Entrepreneurship and development

• Development remains elu-sive concept.
• T&T a classic case of growth without develop-ment.
• True development not pos-sible without unleashing human spirit.

In the 15th century, when the Europeans on their imperial quest came to the Caribbean, the society that they met, though fairly well developed and quite sophisticated in some ways, lacked the capacity to match European power in other respects.

Pre-Columbian society did not have the wheel. It had not domesticated animals to develop farming. It had no big boats to master the sea. It did not have money in the form of coins, it could not glaze its pottery and it had few, if any, musical instruments beyond the drum. It had little capacity for trade and the accumulation of surpluses.

Compared to the Europeans, Caribbean society was poor and weak and vulnerable and therefore ripe for conquest and exploitation by the Europeans who proceeded to plunder. Thus, the Caribbean as part of New World society became, as Bonham Richardson, a Caribbean academic teaching abroad, has pointed out, “a part of capitalism’s periphery long before world-economy thinking or the third world ever existed.”

Caribbean society was born out of the consequences of this encounter—the indigenous people were virtually wiped out; settlers established a foothold; these islands and this region became outposts of Europe; plantation eco- nomy gave rise to slave society with its imports of brutally forced labour, followed by importation of labour under contract, creating the basis for an economic system designed to serve the metropole—a political system devoid of participation and personal responsi- bility, and a sociocultural system which could not escape the mingling of peoples.

The phenomenon of a variety of peoples living together in relatively small spaces facilitated both cultural diversity and inter culturation as part of a simultaneous equation, yet at once tinged with feelings of ancestral loss and longing as well as pride in ethnic identification and assertion, making the issue of individual, national, regional and universal identity a central quest for Carib-bean people; even as making the issue of a Caribbean civilisation, an elusive dream lodged in the imagination of our poets and writers who seek to create worlds of wholeness to embrace the fractured lives and contending articulations of a fragmented people, was to emerge as a theme.

We have come to accept this place to which our ancestors came and where our forefathers were born and which is now our inheritance as our home and so we build families, forge relationships, create and nurture communities and contribute to the shaping of our society. But development remains an elusive concept. Is it that no one is able to envision a mutually desirable destination? Is it that we fail over and over again to identify the precise steps required to get there? Is it that we fail to summon the resources required to turn vision and plan into reality? What is the problem really? Could T&T have a problem in spite of our abundant resources?

A few years ago an Argentine-born economist, speaking at a forum in Barbados, remarked that T&T was a classic case of growth without development. The late Lloyd Best always made the distinction between growth and development and rhetorically asked once: how come we have had so much growth for so long and so little development?   

Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen wrote a short article in 2005 entitled “How does development happen?” It was a tribute to another distinguished economist, Peter Bauer. “What makes the critical difference,” he asked, “resources, institutions or attitudes?” His answer was all three but he advised that the important thing was not to overemphasise any one of the three or “understress” any of the three. Drawing on the work of Bauer, he emphasised domestic trade and micro credit as a means of unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit even among the poorest of the poor.

Clearly for Sen a key element in development is the institutional infrastructure which supports a culture of entrepreneurship and widespread economic activity throughout the population.

And this gets me back to us. T&T. The problem is certainly not resources. Can it be, then, attitude and institutions?

Joseph Schumpeter is generally credited with providing us with early insights into the nature and function of entrepreneurship. But Schumpeter was concerned about development and the role of the entrepreneur and entrepreneurship in the process. And so in his writings he often distinguishes between incremental change, which he argues leads to growth, and a more fundamental discontinuous change, which disrupts the status quo and triggers the development process. Key to this was the entrepreneur whose function is to disturb the status quo and create disequilibrium.

In a piece on development discovered by accident only in 1993, Schumpeter writes of “novelty” but has great difficulty explaining it. But novelty may very well be what the true entrepreneur often brings to the world—critical thinking, creativity and innovation all wrapped up in an integrated package.

True development is not possible without unleashing the human spirit and nurturing a culture of creativity and entrepreneurship which need to be rooted in the home and the school so encouragement and facilitation are present in the earliest years.

At least part of our dilemma in development has to do with lack of ideological clarity which leads to policy contradictions. There are those who genuinely feel that sharing wealth is superior to creating wealth. That handing out is more caring than pulling up and pushing forward. That most people do not have the capacity to make a sustainable livelihood and be motivated to look after themselves and their loved ones.

Arthur Lewis, the only Carib-bean economist to win a Nobel prize, never had those views. I end with a quote from him from his Theory of Economic Growth: “if government spends lavishly on its own services, it may be using up resources which could be invested more productively in the private sector… even if using surplus labour wastefully does not subtract from other output, using it productively would have added to output. If there is surplus labour, it is better to use it to extend the irrigation system than to build pyramids with it.”

Amartya Sen, said that we should not underestimate attitude. Leaders need the ideological clarity of an entrepreneurial mindset to help them to develop the attitudes required to design policy which can make true development happen.