Eu­ro­pean Union am­bas­sador to T&T, Pe­ter Cavendish, says in terms of this coun­try’s eco­nom­ic fu­ture there is a need to re­bal­ance the coun­try’s en­er­gy pro­duc­tion with the out­put of oth­er prod­ucts.

Speak­ing to Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, fol­low­ing the ‘Shap­ing the Fu­ture of In­no­va­tion Awards’ (STFOI) cer­e­mo­ny’ at the Hy­att last week, Cavendish said as it re­lates to Eu­rope, it is se­cured in many ar­eas in­clud­ing trade, in which the group of coun­tries meets the de­mands of its pop­u­la­tion.

He not­ed that T&T has good fash­ion, food, and con­struc­tion prod­ucts along with In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy peo­ple.

“This coun­try has one of the high­est en­gi­neers per head in the pop­u­la­tion of the Amer­i­c­as. We need these types of peo­ple in Eu­rope and we ob­vi­ous­ly want to trade more with T&T. At the mo­ment the ball is in T&T’s court with the huge sur­plus that you have.” Cavendish high­light­ed.

In terms of dig­i­tal con­nec­tiv­i­ty, he said the EU is ap­proach­ing a deep­er lev­el of ex­change, with the ex­ten­sion of the su­per-con­nec­tiv­i­ty ca­ble called BEL­LA, which stands for Build­ing the Eu­rope Links with Latin Amer­i­ca.

The ob­jec­tive of this ca­ble is to con­nect ed­u­ca­tion­al and re­search net­works (ERNs), for ex­am­ple the Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies and the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, to­geth­er with third-lev­el bod­ies in Eu­rope, Latin Amer­i­ca, and else­where in the Caribbean re­gion.

Con­tin­u­ing on the top­ic of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, Cavendish said the Eu­ro­pean Union at the cer­e­mo­ny hand­ed out grants to 25 awardees, with the range be­ing be­tween US$50,000 to US$70,000 per re­cip­i­ent.

He said the EU has been sup­port­ing this ini­tia­tive, along with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) Lab, and the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri) for the past three to four years.

The am­bas­sador not­ed that this pro­gramme is tar­get­ed to en­tre­pre­neur­ial in­no­va­tors who have shown their worth in the var­i­ous co­horts.

Out­lin­ing the im­por­tance of in­no­va­tion to na­tion­al and re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment Cavendish said when the T&T Gov­ern­ment se­lect­ed in­no­va­tion as the fo­cal sec­tor for de­vel­op­ment, it did so for the fol­low­ing key rea­sons:

• In­no­va­tion was con­sid­ered nec­es­sary to sup­port T&T to build an en­abling busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment and im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness;

• It was de­ter­mined that there was a need to build the in­no­v­a­tive ca­pac­i­ty of the pri­vate sec­tor;

• It was im­por­tant to lever­age the re­sources and ca­pac­i­ty of the lo­cal uni­ver­si­ties and busi­ness schools and to en­cour­age their co­op­er­a­tion/part­ner­ship with the pri­vate sec­tor;

• Gen­der equal­i­ty and em­pow­er­ment of women are im­por­tant hu­man rights prin­ci­ples for both the EU and for TT, so it was agreed that this pro­gramme would fo­cus on ‘in­clu­sive in­no­va­tion’ in­clud­ing en­sur­ing sup­port for women-led in­no­v­a­tive en­ter­pris­es.

“We all know that in­no­va­tion plays an in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant role in our economies. As well as ben­e­fit­ing the con­sumers and work­ers, it is es­sen­tial for cre­at­ing bet­ter jobs, build­ing a green­er so­ci­ety, and im­prov­ing our qual­i­ty of life. It is al­so key to main­tain­ing the coun­try’s com­pet­i­tive­ness on glob­al mar­kets,” he de­tailed.

The fu­ture of in­no­va­tion, the am­bas­sador said, is to ad­e­quate­ly re­spond to these is­sues, T&T needs to sus­tain and ex­pand this ini­tia­tive through an ef­fec­tive in­no­va­tion agen­da, which should fo­cus on five fun­da­men­tal ar­eas such as: fund­ing scale-ups; en­abling in­no­va­tion through ex­per­i­men­ta­tion spaces and pub­lic pro­cure­ment; Ac­cel­er­at­ing and strength­en­ing in­no­va­tion in in­no­va­tion ecosys­tems across T&T and ad­dress­ing the in­no­va­tion di­vide; fos­ter­ing, at­tract­ing and re­tain­ing tal­ent and im­prov­ing pol­i­cy-mak­ing tools.

CEO at Cariri Hans-Erich Schulz speak­ing at the cer­e­mo­ny, said the ‘Shap­ing the Fu­ture of In­no­va­tion,’ project is the first ini­tia­tive of its kind in this coun­try—a com­pre­hen­sive pro­gramme de­signed to bridge crit­i­cal gaps in our in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem: from fund­ing and men­tor­ship to strength­en­ing in­dus­try-aca­d­e­m­ic link­ages and cre­at­ing in­clu­sive stake­hold­er col­lab­o­ra­tion.

He not­ed that the In­no­va­tion Chal­lenge Fa­cil­i­ty (ICF), as the flag­ship com­po­nent, pro­vid­ed in­te­gral sup­port to en­tre­pre­neurs in trans­form­ing their bold ideas in­to im­pact­ful ven­tures.

Through the four calls for pro­pos­als, Schulz said it’s an im­pres­sive range of pi­o­neer­ing so­lu­tions in sec­tors such as Agri­cul­ture, in­clud­ing in­no­va­tions in the co­coa in­dus­try and con­trolled en­vi­ron­ment sys­tems; agro-pro­cess­ing, with new prod­uct in­no­va­tions such as ge­o­t­ex­tiles made from co­conut fi­bres; ICT, in­clud­ing fin­tech, mo­bile drone tech­nol­o­gy, digi­ti­sa­tion, and the In­ter­net of Things and cre­ative in­dus­tries, ed­u­ca­tion, health­care, and man­u­fac­tur­ing.

The CEO out­lined that fund­ing from the project has al­lowed re­cip­i­ents to de­vel­op new prod­uct for­mu­la­tions, au­to­mate process­es for in­creased ef­fi­cien­cy through AI ap­pli­ca­tions, in­vest in new equip­ment and in­stru­ments, achieve cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, and im­prove hu­man cap­i­tal through in­ter­na­tion­al train­ing.

These so­lu­tions are not just in­no­v­a­tive, he said they are eco­nom­i­cal­ly em­pow­er­ing. They rep­re­sent new busi­ness­es, new jobs, and new sources of in­come and ex­port po­ten­tial for our coun­try. But be­yond eco­nom­ics, they build hope and re­silience in com­mu­ni­ties, in­spire oth­ers to take risks, and em­body the cre­ativ­i­ty of our na­tion.

“Be­hind every in­no­va­tion is a sto­ry of de­ter­mi­na­tion, sleep­less nights, count­less it­er­a­tions, and a dri­ve to make things bet­ter. All the grant re­cip­i­ents present to­day ex­em­pli­fy this spir­it. They re­mind us that in­no­va­tion doesn’t on­ly hap­pen in large labs or board­rooms—it starts in small spaces, with big dreams,” Schulz added.

To date, the four calls of the STFOI project have fi­nanced a to­tal of 77 in­no­v­a­tive projects.