Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister, Senator Darcy Boyce (second from right) sharing a light moment with Rachel Grimes (left), President of International Federation of Accountants; Lisa Padmore (second from left), Institute of Chartered Accountants of Barbados and Jasmine Davis (right), President of Institute of Chartered Accountants of the Caribbean.
A Government minister is stressing the importance of businesses innovating, not only for their own survival, but to also help the country’s economy to grow.
Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister, Senator Darcy Boyce made the comments while speaking at the Students’ Breakfast Forum, ‘The Accountant of the Future’, hosted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of the Caribbean and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Barbados at the Radisson Aquatica.
“If you do not innovate within your firm and therefore continue to keep your firm fresh, keep it at the forefront, somebody else will innovate alongside your firm and come and take your lunch… Internal entrepreneurship, or what they call in the book intrapreneurship, as opposed to entrepreneurship and vibrant innovation within your businesses is part of what you have to be conscious of,” he told those gathered.
With that in mind, he said he does not think the accounting profession has given as much thought and time to how to account for the costs that go into such things, and he is suggesting that the perhaps it is an area that the persons who set the standards should look to examine.
“To think about how they classify that kind of expenditure, that kind of cash outflow, to help a company prepare itself for the future, because it is really an investment to protect you from the unknown. It has to happen. If you don’t do it determinedly, you either have to go and buy somebody who has done it, or somebody is going to come and take away from you, a significant part of your business. And that happens not only at the level of the company, it also happens at the level of the whole economy,” he contended.
Minister Boyce added, “Remember the economy is a sense a summation of the companies and consumers, it is not a straight summation, but it is in some sense a summation of all the businesses and consumers and if the businesses do not seek to innovate, the economy is not going to be innovative either.”
Moreover, the Minister responsible for Energy, Telecommunication and Invest Barbados, warned that if businesses do not seek to become intrapreneurs, the economy will suffer from a lack of entrepreneurship. To that end, he contended that entrepreneurship and innovation in the local economy, is not a Government issue alone, but also an issue that requires the attention of the corporations that operate within the economy. (JRT)