Ma­jor­i­ty state-owned telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny bmo­bile part­nered with the en­tre­pre­neur­ship hub for its sec­ond an­nu­al en­tre­pre­neur­ship fo­rum to as­sist en­ti­ties in a num­ber of ways.

The con­fer­ence, held dur­ing glob­al en­tre­pre­neur­ship week un­der the theme Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion from the Grass­roots, of­fered mi­croen­tre­pre­neurs prac­ti­cal tools to over­come fi­nanc­ing bar­ri­ers, ac­cess fund­ing, and lever­age dig­i­tal so­lu­tions, a news re­lease from bmo­bile said yes­ter­day, as it not­ed that small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) ac­count for 95 per cent of reg­is­tered busi­ness­es and near­ly 200,000 jobs in T&T.

It said the en­tre­pre­neurs in at­ten­dance rep­re­sent­ed a di­verse range of sec­tors, from med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers and care­givers to life coach­es, farm­ers, and pro­fes­sion­als in agro-pro­cess­ing, food, and ser­vice in­dus­tries.

As part of the fo­rum, bmo­bile and the en­tre­pre­neur­ship hub host­ed In­no­va­tion in Ac­tion, a fire­side chat fea­tur­ing Chevon Wil­son, CEO of No­vo In­ter­na­tion­al, and David Richards, ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of Mo­bile Med­ical Glob­al.

Both busi­ness lead­ers shared lessons and in­sights, from scal­ing their busi­ness­es to how they earned trust and en­cour­aged adop­tion of new ideas, even when those ideas chal­lenged fa­mil­iar prac­tices.

Speak­ing on bmo­bile’s sup­port, Melanie Pierre, se­nior man­ag­er of op­er­a­tions at TSTT, said, “If you spend any time around en­tre­pre­neurs, you re­alise some­thing re­mark­able: in­no­va­tion doesn’t be­gin in a lab or with a piece of hard­ware. It be­gins with a per­son who no­tices a gap and de­cides to act. En­tre­pre­neur­ship lights the flame, but in­no­va­tion needs a plat­form — and that’s where tech­nol­o­gy comes in. Our job at bmo­bile is to build the dig­i­tal foun­da­tion that al­lows en­tre­pre­neurs to com­pete, con­nect, and grow.”

Em­pha­sis­ing a peo­ple-first ap­proach to in­no­va­tion, Wil­son shared that the com­pa­ny in­no­vates to help solve prob­lems that af­fect peo­ple.

“What we recog­nised was that peo­ple found it chal­leng­ing to eat health­i­er be­cause it was ei­ther too ex­pen­sive, there was lim­it­ed ac­cess or it was time-con­sum­ing. Our in­no­va­tion re­moves those bar­ri­ers and pro­vides healthy op­tions that have no ad­di­tives, preser­v­a­tives or MSG,” Wil­son added.

He al­so ad­vised to fo­cus one’s tasks as well as the prob­lem be­ing solved.

“In­no­va­tion is great, but we still come back to peo­ple. No mat­ter the equip­ment you use, it’s all about peo­ple,” Wil­son stressed.

Richards fur­ther high­light­ed the role of struc­ture and pa­tience in build­ing a sus­tain­able busi­ness, re­call­ing the mo­ment that sparked his idea.

“While work­ing as a gen­er­al ra­di­og­ra­ph­er at the hos­pi­tal, I met an el­der­ly pa­tient who had fall­en at home and strug­gled to get to the hos­pi­tal. I grew up close to my grand­moth­er, and I thought, what if this were her? That’s when the idea came,” he said.