In an era de­fined by rapid tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments and ever-evolv­ing chal­lenges, break­throughs are im­por­tant as they en­cap­su­late the col­lec­tive dri­ve to shat­ter bar­ri­ers and pro­pel for­ward.

This theme, “Break­through” was un­der­scored at Am­cham T&T’s an­nu­al Tech Hub Is­lands Sum­mit (THIS), which con­tin­ues to work to­ward ad­vanc­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ef­forts and ini­tia­tives in T&T.

This was al­so re­flect­ed in the pan­el dis­cus­sion which looked at the im­por­tance of break­ing through lim­i­ta­tions, em­brac­ing bold ideas, forg­ing new paths to shape the fu­ture of tech­nol­o­gy, re­defin­ing what’s pos­si­ble and lead­ing the charge to­wards a fu­ture where tech­nol­o­gy knows no bounds.

Dis­cus­sions cen­tred on the fact that young peo­ple are a crit­i­cal com­po­nent in forg­ing the way for­ward as the ques­tion al­so arose on how can the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers be de­vel­oped and nur­tured.

Ca­ri­na Cock­burn, the T&T coun­try rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the In­ter­Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), was part of a pan­el at which she shared that the best high-per­form­ing teams are those that are di­verse.

“It’s not just about hav­ing younger peo­ple. It’s about hav­ing the opin­ions of old­er peo­ple, of men, of women, peo­ple from dif­fer­ent back­grounds and this re­al­ly con­tributes to a very dy­nam­ic de­ci­sion-mak­ing process, which al­lows you to be more suc­cess­ful in the fi­nal analy­sis.

“I think in terms of the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers, the mes­sage to them is to make sure your teams are di­verse,” Cock­burn ex­plained.

Al­so, she not­ed there are op­por­tu­ni­ties to lead ini­tia­tives in an or­gan­i­sa­tion re­gard­less of role or lev­el, adding these can in­clude lead­er­ship at dif­fer­ent stages.

How­ev­er, Cock­burn ad­vised lead­ers to al­so do their part by giv­ing such op­por­tu­ni­ties, lend­ing sup­port and “re­mov­ing any im­ped­i­ments” that may be stop­ping some­one from achiev­ing their full po­ten­tial.

On the is­sue of cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment where dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion can thrive and suc­ceed, Cock­burn said it “re­al­ly has to do with al­low­ing for fail­ure to take place in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

In shar­ing an ex­am­ple of this she said, “Some years ago we de­cid­ed we would try to im­ple­ment AI in our pro­cure­ment process for in­di­vid­ual con­sul­tants. So the idea was that through ma­chine learn­ing, we would re­view key­words in re­sumes and match those with the terms of ref­er­ence. Sounds pret­ty sim­ple but to train the sys­tem, we need­ed a lot of da­ta.

“When we went out to our part­ners in the Gov­ern­ment, they didn’t want to share that da­ta be­cause this is con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion in the pro­cure­ment process. So, we tried, we went through dif­fer­ent con­tor­tions to make it hap­pen and in the end, we weren’t able to pro­ceed with that project at that mo­ment.”

She said while the con­sen­sus was to place the project on pause the team, how­ev­er, felt good that they tried.

“We tried to do some­thing mod­ern in a time when maybe it wasn’t the right mo­ment and that helped us to do oth­er suc­cess­ful ini­tia­tives that we have been able to achieve in the coun­try,” she said.

It’s this kind of “open­ness to fail­ure” Cock­burn main­tained that re­al­ly helps peo­ple and en­ti­ties suc­ceed in en­vi­ron­ments of great com­plex­i­ty.

“Some of the demon­stra­tion projects we have done for ex­am­ple, like the drone light show at Car­ni­val, it hadn’t been done be­fore. It’s great com­plex­i­ty, lots of un­cer­tain­ty and up to a week be­fore, we didn’t know if we were go­ing to be able to pro­ceed.

“In the event it­self, all of the drones were shut down by some in­ter­fer­ence. And so even at that time, we didn’t know that it was go­ing to suc­ceed but by hav­ing a very di­verse team, and peo­ple with dif­fer­ent view­points...you end up hav­ing a team that can pull even the most com­pli­cat­ed projects to­geth­er and get it to suc­ceed,” she added.

With dig­i­tal ideas, these can al­so in­volve some lev­el of risk.

Karen Yip Chuck, CEO, group vice-pres­i­dent Re­pub­lic Bank, said a cul­tur­al change is need­ed from “yes but” to “yes and tell me more.”

“Some ideas that are put on the ta­ble in its first it­er­a­tion may be small and may even be off the mark. But as some­one else lis­tens to it, or even that same per­son starts to ex­plain it, it can build and it can mush­room in­to big­ger and big­ger and great ideas and there­fore great ini­tia­tives,” Yip Chuck said, not­ing that the bank cur­rent­ly has a pro­gramme on­go­ing to en­cour­age ideas and to cre­ate a bet­ter cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence.

In shar­ing fur­ther ad­vice in el­e­vat­ing one’s busi­ness she said, “You’ve prob­a­bly been do­ing it all the years by rote, maybe not ap­plic­a­ble any more in this day and age. Maybe it’s not ef­fi­cient and you could stop and there are oth­ers that you know you have to do. They’re prob­a­bly work­ing well and you could keep those and then there would be oth­ers that you need to just start,” said Yip Chuck.

Not­ing there are many ini­tia­tives born from dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, Yip Chuck rec­om­mend­ed to keep build­ing them and they would mush­room go­ing for­ward.

Ex­am­in­ing the risks even fur­ther she said, “If some­body were to come with the ideas what would you be look­ing at in terms of its ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty, its rel­e­vance. What is it look­ing to solve? If the pay­back would be worth the in­vest­ment, be­cause all of these things are huge in­vest­ments.

“And I guess you just man­age...you have to cre­ate that en­vi­ron­ment of en­cour­ag­ing the in­no­va­tion and the ideas and there­fore, hav­ing an el­e­ment of safe­ty and trust to al­low peo­ple to fail quick, fail fast, fail small.”

Abra­ham Smith, CEO Dig­i­cel T&T echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, say­ing one of the biggest risks comes even af­ter some­thing is done in re­sis­tance.

He ex­plained re­sis­tance in the sense of com­ing up with ideas but be­ing hes­i­tant in im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Smith al­so ad­vised that even the sim­ple thing of how peo­ple speak and com­mu­ni­cate could have a big im­pact on whether peo­ple are re­sis­tant or not.

“And then even af­ter some­thing’s done, you have to watch out for the risk of re­sis­tance as well. I think a lot of peo­ple will be afraid that tech­nol­o­gy is go­ing to take my job and so we al­so have to work to talk about how it changes the work that they do and show that any­thing we do to make things bet­ter for em­ploy­ees and bet­ter for our cus­tomers is ul­ti­mate­ly go­ing to be bet­ter for all of us,” Smith said.

Ac­cord­ing to Am­cham T&T’s web­site, THIS is a hy­brid sum­mit with net­work­ing, ed­u­ca­tion and tech to help peo­ple and en­ti­ties meet the lead­ers and tal­ent in the Caribbean and un­der­stand the po­ten­tial ap­pli­ca­tion of tech in one’s com­pa­ny and even life.

It not­ed that ul­ti­mate­ly, THIS will catal­yse the de­vel­op­ment of a lo­cal tech in­dus­try and put T&T and the wider Caribbean on the glob­al tech map.