St. Lucia Simply Beautiful

Very often we are told, especially among small island states, that they are at a disadvantage because they do not have any resources. May I remind you of Singapore which has grown into a very successful nation not withstanding its lack of natural resources. Like any other country it has people and more importantly it recognizes that “our people are our greatest asset and we must develop them to the fullest”. The foundation for all of their development strategies have been based on this tenet. Why not start with the youth.

When one is passionate about a topic, it pervades one’s existence and there is the tendency to talk about it all the time with the objective of getting something done about it. I am no exception when it comes to enterprise development.

The Barbados government, having consulted the stakeholders of the cultural industries sector, is in the final stages of bringing before the country a Cultural Industries Bill that would address the cultural dimension of our society and economy. The Ministry of Culture has promised to find creative ways of bringing the cultural industry to the fore, as a major player in the economic and social order. The Ministry of Culture, through one of its many consultations, has been made aware of the CBET Shepherding Modelâ„¢ as a business model to systematically develop the industry so that cultural industry practitioners can contribute in their own right to new prosperous horizons.

One obvious use of excess cash is to buy out initial benevolent investors who provided the initial incentive to create lift off for the enterprise. This gives the enterprise the opportunity to expand and generate further cash. This is the source of future wealth for the enterprise which contributes to the spread of wealth in the community.

This new crowdfunding and crowd sourcing platform came to light when the group expressed interest in partnering with Bank On Me, a new reality TV show being produced in Barbados, the aim of which is to create awareness on how start-up, spin-out and scale-up enterprises can attract investment in an entertaining format, and ultimately seeks to develop and elevate enterprise development locally and regionally. Bank on Me is produced by Blue Waters Productions and presented in association with Scotiabank.

While all these initiatives are no doubt commendable, economic growth in the tourism sector is only possible from the cumulative effect of one successful enterprise after another. A successful enterprise will depend on increased tourist spend. Increase tourist spend depends on successful marketing. Where is the innovative marketing strategy? We need to recharge it.

The CPTM Smart Partnership movement, to which I was introduced since 1995, provided the foundation on which the CBET Shepherding Modelâ„¢ was built. The Global Smart Partnership International Dialogues are a cyclical source of inspiration for the continued development of the Model. The Global 2014 Smart Partnership International Dialogue is carded for South Africa.

“As I write this, I checked the round trip airfare from a US market to a city in our region. The base airfare is $200. The taxes and fees are $127 for a total of $327 per person. Does anyone believe that we would not see a travel explosion from that market if the advertised airfare for leisure travel were $199 per person? Let the healing begin.”

My interest is in the healing of an economy. The therapy is rooted in the management of business systems which is oriented towards the correction of the “info-energetic” system of an enterprise by means of informational influence which could be called informational correction of the 25 sub-cellular structures of the ManOBiz Matrixâ„¢ so that the whole enterprise starts functioning harmoniously once again, causing disease to regress until the latter’s complete disappearance. Enter sustainable economic growth!

Mark Sheffield’s article “Waiting to Exhale: Economics, Simplified” is very relevant to the growth of economies in small emerging nations, in particular, where indigenous market footprints are small. These economies must focus on “DNA of an Elephant” enterprises to grow their economies. In the Caribbean Community, the member states are fundamentally committed to democracy, the rule of law and a free-market economy as the basis of political stability, social and economic prosperity.