Nadaleen Singh

Busi­ness lead­ers of­ten per­ceive in­no­va­tion as a means of grow­ing their busi­ness. For 37-year-old Rick Coop­er, it is no dif­fer­ent. Coop­er, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Ri­co Tech­nolo­gies Ltd, en­tered his project–In­ter­act XL–in­to the PitchIT Caribbean com­pe­ti­tion which was host­ed by the World Bank un­der its in­foDev pro­gramme in No­vem­ber 2012.

The com­pe­ti­tion en­abled par­tic­i­pants to pitch an in­no­v­a­tive idea on web and mo­bile start-ups where the project was judged based on how pro­fes­sion­al­ly the idea was pitched as well as its nov­el­ty.

"I had a pet project that I start­ed four years ago, so I said let me just try it out, let me pitch the idea; this was to the en­tire Caribbean re­gion (who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the com­pe­ti­tion). From the hun­dreds who sub­mit­ted, I got picked, which made me hap­py," Coop­er said in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian.

Each par­tic­i­pant was giv­en a men­tor to train them on how to present their project. Now that he was suc­cess­ful at the Caribbean com­pe­ti­tion, Coop­er moves for­ward to par­tic­i­pate at the Glob­al Fo­rum of In­no­va­tion and En­tre­pre­neur­ship in South Africa where he would have to pitch In­ter­act XL to in­vestors.

Talk­ing about the project, Coop­er said it was in­spired by a close rel­a­tive at­tain­ing high marks in math­e­mat­ics at uni­ver­si­ty, but was not a high achiev­er in the sub­ject at sec­ondary school.

De­scrib­ing In­ter­act XL, he said: "It's an on­line math plat­form. The point of dif­fer­ence be­tween that plat­form and oth­er plat­forms is that it mesh­es the spe­cif­ic teach­ing style with the learn­ing style of the stu­dent."

The pro­gramme would en­able the stu­dent to learn at their pace and was put to­geth­er with the as­sis­tance of teach­ers and ped­a­gogy spe­cial­ists.

"What we en­deav­our is to cre­ate dif­fer­ent teach­ing tools, dif­fer­ent teach­ing styles that will be suit­ed to the learn­ing styles of the stu­dent. It is an or­gan­ic pro­gramme, mean­ing that up­on launch, it may be three teach­ing styles and five years lat­er, it might be ten be­cause we all have dif­fer­ent types of learn­ing styles.

"It (the pro­gramme) al­so has a fea­ture where par­ents can get re­al time up­dates on the per­for­mance of the child af­ter com­plet­ing the ex­er­cis­es on the ap­pli­ca­tion."

This means that the par­ent can be at work and would re­ceive a text mes­sage in­di­cat­ing the grade which the child scored.

Green­light­ing the project

Con­grat­u­lat­ed dur­ing a busi­ness sem­i­nar and ap­plaud­ed for plac­ing first in the PitchIT com­pe­ti­tion held last week by the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce in West­moor­ings, Coop­er said he felt hum­bled and ho­n­oured to be recog­nised.

To cre­ate the pro­to­type four years ago and in or­der to en­ter in­to the com­pe­ti­tion, Coop­er need­ed to col­lab­o­rate with ed­u­ca­tors, "since then I have part­nered with ped­a­gogy or teach­ing spe­cial­ists who would be on board once the pro­gramme gets a green light."

A Web de­vel­op­er by pro­fes­sion, Coop­er had no prob­lem in find­ing pro­gram­mers, but find­ing SEA teach­ers proved a small chal­lenge, es­pe­cial­ly as fund­ing was lim­it­ed and he had to re­ly on out-of-pock­et ex­pens­es. Coop­er was de­ter­mined to suc­ceed.

He said be­ing an in­no­va­tor can be frus­trat­ing.

"It can be a gift and a curse in the sense that you have to re­tard your­self, know what to put out ear­ly. You can't stop it; you just have to keep go­ing."

He tells in­no­va­tors be de­ter­mined, but keep the se­crets of your in­no­v­a­tive project to your­self and en­sure that your in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty is pro­tect­ed.

"On one hand, you hear about ICT ini­tia­tives, but on the oth­er hand, it is not re­al­ly be­ing sup­port­ed. For in­stance, when I ap­proach high-lev­el in­vestors, they all love the idea (of in­no­va­tion), but they may quick­er bring in a fran­chise from abroad be­cause that is a test­ed sec­tor."

Many in­vestors are un­will­ing to take risk.

The for­mer St Mary's Col­lege stu­dent is a pre-med stu­dent from Howard Uni­ver­si­ty in Wash­ing­ton DC. Asked why he moved from study­ing med­i­cine to be­ing an in­no­va­tor, he said: "What I found dur­ing my sopho­more year: I used to play with cre­ative Web sites and it paid the bills, it paid rent. I love sci­ence, I love bi­ol­o­gy, but I just thought this Web tech­nol­o­gy thing was so fas­ci­nat­ing. I got my de­gree in pre-med, bi­ol­o­gy, but I stuck with the IT as­pect and years lat­er start­ed Ri­co Tech­nolo­gies Ltd," he said.

About In­foDev:

It is a glob­al part­ner­ship pro­gramme with­in the World Bank Group which works at the in­ter­sec­tion of in­no­va­tion, tech­nol­o­gy, and en­tre­pre­neur­ship to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­clu­sive growth, job cre­ation and pover­ty re­duc­tion."

About Ri­coTech­nolo­gies:

-start­ed op­er­a­tions in 2005

-lo­cat­ed in Bel­mont

-pro­vides ser­vices like:

Graph­ics

-Web de­sign

-e-com­merce

-ap­pli­ca­tions for in­ven­to­ry

-has three em­ploy­ees based in T&T and 20 pro­gram­mers based around the world

Some clients:

-Cariri

-Sacha Cos­met­ics

-T&T Film Com­pa­ny Ltd

-bpTT Ltd

Though he has a sci­ence de­gree, Coop­er is de­ter­mined to com­plete his mas­ter's in in­for­ma­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and tech­nol­o­gy.

"Sci­ence in it­self is a log­i­cal dis­ci­pline, you have to use a lit­tle log­ic. The rea­son I picked up web de­sign so well is be­cause code is log­ic. I just thought IT was so much more in­ter­est­ing."