By: Staff Writer
June 28, 2022
The Caribbean Export Development Agency hosted a webinar for the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Day where being “nimble” was the watch-word for small businesses trying to make it in today’s marketplace.
Ayanna Young Marshall, Lecturer in International Business at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, said at the webinar that MSME’s have to be “nimble” in this climate as the COVID-19 has put a few established businesses out of business, MSME’s need to be ready to take on the challenge to go to the next level.
She said small business for her means, “being very nimble. Smallness is not just from the firm standpoint, but it’s also from the Countries standpoint,” adding that for Barbados in particular, they have been fighting the climate change battle in the forefront and “making the case” for climate awareness.
She continued, “But within the business context, it means that we have to create the next wave of businesses. So in my march between 2000 to now, I have seen a number of Caribbean businesses, Caribbean brands go out of ownership of the Caribbean and that’s fine, because if your brand is competitive, and your brand is fantastic, it means the rest of the world is going to want to acquire that; the rest of the world has the financial wherewithal to do such, but it means that we as Caribbean countries, small countries, have to keep replacing those companies. So we need to replace that previous wave with the next wave of businesses.”
Ms Young-Marshall added: “Our challenge is to ensure that that next wave of companies is created and that wave now because of technology, and so many things that are different from doing business in our time and how they worked 20 odd years ago, means that tiny companies, micro companies, start-ups, the men on the side of the road and so on-which is why you see so many initiatives among our governments in supporting these unlikely business characters- they now have a chance to leverage the technology and leverage other things, leverage the crisis that we’re rebounding from, in terms of this pandemic, and we were in crisis mode even before to create that next wave.”
Ms Diane Edwards, President of Jamaica Promotions Corporation (JAMPRO), also said that a lot of the large companies around the region, started out small at one point and pointed to shining examples like Grace Kennedy and Wray & Nephew. “If you look at a company, for instance, like Walkerswood, which is a Caribbean food company, somewhat similar to Baron Foods in terms of their trajectory, you see how small can actually be a competitive advantage, because sometimes small means definitely nimble and gives you the opportunity to have a first mover advantage and to innovate. I think that that is really critical.”
She continued, “What we see in Jamaica is over 80 percent of jobs in Jamaica are from SME’s, 40 percent of working Jamaicans are self-employed and this is really critical, what I think we need to be doing is to supporting this sector, much more.”
Support means more than just providing finance, but also more formal business training because a lot of people are entrepreneurs by “necessity and not by choice,” she said.