Raphael John-Lall

For many en­tre­pre­neurs in T&T, sus­tain­abil­i­ty can feel like a lux­u­ry re­served for large cor­po­ra­tions with deep pock­ets. Small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) of­ten op­er­ate with lim­it­ed re­sources while fac­ing grow­ing ex­pec­ta­tions to adopt en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly and so­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble prac­tices.

How­ev­er, new re­search from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), led by UWI lec­tur­er Dr Priscil­la Ba­haw, sug­gests that gen­er­a­tive Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) may help small busi­ness­es achieve sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals in ways that were pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­in­able.

Gen­er­a­tive AI is a sub­set of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence that cre­ates new, orig­i­nal con­tent—in­clud­ing text, im­ages, code, mu­sic and videos—by an­a­lyz­ing pat­terns in mas­sive datasets.

The study, pub­lished in the in­ter­na­tion­al jour­nal Sus­tain­able Fu­tures, pro­vides the first em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence in T&T link­ing the use of gen­er­a­tive AI to busi­ness sus­tain­abil­i­ty among SMEs. Con­duct­ed by Ba­haw along­side co-au­thors David For­ge­nie, Ghul­fam Sadiq and Satesh Sookhai, the re­search ex­plores how AI-pow­ered tools can help small busi­ness­es bal­ance prof­itabil­i­ty with en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Ba­haw is a lec­tur­er in en­tre­pre­neur­ship at UWI and serves as Caribbean chair of the Acad­e­my of Latin Amer­i­ca Busi­ness and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Stud­ies. Her re­search fo­cuss­es on en­tre­pre­neur­ship, SME de­vel­op­ment, and sus­tain­able busi­ness prac­tices in small is­land de­vel­op­ing states.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, she gave de­tails of the study and its im­pact on the busi­ness sec­tor.

Ba­haw said the mo­ti­va­tion for the re­search emerged from ob­serv­ing the re­al­i­ties faced by en­tre­pre­neurs across the Caribbean.

“SMEs are con­stant­ly be­ing asked to do more with less, They must re­main prof­itable while al­so re­spond­ing to en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cial ex­pec­ta­tions. Our re­search shows that gen­er­a­tive AI can help bridge that gap.”

Na­tion­al AI con­ver­sa­tion

The re­search ar­rives at a crit­i­cal mo­ment for T&T as the coun­try ex­plores its readi­ness to adopt AI tech­nolo­gies.

On Feb­ru­ary 27, 2026, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, aca­d­e­mics and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners gath­ered at UWI’s St. Au­gus­tine cam­pus for the Na­tion­al Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Readi­ness Val­i­da­tion Work­shop, host­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence and UN­ESCO. The work­shop formed part of a broad­er na­tion­al ef­fort to as­sess how pre­pared the coun­try is to adopt AI re­spon­si­bly and strate­gi­cal­ly. The lead lo­cal ex­pert for the ini­tia­tive is Dr Leti­tia Ad­di­son, an­oth­er UWI lec­tur­er, who Ba­haw works close­ly with.

Ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease on the event from the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, the work­shop marked a crit­i­cal mile­stone in T&T’s AI Readi­ness As­sess­ment process.

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, Do­minic Smith, in his ad­dress reaf­firmed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to build­ing a re­spon­si­ble, in­clu­sive and for­ward-look­ing dig­i­tal so­ci­ety.

“We seek a fu­ture in which tech­nol­o­gy serves peo­ple, not the oth­er way around. A fu­ture in which in­no­va­tion flour­ish­es with­out com­pro­mis­ing rights, eq­ui­ty or pub­lic trust. A fu­ture in which small states like ours are ac­tive ar­chi­tects of tech­no­log­i­cal progress,” he stat­ed.

Ba­haw’s re­search has con­tributed to this na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion by high­light­ing the role that AI can play in strength­en­ing the coun­try’s SME sec­tor.

“Much of the glob­al AI con­ver­sa­tion fo­cus­es on large cor­po­ra­tions. But in economies like ours, small busi­ness­es are the en­gine of growth. If we want dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion to be in­clu­sive, SMEs must be part of that jour­ney,” she said.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty in small busi­ness­es

She point­ed out that sus­tain­abil­i­ty in busi­ness is of­ten framed through the con­cept of the “triple bot­tom line,” which en­cour­ages com­pa­nies to bal­ance three pri­or­i­ties: prof­it, en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and so­cial im­pact.

While large cor­po­ra­tions may have ded­i­cat­ed sus­tain­abil­i­ty teams and large bud­gets, SMEs of­ten face very dif­fer­ent re­al­i­ties. Lim­it­ed cap­i­tal, small­er work­forces, and in­tense com­pe­ti­tion can make sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives dif­fi­cult to im­ple­ment.

Ba­haw’s re­search set out to ex­am­ine whether gen­er­a­tive AI could help over­come these chal­lenges.

“Tech­nol­o­gy has tra­di­tion­al­ly been viewed as some­thing ac­ces­si­ble main­ly to large firms. What makes gen­er­a­tive AI dif­fer­ent is its ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty. Many of these tools are rel­a­tive­ly af­ford­able and user-friend­ly, which means even small en­tre­pre­neurs can ben­e­fit.”

To bet­ter un­der­stand how these tech­nolo­gies are be­ing used lo­cal­ly, the re­search team con­duct­ed a mixed-meth­ods study in­volv­ing 310 SME own­ers across T&T, com­ple­ment­ed by in-depth in­ter­views with en­tre­pre­neurs.

She not­ed that the quan­ti­ta­tive re­sults re­vealed that two fac­tors strong­ly in­flu­ence whether busi­ness own­ers adopt AI tools: per­ceived use­ful­ness and ease of use. When en­tre­pre­neurs find AI tools prac­ti­cal and easy to op­er­ate, they are far more like­ly to in­te­grate them in­to their dai­ly busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties.

The in­ter­views pro­vid­ed deep­er in­sight in­to how these tools are be­ing used in re­al busi­ness set­tings.

One of the most im­me­di­ate ben­e­fits iden­ti­fied in the re­search was im­proved op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy.

Many en­tre­pre­neurs re­port­ed us­ing AI as a vir­tu­al as­sis­tant to han­dle rou­tine tasks such as draft­ing emails, gen­er­at­ing re­ports and or­gan­is­ing in­for­ma­tion.

“For small busi­ness­es, time is of­ten their most lim­it­ed re­source. When AI helps re­duce ad­min­is­tra­tive work, en­tre­pre­neurs can redi­rect their en­er­gy to­ward in­no­va­tion, strate­gic plan­ning, and en­gag­ing with their cus­tomers.”

Sup­port­ing da­ta-dri­ven de­ci­sions

An­oth­er im­por­tant ap­pli­ca­tion iden­ti­fied in the study is im­proved de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

She said sev­er­al SME own­ers de­scribed us­ing AI tools to analyse costs, com­pare sup­pli­ers, and iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties to re­duce en­er­gy con­sump­tion. These in­sights al­low busi­ness­es to make de­ci­sions that sup­port both fi­nan­cial per­for­mance and en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

The re­search al­so high­light­ed how gen­er­a­tive AI can sup­port in­no­va­tion with­in re­source-con­strained en­vi­ron­ments.

Some en­tre­pre­neurs re­port­ed us­ing AI to gen­er­ate ideas for new prod­ucts or ser­vices, in­clud­ing cre­ative ways to re­duce waste or re­pur­pose ma­te­ri­als. In sev­er­al cas­es, these ideas helped busi­ness­es iden­ti­fy new rev­enue op­por­tu­ni­ties while min­i­miz­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact.

“Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is of­ten seen as an ad­di­tion­al cost for small busi­ness­es,” Ba­haw not­ed.

“What we ob­served is that tech­nol­o­gy can help en­tre­pre­neurs see sus­tain­abil­i­ty as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­no­va­tion and growth.”

She al­so point­ed out that in to­day’s dig­i­tal mar­ket­place, ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion is es­sen­tial for busi­ness suc­cess. The study found that many SMEs are us­ing AI tools to cre­ate mar­ket­ing ma­te­ri­als, videos, and so­cial me­dia con­tent that high­light their sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives.

This al­lows small­er firms to com­mu­ni­cate their val­ues more ef­fec­tive­ly and com­pete with larg­er or­gan­i­sa­tions that may have ded­i­cat­ed mar­ket­ing teams.

Prac­ti­cal im­pli­ca­tions

Ba­haw ex­plained that be­yond its prac­ti­cal im­pli­ca­tions for en­tre­pre­neurs, the study ad­dress­es an im­por­tant gap in aca­d­e­m­ic re­search.

While AI has been wide­ly ex­am­ined in large cor­po­ra­tions and ad­vanced economies, rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle em­pir­i­cal re­search has ex­plored its role in small is­land de­vel­op­ing states (SIDS) such as T&T.

Ba­haw be­lieves this makes the re­search par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant for the re­gion.

“Our Caribbean economies face unique eco­nom­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges. Un­der­stand­ing how dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies can sup­port sus­tain­able en­tre­pre­neur­ship in small is­land states is crit­i­cal for shap­ing fu­ture poli­cies and de­vel­op­ment strate­gies.”

The re­search al­so of­fers im­por­tant in­sights for pol­i­cy­mak­ers seek­ing to sup­port the growth of the SME sec­tor.

Rather than fo­cussing sole­ly on fi­nan­cial in­cen­tives, Ba­haw sug­gests pri­ori­tis­ing dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture, train­ing pro­grammes, and pub­lic aware­ness ini­tia­tives that help en­tre­pre­neurs un­der­stand and use AI tools ef­fec­tive­ly.

Re­li­able in­ter­net ac­cess and im­proved dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy will be es­sen­tial if SMEs are to ful­ly ben­e­fit from emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies.

“If we want our SMEs to thrive in a dig­i­tal econ­o­my, we must en­sure that en­tre­pre­neurs have the tools, con­nec­tiv­i­ty and knowl­edge need­ed to par­tic­i­pate.”

New chap­ter for Caribbean in­no­va­tion

Ba­haw said as T&T pre­pares for the pub­lic launch of its Na­tion­al AI Readi­ness Re­port lat­er this year, the re­search pro­vides a hope­ful mes­sage for the coun­try’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

She not­ed that AI is of­ten por­trayed as a tech­nol­o­gy re­served for glob­al cor­po­ra­tions and ad­vanced economies yet her work demon­strates that it can al­so em­pow­er the small busi­ness­es that form the back­bone of lo­cal economies.

“The fu­ture of sus­tain­able en­tre­pre­neur­ship in the Caribbean will de­pend on our abil­i­ty to com­bine in­no­va­tion with in­clu­sion. Gen­er­a­tive AI gives us an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do ex­act­ly that.”