Against the backdrop of long-stagnant economic transformation across the Caribbean small island developing states, Barbados’ lead trade and investment agency is calling for a fundamental shift in regional ambition: moving beyond small-scale entrepreneurship to build intentional, scalable industrial capacity that can drive sustainable growth and global competitiveness.
The Barbados Investment and Development Corporation (BIDC), which operates under the Export Barbados banner, recently underscored this vision while presenting a US$5,000 sponsorship cheque to support the University of the West Indies (UWI) International Undergraduate Students’ Leadership Conference and Entrepreneurship Exhibition, scheduled to run in Jamaica from September 23 to 25. The total value of the commitment amounts to BBD $10,000.
Mark Hill, Chief Executive Officer of Export Barbados BIDC, emphasized that the sponsorship is far more than a one-off charitable contribution—it is a targeted investment in advancing the regional shift from startup entrepreneurship to systemic industrialisation. Hill drew a clear distinction between the two roles that are often conflated, noting that while an entrepreneur identifies a market opportunity, takes calculated risks, and launches a new enterprise, an industrialist expands that work to build a large-scale productive system. “The entrepreneur creates a business. The industrialist builds productive capacity,” Hill explained. “We need both. But we have long needed more of the latter to transform our regional economy.”
Hill pointed out that the Caribbean is not lacking in creative ideas or ambitious, enterprising people. The core gap, he argued, is a clear pathway to scale ideas out of small, individual operations and into large, sustainable production systems that generate high-level intellectual property, mass employment, specialized expertise, and growing export volumes. It is this gap that Export Barbados aims to close through initiatives like its purpose-built International Food Science Centre, and the new GIGA framework for green industrialisation.
Hill reintroduced GIGA, his agency’s initiative designed to connect the next generation of innovators with the resources they need to scale. The framework acts as a bridging platform linking new ideas and entrepreneurial talent to critical inputs: financing, cutting-edge technology, dedicated production facilities, international product certification, affordable clean energy, and access to global consumer markets. Hill said he wants participating UWI students to imagine a different future for themselves—not just as future employees or small business owners, but as a new cohort of intelligence-driven industrialists. These future leaders, he noted, would be equipped to build factories and research labs, commercialize scientific breakthroughs, launch technology platforms, develop climate-smart intelligent farms, and grow globally competitive enterprises.
The ultimate goal of this investment, Hill added, is to lay the foundation for a long-term collaborative industrial relationship between BIDC, the private sector, and the regional university system. “It is an investment in new intelligence, and in the possibility that the young entrepreneur benefiting from this conference can grow into a transformative industrialist,” he said.
Professor Winston Moore, Deputy Principal of UWI’s Cave Hill campus in Barbados, echoed Hill’s call for more targeted investment, noting that small island developing states face unique structural barriers to research and development (R&D) that hold back economic progress. Unlike large economies, small states cannot compete on production volume—their competitive advantage lies in innovative ideas. However, Moore highlighted that regional R&D spending consistently falls below 1% of GDP, a level too low to foster consistent development of new, commercially viable ideas.
Moore stressed that partnerships like this sponsorship point the way forward for Barbados and other small developing states. Outlining his vision for the university, he noted that UWI aims to create a dedicated portal that connects private sector challenges directly to student innovators, creating a structured pipeline for turning ideas into solutions that can scale into new industries. “This is exactly the kind of investment we need to be making to unlock our region’s potential,” he added.