It takes an ecosystem to raise an entrepreneur

Entrepreneur, Managing Director, GeoTechVision

 

Valrie Grant
Valrie Grant

Recently, I was a participant in the Infodev/World Bank Accelerate Caribbean Study Tour in Florida and Toronto. The Accelerate Caribbean programme is part of infoDev’s Entrepreneurship Programme for Innovation in the Caribbean (EPIC). It aims to increase capacity and strengthen performance of the Caribbean business enablers via a combination of action learning, coaching and mentoring as well as to facilitate the sharing of knowledge on various models of business incubation and networking. The study tour was one of the key activities of the programme that will provided participants the opportunity to become familiar with business best practices as well as facilitated networking and peer-to-peer learning.

For me, the study tour highlighted one common element, “It takes an ecosystem to raise an entrepreneur.” I have always maintained that true success cannot be achieved in isolation, thus we need to collaborate to innovate. A familiar saying is “it takes a village to raise a child” and similarly “it takes an ecosystem to raise an entrepreneur.”  So what is an entrepreneurial ecosystem? An entrepreneurial ecosystem describes the conditions that brings stakeholders together to foster economic prosperity and wealth creation. There are several major elements which are considered important to the generation of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. These elements include: