al recog­ni­tion

Eighty years af­ter Schum­peter’s sem­i­nal con­tri­bu­tion, I awoke to a mes­sage from Dani­lo Spani­lo that read: “In­no­va­tion won the No­bel Prize.” In­trigued, I dis­cov­ered that three eco­nom­ic his­to­ri­ans, Philippe Aghion, Pe­ter Howitt, and Joel Mokyr, had ex­pand­ed Schum­peter’s the­o­ry, deep­en­ing our un­der­stand­ing of in­no­va­tion-dri­ven growth. Their col­lec­tive work earned them the 2025 No­bel Prize in Eco­nom­ics. They em­pha­sise how R&D, knowl­edge cre­ation, and cre­ative de­struc­tion are not pe­riph­er­al forces but the very en­gines of sus­tained eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and im­proved liv­ing stan­dards.

Why T&T strug­gles with in­no­va­tion

Fo­cussing on R&D made me re­flect on why T&T con­tin­ues to strug­gle with in­no­va­tion, as ev­i­denced by our con­sis­tent­ly low rank­ings on the Glob­al In­no­va­tion In­dex, the UNC­TAD Fron­tier Tech­nol­o­gy Readi­ness In­dex and Har­vard’s At­las of Eco­nom­ic Com­plex­i­ty. One rea­son may be our long­stand­ing fo­cus on mi­cro, small, and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (MSMEs) with­in na­tion­al in­no­va­tion ini­tia­tives. While sup­port­ing MSMEs is es­sen­tial, such lo­cal firms of­ten lack the fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, man­age­r­i­al ca­pac­i­ty and in­ter­na­tion­al reach re­quired to en­gage in mean­ing­ful R&D and scale ef­fec­tive­ly to com­pete in glob­al mar­kets.

The re­al­i­ty is that R&D in fron­tier tech­nolo­gies such as AI, quan­tum com­put­ing, and ro­bot­ics are cap­i­tal in­ten­sive and de­mand pa­tient in­vest­ment, as re­turns can take years to ma­te­ri­al­ize. The Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) de­fines a medi­um sized en­ter­prise as em­ploy­ing 26 to 50 peo­ple with an­nu­al sales up to $10 mil­lion. Even if such a firm de­vot­ed 3 per cent of its rev­enue to R&D, that would amount to just $300,000 a year or $25,000 per month which is in­suf­fi­cient to achieve sig­nif­i­cant tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs in a glob­al land­scape dom­i­nat­ed by tril­lion-dol­lar tech gi­ants.

Lo­cal firms point the way for­ward

By con­trast, large firms, pos­sess the cap­i­tal, man­age­r­i­al ca­pac­i­ty and in­ter­na­tion­al net­works nec­es­sary to un­der­take sus­tained R&D. Lo­cal ex­am­ples demon­strate this po­ten­tial. Ramps Lo­gis­tics, for in­stance, launched its R&D de­part­ment a few years ago and has since achieved ex­po­nen­tial growth, ex­port­ing ser­vices de­vel­oped in house. The com­pa­ny was re­cent­ly short­list­ed as a fi­nal­ist in the pres­ti­gious Break­bulk In­no­va­tion Awards, out­per­form­ing sev­er­al long es­tab­lished in­ter­na­tion­al com­peti­tors.

Sim­i­lar­ly, S.M. Jaleel & Com­pa­ny Ltd, found­ed in 1924, has shown how con­tin­u­ous in­vest­ment in R&D can sus­tain suc­cess. Over the past two decades, the com­pa­ny has in­tro­duced new prod­ucts reg­u­lar­ly, main­tain­ing its po­si­tion as one of the Caribbean’s largest non-al­co­holic bev­er­age man­u­fac­tur­ers.

While few oth­er lo­cal com­pa­nies have com­pa­ra­ble R&D ca­pac­i­ty, sev­er­al are strength­en­ing their in­no­va­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties. Agos­ti­ni Group has ap­point­ed a head of in­no­va­tion and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, Carib Brew­ery has es­tab­lished an in­no­va­tion de­part­ment, and state-owned en­ter­pris­es such as Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd and TSTT have al­so cre­at­ed ded­i­cat­ed in­no­va­tion de­part­ments.

Build­ing a na­tion­al frame­work for in­no­va­tion and R&D

To sup­port these emerg­ing in­no­va­tion ef­forts and strength­en the coun­try’s ca­pac­i­ty for ap­plied R&D, all firms should be en­cour­aged to adopt ISO 56001, the world’s first stan­dard for in­no­va­tion man­age­ment sys­tems, now for­mal­ly rec­og­nized as T&T’s na­tion­al in­no­va­tion stan­dard. The stan­dard pro­vides a struc­tured frame­work that helps or­gan­i­sa­tions con­tin­u­ous­ly gen­er­ate, de­vel­op and com­mer­cialise ideas, while en­abling se­nior lead­ers to eval­u­ate and au­dit in­no­va­tion ini­tia­tives us­ing glob­al­ly rec­og­nized best prac­tices.

The im­pli­ca­tions for gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy are clear: we must adopt a dual track ap­proach to na­tion­al in­no­va­tion pol­i­cy, sup­port­ing both the en­tre­pre­neur­ial ecosys­tem dom­i­nat­ed by MSMEs and the R&D ecosys­tem led by large firms and re­search in­sti­tu­tions.

As we cel­e­brate the No­bel Prize recog­ni­tion of in­no­va­tion as a key dri­ver of eco­nom­ic growth, it is an op­por­tune mo­ment to re­cal­i­brate our na­tion­al in­no­va­tion strate­gies to bet­ter bal­ance sup­port for small en­ter­prise vi­tal­i­ty with tar­get­ed mech­a­nisms that en­able larg­er firms to in­vest deeply in the R&D that fu­els trans­for­ma­tive, long term de­vel­op­ment.

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.