In­no­va­tion is the lifeblood of busi­ness­es and economies. Crit­i­cal for in­no­va­tion to take place is the growth of a re­search and de­vel­op­ment (R&D) ca­pac­i­ty. But T&T may not be com­ing up to scratch in this vi­tal area, a fact that el­e­ments of this coun­try's pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor have ac­knowl­edged.Min­is­ter of Plan­ning Bhoe Tewarie said as a rule there was not sig­nif­i­cant spend­ing by in­vid­ual com­pa­nies on R&D and that this could be at­trib­uted to T&T's busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment.

"The busi­ness­es ba­si­cal­ly have evolved as trad­ing busi­ness­es (buy­ing and sell­ing). Be­yond that there is the en­er­gy in­dus­try which has been dom­i­nat­ed by the multi­na­tion­al sec­tor and they re­ly on re­search from their in­ter­na­tion­al re­sources. The oth­er com­pa­nies in the coun­try live in the con­text of knowl­edge and tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer and don't go be­yond that."Tewarie said that this rais­es the is­sue of how we might cre­ate bridg­ing in­sti­tu­tions that fa­cil­i­tate R&D, clus­ter for­ma­tion, de­vel­op­ment and ex­pan­sion.

As a so­lu­tion, he raised the the­o­ret­i­cal con­cept of the "Triple He­lix" be­ing ap­plic­a­ble to T&T if the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment it­self has to evolve in­to be­ing cul­tur­al­ly in­no­v­a­tive. Tewarie said: "Nor­mal­ly in coun­tries you tend to have the triple he­lix mod­el in terms of or­gan­is­ing re­search strat­e­gy which is a col­lab­o­ra­tive mix be­tween uni­ver­si­ty re­search, pri­vate sec­tor fund­ing and gov­ern­ment fund­ing."

Dr. Tewarie said, "This is the way we may go in terms of fund­ing spe­cif­ic clus­ters or spe­cif­ic ar­eas of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion."The min­istry has al­so been work­ing on a Na­tion­al In­no­va­tion Sys­tem in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (CARIRI), the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, the Eu­ro­pean Union and the In­ter Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IADB).

Of the pro­gramme, Tewarie said: "At the end of the day, the na­tion­al in­no­va­tion sys­tem be­comes a com­bi­na­tion of state, pri­vate sec­tor, uni­ver­si­ty col­lab­o­ra­tion type in­sti­tu­tions, clus­ter-re­lat­ed re­search ca­pac­i­ties built up with a very tar­get­ed fo­cus and in­di­vid­ual com­pa­ny re­search that may or may not draw on oth­er re­search ca­pa­bil­i­ties." He said that with a well de­signed na­tion­al in­no­va­tion sys­tem, the coun­try can be­gin to in­ten­si­fy the pace at which in­no­va­tion is har­nessed in the ex­ist­ing sys­tem.

"The main thing is not the re­search but the ap­pli­ca­tion, the cre­ation and the in­no­va­tion."He thought the strat­e­gy should al­so take in­to ac­count for­mal and in­for­mal sys­tems of ed­u­ca­tion that tap hu­man imag­i­na­tive ca­pac­i­ty.

On this, Tewarie said: "The most im­por­tant thing we need to un­der­stand is that sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment is not pos­si­ble with­out per­pet­u­al in­no­va­tion and per­pet­u­al in­no­va­tion is not pos­si­ble with­out tap­ping the hu­man imag­i­na­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty. We need to un­der­stand that hu­man imag­i­na­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty is not lim­it­ed by a per­son hav­ing lit­tle ed­u­ca­tion. If that were the case we would not have de­vel­oped pan." He con­tin­ued, "nor is it stim­u­lat­ed more by peo­ple who are wealthy be­cause a lot of the world's in­no­va­tions and in­ven­tions are cre­at­ed by poor peo­ple or peo­ple who are not nec­es­sar­i­ly wealthy."

He said: "Once you un­der­stand that the hu­man imag­i­na­tion is im­por­tant from a pol­i­cy point of view, you will ap­pre­ci­ate that an all in­clu­sive strat­e­gy that em­braces the in­no­va­tion for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment par­a­digm has to be em­braced. You have to ad­mit that the most im­por­tant re­source to your coun­try is the in­ex­haustible re­source of the hu­man imag­i­na­tion, which is very dif­fer­ent from hu­man cap­i­tal and in­tel­lec­tu­al cap­i­tal." He al­so thinks that both brain pow­er and imag­i­na­tive ca­pa­bil­i­ty are need­ed.

He ref­er­enced Car­ni­val to ex­em­pli­fy the imag­i­na­tive ca­pac­i­ty of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans - an abil­i­ty he be­lieves Trini­bag­o­ni­ans do not take se­ri­ous­ly as and he said the na­tion has been un­able to trans­late that cre­ativ­i­ty in­to a source for in­dus­tri­al in­no­va­tion.

Dr. Tewarie's ap­par­ent as­sess­ment, that the pri­vate sec­tor has been un­able to de­vel­op cre­ative thought in­to in­dus­tri­al­ized in­no­v­a­tive con­cepts, prompt­ed the Sun­day BG to ask the Plan­ning Min­is­ter, who he thought should take the lead if T&T is to de­vel­op a cul­ture that sup­ports in­no­va­tion - the pri­vate sec­tor or the pub­lic sec­tor.Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, the an­swer de­pends on what is need­ed.

"The na­tion­al in­no­va­tion sys­tem should be a range of pub­lic sec­tor fund­ed in­sti­tu­tions that can es­tab­lish re­search and in­no­va­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ty which can be ap­plied across the sys­tem and that can trans­fer knowl­edge across the sys­tem." As for the pri­vate sec­tor link­age to that, Dr. Tewarie said: "There needs to be a mod­el which cre­ates the con­di­tions for pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor fund­ed re­search which is fo­cused on spe­cif­ic ar­eas."

He be­lieved pri­vate com­pa­nies need­ed to do some re­search of their own, which he said could be ac­com­plished in two ways - re­search spe­cif­ic to them us­ing, uni­ver­si­ty re­sources or, cre­at­ing the con­di­tions for col­lab­o­ra­tion in their sec­tor.

Pri­vate sec­tor should lead the way

But as the pub­lic sec­tor is mak­ing its push to grow the coun­try's imag­i­na­tive ca­pac­i­ty, CEO of Ix­anos Ltd, Stephen King sees the pri­vate sec­tor lead­ing in­no­va­tion de­vel­op­ment. How­ev­er, he told the Sun­day BG that on­ly a small num­ber of pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies are set up for in­no­va­tion, out­side of the in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions and not giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to max­imise their po­ten­tial.

King, who is the son of for­mer Plan­ning Min­is­ter, Mary King, said: "The multi­na­tion­al fund­ing agen­cies seem to be fund­ing a lot of the pub­lic sec­tor projects and there seems to be some sort of hid­den agen­da where ex­ter­nal com­pa­nies get the large projects, so it re­al­ly damp­ens any ef­forts by the small­er com­pa­nies in Trinidad."Draw­ing ref­er­ence to his own ex­pe­ri­ences with the sit­u­a­tion, King's said his did not even con­sid­er bid­ding for projects fund­ed by multi­na­tion­al agen­cies.

"As soon as I see a ten­der fund­ed by IADB or any multi­na­tion­al fund­ed agency, its point­less even look­ing at it be­cause you know where its go­ing," said King.The Ix­anos CEO al­so said that hav­ing worked with the State sec­tor, he does not think that it makes in­no­va­tion pos­si­ble.

He il­lus­trat­ed: "We have de­vel­oped a sys­tem with some of the min­istries which is along the lines of mon­i­tor­ing, plan­ning and eval­u­a­tion. These sys­tems don't ex­ist off the shelf. They tend to be used by the multi­na­tion­al lend­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions and are web-based sys­tems that help them man­age their funds. "

He con­tin­ued: "We have de­vel­oped the frame­work with a few of the min­istries - the min­istries of Plan­ning, Gen­der, as well as, Sport. They were in­volved in the de­vel­op­ment, from its con­cept to how it should work. We are now try­ing to get pi­lot projects put in place and what we're find­ing is the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­taries are say­ing they don't know how to im­ple­ment it."

King said the im­ple­men­ta­tion end of sys­tems in­no­va­tion needs to be set­tled from a pub­lic sec­tor per­spec­tive so that de­ci­sion mak­ers un­der­stand the process. He added: "If it is we are de­vel­op­ing sys­tems in Trinidad, es­pe­cial­ly since the gov­ern­ment is the largest spender, they need to know how to im­ple­ment them."King said that his com­pa­ny's ethos is to build sys­tems in­fra­struc­ture for T&T and even­tu­al­ly ex­port.

He said: "What we're find­ing is that the Trinidad set-up is risk averse and they tend to buy prod­ucts from out­side with­out even prop­er eval­u­a­tion. Lo­cal de­vel­op­ment tends to be damp­ened by that cul­ture."He thought this cul­ture was slow­ly chang­ing giv­en what gov­ern­ment was try­ing to do.

As for a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween in­dus­try and uni­ver­si­ties, King said the op­por­tu­ni­ties are there but it is up to the pri­vate sec­tor to seek them out. He said that his com­pa­ny con­stant­ly re­lies on the ex­per­tise of lec­tur­ers at UWI and has even tak­en on stu­dents for men­tor­ship.

"The pro­fes­sors have been very good to us, lit­er­al­ly, even con­sult­ing for free on some of our projects. Ix­anos em­ploys from UTT and UWI, 100 per cent. The stu­dents are open to work­ing and de­vel­op­ing. We men­tor a lot of the stu­dents in the en­gi­neer­ing de­part­ment and we share with them some of the in­dus­try prob­lems which gives them a bet­ter in­sight in­to what they can con­cen­trate on to have a re­al prod­uct."

With Ix­anos' close ties to uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion, King said UWI has asked the com­pa­ny to take on dif­fer­ent project groups of 8-10 stu­dents an­nu­al­ly to men­tor in soft­ware and in­no­va­tion de­vel­op­ment, which they have been do­ing for the past five years. He said the com­pa­ny plans to move to the Tamana In­teck Park where it will con­tin­ue to use both stu­dents from UTT, who King said, have a more prac­ti­cal ap­proach as well as stu­dents from UWI, who he said are more aca­d­e­m­ic, giv­ing the per­fect bal­ance for re­search.

-with re­port­ing by Kwame Joseph