?The route to be­ing that elu­sive, enig­mat­ic crea­ture, an en­tre­pre­neur, was nei­ther a straight line nor a con­scious choice for Her­bert "Haz" Samuel, the An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Awards for Ex­cel­lence Lau­re­ate in En­tre­pre­neur­ship in 2015.

Samuel's in­no­v­a­tive web app, Welec­tric­i­ty, has been called a "game chang­er" in the en­er­gy con­ser­va­tion move­ment, and has users in 112 coun­tries. (The app can be found at www.welec­tric­i­ty.com.)

Samuel was born in St Vin­cent & The Grenadines, and at­tend­ed UWI, St Au­gus­tine, where he qual­i­fied as an in­dus­tri­al en­gi­neer. He re­turned home in 1982 to work as the first en­er­gy of­fi­cer in the gov­ern­ment of SVG, there­after with the is­land's elec­tric­i­ty au­thor­i­ty, Vin­lec, and from there to a re­gion­al en­gi­neer­ing firm, CEP and then to Car­ilec in Saint Lu­cia. He has worked as an in­de­pen­dent en­er­gy con­sul­tant since 2007 and he cur­rent­ly works with re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al clients.

These in­clude the Cari­com Re­new­able En­er­gy De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (CREDP-GIZ) and the World Bank, where he is a mem­ber of a team build­ing out a glob­al net­work of in­no­va­tion cen­tres that em­pow­er en­tre­pre­neurs to build busi­ness­es tack­ling en­er­gy and cli­mate-re­lat­ed prob­lems.

Samuel's first en­tre­pre­neur­ial ven­ture was done with­out any ex­pec­ta­tion of re­ward, or even the knowl­edge that it was a ven­ture, which was a good thing, as it turned out. Samuel de­scribes him­self as a "Jazz fa­nat­ic", and lived in St Lu­cia at the time the St Lu­cia Jazz Fes­ti­val was launched in the ear­ly 1990s.

These were al­so the ear­ly days of the In­ter­net and, he says, look­ing for in­for­ma­tion on the fes­ti­val on the Ca­ble and Wire­less Web site, and find­ing none, he de­cid­ed to build his own web­site for the fes­ti­val.

This was pure­ly for his own ed­i­fi­ca­tion and as an in­ci­den­tal pub­lic ser­vice, col­lect­ing in­for­ma­tion on per­form­ers and venues and putting it on­line for the ben­e­fit of oth­ers like him. At this point, these were the ear­ly days of the world­wide web, and the val­ue of In­ter­net pres­ence was not recog­nised by the au­thor­i­ties, so Samuel main­tained the web site for sev­er­al years.

Even­tu­al­ly, he re­calls, "I ap­proached the St Lu­cia Jazz Fes­ti­val to pur­chase the site, but they did not agree. So I con­tin­ued to do it for my­self." They did even­tu­al­ly pur­chase the do­main name as the scope of the Web as a pro­mo­tion­al tool grew.

But this was a rev­e­la­to­ry mo­ment for him. To be an en­tre­pre­neur in the Caribbean is to be a Colum­bus-like fig­ure: a man or woman dri­ven by an idea which he must con­vince an of­ten un­yield­ing­ly skep­ti­cal in­vestor is vi­able.

The ideas them­selves come from a num­ber of places, from the mun­dane to flash of in­sight, and might be pur­sued in iso­la­tion for years be­fore it is com­mer­cial­ly vi­able, if that mo­ment ever comes.

The whole process is fraught with fail­ure. "The cul­ture of the Caribbean needs to change," says Samuel. "Peo­ple need to be giv­en the chance to fail, with­out any stig­ma at­tached. Some­times it's the fail­ure that leads you to the suc­cess."

For Samuel, the in­sight which led to his cre­ation of Welec­tric­i­ty came when a friend asked for help to size a so­lar elec­tric­i­ty sys­tem for a home he was con­struct­ing. Analysing the en­er­gy con­sump­tion of his friend's house­hold (four peo­ple) com­pared to his own (two peo­ple), Samuel re­alised that the re­la­tion was not sim­ple arith­metic: that is, two peo­ple in a sim­i­lar hous­ing sit­u­a­tion did not con­sume half as much as four � and that the dif­fer­ence was dri­ven by be­hav­iour­al fac­tors.

This in­sight in­to the asym­met­ric re­la­tion­ship be­tween con­sump­tion, pop­u­la­tion and re­sources was not unique. Samuel notes that the in­sight was first de­scribed in the work of the 19th Cen­tu­ry British econ­o­mist, William Stan­ley Jevons, who pro­posed a para­dox in his 1856 book, The Coal Ques­tion, that in­creas­ing the tech­ni­cal ef­fi­cien­cy of an en­er­gy con­sum­ing sys­tem would not nec­es­sar­i­ly re­duce en­er­gy con­sump­tion.

Samuel re­alised that log­ic and moral sua­sion would not de­ter un­nec­es­sary en­er­gy con­sump­tion, a mat­ter of crit­i­cal im­por­tance to peo­ple liv­ing on is­lands and re­liant on im­port­ed en­er­gy.

"The thing is," he says, "a flat screen TV might be left on not be­cause you want to see a show. It might be left on be­cause it is at­trac­tive to look at."

Cou­pling this in­sight with the in­creas­ing in­ter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty of lo­cal and non-lo­cal pop­u­la­tions via the In­ter­net, and the in­creas­ing trend to "gam­i­fy" every­day ac­tiv­i­ties (to in­tro­duce an el­e­ment of game play­ing), the fun­da­men­tal in­no­va­tion of Welec­tric­i­ty was born: a web site that tracks do­mes­tic en­er­gy con­sump­tion, but in­tro­duces el­e­ments of so­cial in­ter­ac­tion and com­pe­ti­tion.

It was con­ceived in 2009 and, fund­ed by an Ideas En­er­gy In­no­va­tion award from GVEP In­ter­na­tion­al and GiZ, was built and launched in 2010. It has been ex­cep­tion­al­ly well-re­ceived, at­tract­ing in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion, and win­ning new glob­al in­no­va­tion awards. It now has users from 112 coun­tries.

In 2010 the UK-based WWF, the world's largest in­de­pen­dent con­ser­va­tion or­gan­i­sa­tion, named Welec­tric­i­ty as a "Green game-chang­er"; GE award­ed it Best Idea for the Mil­len­ni­al in its 2010 eco­mag­i­na­tion smart grid chal­lenge and in 2011 it was judged Best New Sus­tain­abil­i­ty In­no­va­tion in the Knowl­edge@Whar­ton/Wipro In­no­va­tion Tour­na­ment at the Whar­ton School at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia.

Welec­tric­i­ty, says Samuel, could not have been pos­si­ble with­out the con­nec­tiv­i­ty of the world­wide web. The orig­i­nal it­er­a­tion of the app was built in twelve weeks with in­puts from a team of pro­gram­mers based in Bar­ran­quil­la, Colom­bia and in Cal­i­for­nia. Now, five years on, he is en­ter­ing in­to ven­tures in the Far East, in coun­tries like Malaysia.

But the ef­fect of Welec­tric­i­ty is much more than tech­ni­cal. In cre­at­ing it, Samuel has proven that liv­ing on a small is­land is not a con­straint to cre­ativ­i­ty or think­ing glob­al­ly. This is the les­son he hopes that will ac­com­pa­ny his achieve­ment.