Minister of Planning and Sustainable Development, Senator the Honouable Dr Bhoendradatt Tewarie
October 31, 2012: ?
In our world it is pretty much agreed that innovation is the only real competitive advantage. Peter Drucker, in his own insightful way, wrote on this topic several years ago.
It is also by and large agreed today that competitiveness takes place at the level of the firm or cluster but can be boosted by the facilitative environment in which firms and clusters function.
Michael Porter pointed this out to us many years ago and every year for some time now, the World Competitiveness Report does an assessment of the context for national competitiveness in about 140 countries.
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It is very much understood that while companies pursue competitiveness so that they can be more effective and profitable? by meeting demand and expectations better, nations pursue growth, job creation and prosperity so that their citizens can enjoy a better quality of life.
Inevitably prosperous countries have more access to more of what the world has to offer and can position themselves better in their own region and in the world at large.
In the current environment in which most countries are focused on how to get back to pre-2008 growth levels, the formidable challenge is?how to manage policy between austerity needs and stimulus demands and still achieve growth and competitiveness and foster a climate conducive to innovation.
Innovation may take place at the level of the firm or cluster but the infrastructure to support innovation in a country can be quite complex.
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At the very minimum four (4) things are needed to support an environment conducive to innovation. These are (i) research, (ii) application of research to solutions and improvements, (iii) talent and creativity and the environment to support talent and creativity?first in the education system, secondly in the society at large and finally in the organizations, institutions and companies where people work. In addition, a system which connects key entities to support innovation facilitate advancement is also needed.
A system which supports innovation and facilitates creativity and entrepreneurship grows the talent pool and lays the foundation for collaboration and possible synergies.? Such a system will stimulate wealth generation and prosperity.
Since human talent and creative capacity are so critical to entrepreneurship, innovation and prosperity,? then human capital and the management of it?that is to say the output of human capital, the absorption of such output, the effective management of talent, the deployment of human resources, the harnessing of creativity, the building of capacity, the summoning of resources in the right place at the right time?all of these are vitally important matters for the government of a country to consider and to act upon. And there needs to be a strong appreciation of these matters across sectors in a society.
In small countries such as Trinidad and Tobago, it is ever more critical. Countries such as China and India enjoy human resource abundance and depending on the policies pursued a huge talent pool? of the most sophisticated kind can be created to be drawn upon.
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A country such as Trinidad and Tobago which has one thousandth of the population that China has (the population of Trinidad and Tobago is 1.3 million) must manage talent meticulously if it is to prosper and compete.
Countries of the Caribbean and the smaller countries of Latin America cannot compete with China. Small countries such as ours need to compete instead FOR a more desirable and sustainable future and FOR space and opportunity in real time.? Competitiveness for small countries is a little different, therefore. Small countries have to be smarter, more innovative and very agile. But how to do this in a free trade market for talent in the world?
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China and India are suppliers of talent but they also acquire talent from the rest of the world. And this is true of small countries such as Trinidad and Tobago and other small countries of the region.
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The world?s major cities and the major companies of the world compete for talent. Beginning with an IMF study in 2006, there have been a number of studies and reports which identify Caribbean countries as having the highest per capita migration of skilled and educated citizens?? world wide. Central and South America, too, is a vast talent pool from which the major competitive centres can draw.
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It is not simply an issue of brain drain, brain gain or brain circulation. For even in small countries, it may seem like trading places. Trinidad and Tobago sometimes loses talent in the Energy sector or exports doctors and nurses or engineers or ICT graduates. But Trinidad and Tobago also imports top level managers and doctors and nurses from other countries. Talent, unlike cargo or finance or even information is mobile on its own volition. Everything begins with the market, as West Indian economist Arthur Lewis pointed out some years ago, and a great deal depends on incentives which can pull and motivation which can prompt and ambition which can drive the individual.
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So how then does one manage talent for prosperity and innovation? There are three (3) dimensions to answering this question ?international, national and institutional.
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So policy is important and the framework within which policy is designed is absolutely vital for managing a country?s talent needs. But let me pause to ask a question and it is this: What makes development happen? I share with you three (3) short quotes from Lawrence E. Harrison who wrote a book over thirty (30) years ago entitled Underdevelopment is a State of Mind. He was troubled by the fact that some countries, in spite of available resources, just did not seem to make enough progress. So I quote from Harrison:
??????????? ?Development, most simply, is improvement in human well-being?.This is straightforward but, perhaps, it is worth pointing out that the purpose of development here, is improvement of the human condition.
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A second quote from Harrison to answer the question, what is development?
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?The creative capacity of human beings is at the heart of the development process. What makes development happen is an ability to imagine, theorize, conceptualize, experiment, invent, articulate, organize, manage, solve problems, and do a hundred other things that contribute to the progress of the individual and of human kind. Natural resources, climate, geography, history, market size, government policies and many other factors influence the direction and pace of development. But the engine is human creative capacity.?
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It is important to underscore this point. While a number of issues and factors may affect the direction and pace of development, the single most important and significant factor in development is human creativity.
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And the third and final quote from Harris especially as productivity is regarded as such a fundamental factor in competitiveness:
The quote: ?development is far broader than just the productive dimension of human existence. It also embraces the social dimension, particularly health, education and welfare.?
I think that this is something, in our time, that we have all come to accept. As a world community we are becoming more enlightened.
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So what about this human creative capacity? How should we treat with it? Let us examine for a minute what the act of creation involves. To create something, anything, everything begins with the human imagination. Once that thing, whatever it is, is created, then everything begins with the market?unless one chooses to withdraw from the market.
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Once you are in the market, then the only way to stay ahead of the curve is through innovation. Innovation is made possible through the creative insights of the human imagination. So the source of everything is the human imagination. In a fundamental sense, therefore, we create what we think; and the way that we think, that is, how we think, determines what we focus our creative energies on.
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So the management of human talent involves the nurturing and managing of human creative capacity and nurturing and developing the skills of critical thinking in the society. What is the link between critical thinking and human creative capacity?
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The critical thinker asks questions about the world as it is and addresses alternative ways of seeing, of doing and of being. The creative thinker looks at ways and means of doing things differently and better and making and doing new things. Both are vital for innovation and we need to cultivate both critical thinking and creative thinking in our society and then find ways of managing, harnessing and deploying such people to fuel prosperity through original thinking, creative insights and ideas, entrepreneurial intervention, the assertion of will, the determination to succeed and make a difference, the willingness to collaborate, the welling up of ambition, the desire to do more and be more, and the need to make and do things that will meet a need or demand in the world. Because creativity drives innovation, innovation is not simply about supply, demand and consumption. Innovation is also about creating a value proposition to meet social needs and in the process finding and unearthing further untapped markets.
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Successful societies make and do things and make things happen. Companies might be critical bridges in the market process but it is the people in a society who make successful companies and successful countries possible. A lot therefore, depends on the thinking frame and disposition, the mindset and attitude of the people in a society ? the sense of self, the perception of possibility, the disposition to the future, the weight of the past, disposition to others, the attitude to the world. Mindset and culture, inextricably bound, are critical to the act of creation and the challenge of development.
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For instance, it makes a big difference if you see a problem as a headache or if you see a problem as something which emerges because the solution already exists and needs to be? found and formed. Thinking affects perception and perception in turn affects thinking and both affect mindset, disposition, attitude and the energy of talent. To manage for the future, therefore, it is important to develop attitudes and to make shifts in the cultural status quo. No place or country can fully develop unless human creative capacity is unleashed. No place or country can develop exponentially unless the freedom exists to question things as they are and the collective will exists to change and to do things differently. Mindscape is as important as landscape, if not more important. Unleashing human creative capacity and summoning the collective will may well be more important than anything else.
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The fundamental talent development and management question is this: how does one tap spirit and unleash positive energy in human beings? To do that, one requires a climate of inspiration and it requires institutions which create a context for people to feel inspired, and for them to inspire themselves to achievement and creation, and to inspire others as well to be productive.
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The dynamic between individual drive and ambition, the institutional support framework and the collective will of the society to create a better and more desirable future, is a vital factor in creativity, prosperity and innovation. The willingness to work as part of a wider regional neighbourhood to further national aspirations and to pursue objectives which others also find desirable, are essential for spreading the benefits of prosperity. There is indeed an institutional, a national and an international dimension to all of this.
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One of our great Trinidad and Tobago and Caribbean writers, the Nobel Laureate VS Naipaul has one of his characters in a novel entitled, A Bend in the River, say this: here is what the character in Naipaul?s says: ?The world is as it is; those who are nothing, who allow themselves to be nothing have no place in it?.
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Let me share with you this conclusion of the meaning and implications for us of that quotation in the context in which we are engaging each other in this forum. Human achievement depends on the positive assertion of individual will. Societal achievement depends on the positive assertion of collective will. The history we record is built on achievement and creation and a lot of what one achieves and creates depends on a clear vision of a desirable future for which individual and collective will have to be summoned for an identified vision to be achieved.
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So how do we proceed to manage talent in this context?
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The first thing is to assess what you have in a realistic manner and make the best use of it. This means that we need to assess realistically the national attitude and incentive system to productivity, the institutional commitment to competitiveness and to examine the support systems to make a competitive system possible. The collaborative interface between public sector, private sector, trade union leadership and civil society needs to come together to create a high productivity social contract. So the first thing is to make the system work better. Whatever you have make it work better. In Trinidad and Tobago, we are wrestling with multi-partite collaboration through institutions to achieve this and doing the necessary reforms to improve the business climate whether this is in customs reform or reducing the time to form a company.
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The second thing is to look to citizens as wealth and wealth creators and treat them as such. Don?t look at citizens as a cost. If citizens represent wealth and are wealth creators then invest in them through public/private partnership to develop skills and attitude where they work and invest in the future through the education system as well as new structures, formal and informal.
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Appreciate the distinction between wealth and money. Investment in wealth generating assets will facilitate larger numbers of people to make money. In Trinidad and Tobago, we are committed to universal Pre-School education. We have achieved universal primary and secondary school education. We are committed to 60 percent tertiary and technical vocational participation by 2015 and 2 percent reduction in poverty per year. We have in fact achieved a 4% reduction in poverty since 2009 and our tertiary and technical/vocational participation rate is now at 46%. Our largest budgetary allocation is for education and human development. The system is not perfect, as there is a significant underachievement in the system, but our emphasis on quality education is undeniable.
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Get your best talent to invest rather than take a job and facilitate entrepreneurship among your best talent. That means do something now? in order to do something for tomorrow. In Trinidad and Tobago we established an Innovation facility in 2011. It did not work. Nothing was done. But in 2012, we supported 50 young bright people with ideas to pursue business start ups supported by an incubation process. And we will do it again in 2013.
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In the longer term it is necessary to transform educational institutions. This is being pursued now at several educational levels in Trinidad and Tobago. There is the Caribbean Competitiveness Centre at the University of the West Indies which I founded in 2010 as Pro Vice Chancellor for Planning and Development which is meant to transform curriculum, train faculty in the new curriculum, and do meaningful action research. I am not in a position to say how much progress has been made but that is what the Caribbean Competitiveness Centre was created for. The College of Science Technology and Applied Arts has just established a collaborative entrepreneurial initiative with Babson College. This is the beginning of an important initiative. And the University of Trinidad and Tobago is fashioning its programmes in the context of an entrepreneurial university. Some progress has been made in areas such as fashion and animation but much remains to be done.
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How does a country create entrepreneurs and produce more and become more productive? The first thing is to make the industries which already exist more productive and competitive. To do this in Trinidad and Tobago we have created the Council for Competitiveness and Innovation and the Export Development Company has been recently rationalized. Some businesses will not survive and will die, but others have the potential to grow and become more successful with the focus on competitiveness and exports and appropriate areas to support this have been incentivized. We have also reestablished a multi-partite Productivity Council under the Ministry of Labour to facilitate consensus on productivity issues. Entrepreneurship we are seeking to stimulate through the education system, curriculum redesign and programme development, facilities such as the Innovation Fund, a focus on micro, small and medium enterprises, and by infrastructure development that supports commercial activity and business initiatives. We see this happening in our north western peninsula with the recently constructed Boardwalk and anticipate more of this in the development of five growth poles in different geographic locations.
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We created an Economic Development Board in 2011 and put it in charge of the growth poles. In most of our countries we have an entrepreneurship and business creation deficit. This is true in Trinidad and Tobago too and we are seeking to find ways and means of facilitating entrepreneurship and new business creation.
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How to build research driven industries linked to high impact business in a world economy that is knowledge intensive? This is the biggest challenge for a small country such as ours at our stage of development.
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Trinidad and Tobago has had a 103 year history in the energy business and some diversification has taken place in this sector but the country is very energy industry dependent and broader diversification is absolutely necessary. Attempts have been made by successive governments to do this but it has proven to be a challenge. Fifty seven percent of our revenue comes from energy and eighty percent of our exports. Sixty four percent of our jobs, however, come from the Services sector. Diversification is a necessity.
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In Trinidad and Tobago, we have identified seven clusters for development.
1.????? Energy using natural gas as a feedstock to fuel high value manufacturing because this is an industry we know and something we can carry to the next stage.
2.????? Food sustainability because the food and beverage sub sector is competitive and strong and there is capacious room for growth in agriculture.
3.????? Tourism, again because we have undersold and under-utilized our natural assets because of income from Energy and we have stifled this sector. With strategic product development Tourism has immense potential supported by a good marketing strategy and by airlift aligned to the marketing.
4.????? Marine services. Trinidad is an island. Tobago is an island. We have five other small islands. Trinidad is very sheltered from weather patterns, very good for yachting. There is a skills build up in technical ? vocational training ? one of these is in ship building and repair. Marine services are a normal part of the energy industry. We are rethinking our ports and building two new ones in Galeota (South East) and Brighton (South West Peninsula) at relatively extreme ends of Trinidad.
5.????? Finance ? this industry now contributes eleven percent to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and has immense capacity for growth and has the potential for absorption of expanded throughput from the tertiary sector. Recently, we have had successful investments in this sector and more seems to be coming.
6.????? Information Communication Technology (ICT) ? we are doing broadband and encouraging investments in this area. ICT is both a cluster in its own right and a facilitator of other clusters and is a critical factor in competitiveness of every industry. It is also a vital stimulus to new entrepreneurship.?
7.????? Creative Industries in Trinidad and Tobago seem obvious but there is much to do to make this viable. Trinidad and Tobago has created the steel pan and the steel orchestra and innovated pan jazz and the steel pan has been at the centre of a number of innovations in music?steel pan and conventional instruments, steel pan and sitar, steel and voice, steel with traditional symphony.
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Trinidad and Tobago has one of the most creative Carnivals in the world and has influenced Carnival in every other Caribbean territory and has spawned Carnivals in a number of metropolitan destinations across the world. The creative sector is poised for growth, music, fashion, design, film, publishing, art itself, painting and sculpting.
We have had a study done by the World Intellectual Property Institute and based on that we are targeting a growth to 6% of GDP. It is an ambitious undertaking but something worth pursuing. We are rationalizing our strategy to this sector and taking a methodical approach to it.
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The important thing to remember about the Creative Industries is that it is mind intensive, labour intensive, collaboration intensive and thrives on experimentation and innovation. And Trinidad and Tobago is very multi cultural. Asian culture in Trinidad and Tobago has elements of authenticity but also of innovation because of the transformative experience of Caribbean life. The potential creative value from Asian Caribbean culture is immense.
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In all seven (7) clusters we see research, science, technology and its applications as critical for innovation and prosperity, wealth generation and growth. Our investment strategy is linked to diversification and job creation but also to research, science and technology and building the knowledge side of the diversification strategy is an important consideration.
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The other sides of diversification involve geographical diversification through growth poles, projects and estates, the markets side of diversification linked to trade agreements and bilateral partnerships and diversification of the output from the tertiary sector through curriculum redesign linked to investment strategy. Our approach to diversification is an integrated one that derives from a comprehensive view.
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As Minister of Planning and Sustainable Development for Trinidad and Tobago, I carry in my consciousness questions which relate and connect to one larger existential question in my head everyday as we address the issues of development, diversification, competitiveness and innovation as these relate to development. Let me share my thoughts with you.
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The theme of our 2010 manifesto is ?Prosperity for all? with a Sustainable Development framework. The theme of our Medium Term Policy Framework is ?Innovation for Lasting Prosperity?. I am happy to note that the theme of this forum is influenced by these documents. All my connected questions are about the alignment required to make innovation led growth and prosperity possible within a framework of sustainable development. We have also done an assessment of where we are as far as progress on the sustainable development front is concerned in a work entitled Working for Sustainable Development in Trinidad and Tobago presented at the Rio+20 conference.
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So what is the existential question and its connectors? Well it is this: how do we, in Trinidad and Tobago align our investment strategy to our diversification objectives and link it to our tertiary education strategy for expanded throughput and evolve the current production system to integrate with the knowledge system and knowledge economy of the world? And what is the taxation and incentive system that we need to design, to facilitate an almost organic process with smooth flow to fuel growth, expansion and market diversification? But there is another important and vital question. How to make the sectors that are competing well, more creative; and how to make the creative sectors more disciplined and focused. Conventional industries pursuing competitiveness can learn from what creative industries do and how they work and creative industries can be more competitive if they draw on the success factors of conventional businesses.
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Cross fertilization may well make a world of difference. It is an experimental approach we propose and so we beat on, pursuing our vision which is that ?through creativity, collaboration and innovation we shall prosper together? and our mission which is to achieve ?economic inclusiveness in an innovation?driven growth economy with greater equity, more meaningful participation and a rising tide of prosperity for all.?
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I close with reference to something the great Spanish writer, Ortega y Gasset, wrote some years ago. He said that the people in a country need to have a vision of what they want to achieve tomorrow in order to come together productively today.? Every country needs o have a common purpose and a vision of a desirable future state to drive it forward. And you need people with their talent to make that happen in any country. But we also need to build a wider Caribbean and Central American family because we share common problems. And we need to strengthen relations across Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition we need to strengthen the Hemispheric neighbourhood and build solidarity. North America is a vital partner in this. In my view it is inevitable that this hemisphere will become a United Hemisphere of the Americas like the European Union. Talent will go where talent is happiest and most treasured. Let us make the hemisphere a happy productive and creative space and let us develop and nurture talent and make room for it.
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Making progress worthy of attracting the best talent should be one of the goals on an enlightened country. That is one sure way of fuelling more entrepreneurship and keeping the society on an innovation track to build competitive industries and drive a more competitive economy.
Source: http://www.news.gov.tt/index.php?news=11992
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