Submitted by David Weekes
For there to be any effective investment in Innovation by Bajans, ONE HAS TO HAVE THE VISION TO innovate!
I once heard the brain challenge/puzzle given where a man comes to a 4 cross roads and the sign is broken at its base. The query is now does he get to where he is going if the sign is down?
All sorts of hare-brained ideas are presented; aligning the breaks at the base of a post which has rotted, getting a compass, asking a villager, all solutions that are outside of the parameters of the puzzle and are therefore moot. Of course the answer lies in the fact, because he knows where he has come from, once he fixes the post so that the name on the sign from where he came is pointing back to that direction, he will know where he is going to.
The simple issue that we are facing in Barbados is that, those who have been appointed to chart the azimuth for innovation, do not have a clue about where we have come from, not even the least idea where we are going and certainly have even less of an idea about how to inventory our HR and other resources critical to INNOVATE.
Some years ago I went to a meeting where I presented a solution for Border Travel. The person conducting the evaluation for this regional Innovation facility asked the question “where in the United States did the idea come from?” She like many could neither see the idea nor believe that it was indigenous. Meet Boyan Slat, the inventor behind a possible solution to the ocean’s plastic pollution. Slat is only 20 years old but his idea may have a huge impact. It has to come from overseas for Bajans to accept anything.
Now the point I want to make at the onset of this submission is, it is not that we do not have inventors like Slat here in Barbados, I myself met a young woman who was able to come up with an invention to address the sargassum weed across the beaches in Barbados, no, it is that we do not have people who have the ability and vision to “see” the solution!! Our problem is more potent. Blatant Wastage. US$2M from World Bank wasted at the ** Commission on what was a fiasco to pretend to assist young people, but who gives a “really bad curse word”?
So, is there a sexy way for someone to say, I want to rape you? Yes there is . We have a phenomena appearing across Barbados – ‘ Venture Capitalists outfits – which, according to a recent conversation with the ** Consultant from **, “these fellows are a band of small businessmen who are not driven by any real conviction to Innovate, but are your local equivalent of what the United States calls “trolls””. He confides further “here is a gang of fellows, with a few dollars in their pockets, without any idea about what is “innovation”, but have ganged together to launch what is only a sophisticated “tax reduction” concept. The idea is quite a gem – a two pronged initiative conducted by our local equivalent of “Innovation Trolls”.
Part One. How do I, under the guise of supporting small businesses, get a government to “write off” monies that are ostensibly for Innovation and small business spectrum?
Followed by “How do we get ourselves appointed to manage any international $$ that are earmarked for this area, sizable monies by the way, if not by and through this pretense?”
So how do we do it? “
We put up say $10K a piece, 50 of us, to seed a 1/2 million kitty BUT, AND HERE IS THE KICKER, because we have seeded the facility, we are now open to matching funds of $5M from development agencies WHICH, because we are “OFF SCOPE”, no one can touch us!!” All we have to do is make some really pretty videos of us pretending to make INNOVATION work.
Part TWO. HOW TO RAPE IGNORANT PEOPLE – Operationalizing the Exercise. We set up a competition under the guise of say some bona fide organization, inviting all and sundry to compete for a first prize of $5,000. That is a lot of money to us innovators and inventors. So people like me and the innovators around Barbados enter and submit our IP, without any Non Disclosure agreement, to this nameless entity. 2,000 of us bright Bajans make this online submission and one of us wins.
Lights action, CBC, Nation and Advocate plaster our mugs all over the media WHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH, 1,999 brilliant ideas have been RAPED from the ignorant unsuspecting Bajan masses and for $1.25 cents my bonafide organization has been able to “willingly misappropriate” 1,999 ideas.
Are you understanding this!
Is this ignorant fellow Weekes getting through to you gents and ladies?
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