The views expressed herein are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of One News SVG.
By Kenrife Matthias | Founder, Kencept Solutions LLC.
Caribbean talent has travelled the world. The next challenge is ensuring Caribbean businesses capture more of the value that talent creates.
The Caribbean has never had a shortage of creativity. For a collection of relatively small countries, our cultural footprint is remarkable. Our music travels, our food travels, our festivals attract international attention, and our athletes, designers, writers, entertainers and entrepreneurs routinely demonstrate that Caribbean ideas can compete far beyond our shores.
Our bigger challenge is what happens after we create.
We are exceptionally good at producing value, but we have not always been equally effective at positioning, packaging, protecting and monetising that value. That distinction matters because creating something excellent and convincing a market to recognise its value are two very different skills.
UNESCO’s Creative Caribbean initiative, developed with CARICOM and The University of the West Indies, reflects this challenge. Among its objectives are improving market access, strengthening entrepreneurial capacity and increasing the production of globally competitive Caribbean goods and services. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is among the countries included in the initiative.
In other words, talent is only part of the equation.
Being known is not the same as being positioned
Small Caribbean societies provide businesses with something many international brands spend fortunes trying to acquire: familiarity.
Everybody may know the restaurant, contractor, shop owner, designer or person who makes the best cakes in the community. Word of mouth remains powerful, and personal reputation can carry a business for years.
But familiarity can also disguise weak positioning.
Being known is not necessarily the same as being known for something.
What happens when that Vincentian business wants to sell to someone in Toronto who does not know the owner? What happens when a potential customer in New York discovers the company through Google? What happens when a visitor searches online before arriving in SVG?
Suddenly, your reputation cannot make the introduction. Your brand has to.
A potential customer must be able to understand who you serve, what problem you solve, why your product or service is different and why they should trust you.
That is positioning.
And this is where a great product can lose to a better-positioned competitor.
Our market is bigger than our population
Positioning becomes even more important when we reconsider what constitutes the Caribbean market.
For years, the diaspora conversation has understandably centred heavily on remittances and assistance sent home. But the diaspora represents something else: customers, investors, professional networks and potential gateways into larger markets.
A World Bank study of more than 850 members of the Caribbean diaspora found significant interest in deeper economic engagement with the region, while identifying visibility of opportunities as one barrier to greater investment.
That should make Caribbean entrepreneurs think differently.
A Vincentian food producer, designer, consultant or creative business does not necessarily have to define its potential market by the population physically living in SVG.
The question becomes: How do we position what we produce locally for people willing to buy it globally?
Technology has made parts of that journey easier. E-commerce, digital payments, remote professional services and online marketing allow some businesses to reach customers who would previously have been inaccessible. The Inter-American Development Bank has similarly argued that digital transformation and access to online marketplaces are increasingly important to the competitiveness and resilience of small businesses.
But putting something online does not automatically position it for success.
Packaging matters. Customer experience matters. Search visibility matters. Reviews matter. Intellectual property matters. Most importantly, the customer must understand the value.
From Caribbean creativity to Caribbean ownership
There is a larger economic question here.
The Caribbean has become extraordinarily successful at producing cultural influence. We should now become equally deliberate about capturing more of the commercial value generated by that influence.
The World Intellectual Property Organization has highlighted the importance of intellectual property in helping Caribbean creators protect and benefit economically from their work.
There is a difference between exporting talent and building exportable brands. There is a difference between creating a trend and owning the intellectual property behind it. And there is a difference between being admired globally and building businesses capable of earning globally.
The Kencept Perspective
The Caribbean does not need permission to be creative. We settled that argument generations ago.
Our next challenge is building stronger systems that turn creativity into intellectual property, businesses into brands, local recognition into global relevance and good ideas into sustainable economic value.
The next chapter of Caribbean business cannot simply be about making better things. We must become better at communicating why those things matter, who they are for and why the world should choose them.
Our creativity has already travelled the world.
Our positioning needs to catch up.
END
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