Despite its not-so-catchy slogan “To Be The No.1 Entrepreneurial Hub in the World by 2020,” the Barbados Entrepreneurship Foundation has catapulted itself to the centre of the crossroads where government and private sector visions for the future intersect.

I say crossroads because that’s where they meet from time to time, only to diverge again on their separate paths.

The BEF wants to change the X to a Y, so that when the two visions meet, they both start heading in the same direction.

That may be why its second conference, held last week at the Lloyd Sandiford Centre, got bogged down in “ideas” sessions after a promising start.

The opening session featured inspirational speeches from BEF President Damien McKinney, whose firm McKinney Rogers has been the catalyst for an organisation which has impressively brought together the mainstream private sector and its too-often hard-to-find offshore counterpart; Neville Isdell of Coca-Cola fame, who is now retired here; and Sir Kyffin Simpson, the now-legendary Bajan entrepreneur who made his first speech to a Barbados audience in a long, long time.

But, like too many other conferences I have attended, this one made the mistake of thinking that such an event is the place for getting ideas “from the floor”. 

So the rest of the day was spent in break-out sessions to get ideas for the BEF’s five “pillars” or areas of interest rather than offering up case studies on other successful entrepreneurs from in and out of the region, panel discussions on challenging topics, and perhaps sessions to hear the view of young people.

The next morning the reports from the previous day’s sessions were presented, and while all were worthy of praise, did not sound like anything which could not have been decided before the conference. Anyway, I am not here to bury the conference, but to praise it. And unlike Mark Anthony, I mean that sincerely.

With many of the private sector associations which were far more vocal in earlier years now represented by the Barbados Private Sector Agency, which mostly plays a behind-closed-doors role as a member of the social partnership, the BEF has moved to provide the private sector vision for the Barbados’ future.

It does not revolve around begging for subsidies for individual sectors, which eventually made those other associations sound like stuck records (I know that this reference hopelessly dates me). The BEF has a broader perspective for promoting “entrepreneurship,” including asking government to speed up the time it takes for the civil service to do things like register companies, approve work permits, and notably permits from Town Planning. It has also been working hard on mentoring for students and small businesses, and is working towards getting venture capital to put into the most promising ones coming out of that process.

In fact, the BEF has come up with stuff it wants to do or see done in each of its five “pillars” of government policy, finance availability, mentorship and networks, education and talent, and business facilitation.

It is thus the first organisation to see a seamless interaction between local and foreign entrepreneurship and investment in Barbados. This is exactly where all of our legislation has to go if we are to be in conformity with increasingly hostile OECD regulations, and is also exactly where Barbados has to go in developing its “engine of economic growth” as quickly as possible. It also leave specifics with regard to the offshore sector in the capable hands of the Barbados International Business Association.

The BEF has therefore wisely couched its overall mandate under the “entrepreneurship” rubric, allowing it to promote the concept as a positive for the island, no matter from where a particular example of it emanates.

Turning Barbados into a top entrepreneurial hub may be, like the BEF’s free wi-fi venture, not 100% achievable. But as they say in another context, it is the journey rather than the destination that is important. And the small gains made along the way.

In my view, the positive example the BEF is setting, by its outreach locally to both students and businesses, and internationally by celebrating the achievements of offshore firms domiciled here, will pay greater dividends than any number of white papers, suggestions or requests to government emanating from the organisation. While these efforts must be made, it has really all been said already, and once the will is found at the government level, there is only the matter of technical issues to be resolved, such as exactly how to approach a particular matter or how to campaign internationally on an issue. 

That is not to minimise the difficulty of those challenges but to note that, in my opinion, the BEF’s greatest contribution to the country is in making it clear to all that it champions entrepreneurship, not only from abroad, but from every geographic location and socio-economic sector on this island. For wherever you stand on the nature-nurture debate over whether entrepreneurs are born or can be made, none of them will prosper unless there is an organised system which can take their small idea and provide it with the acumen, resources and encouragement to grow it into a big one.

The Broad Street Journal congratulates the BEF on a fine summit and wishes it even greater success as the years roll on. Thank you for your service to this country.