KINGSTON, Jamaica – Oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, once hailed America’s richest businessman, quipped in the 1990s that “there is only one way to make a great deal of money and that is in a business of your own.”
Evidence that the notion still lives was recently discovered where three groups of enterprising graduates, at the University of the West Indies, have conceptualised viable businesses behind which JNBS Small Business Loans has thrown support.
“Young people seldom decide to start businesses; and even when they do, a popular complaint concomitant with slow growth in these ventures is the lack of capital,” said Frank Whylie, General Manager at JNSBL.
The head of the region’s largest microfinance provider added that the development of “the Caribbean’s first Communications Auditing Firm, an Interactive Learning Device and a Jamaican Men’s magazine are three very impressive business concepts developed by CARIMAC students, which is why they were singled out by JNSBL.”
Mr. Whylie was addressing students during a brief awards reception recently hosted at The University of the West Indies.
The apprentices received some $120,000 (JA) as an initial reward for their innovations; and have been guaranteed business guidance and funding from JNSBL, if they pursue the implementation of these business projects.
According to Gerrard McDaniel, CARIMAC Lecturer, who coordinated the entrepreneurship course, “some of the students have ventured outside of Jamaica and have identified four Barbadian companies that are seeking the Communication Auditing services from C5 Communications,” which is the name proposed for one of the businesses.
The most outstanding concept was that for a local men’s magazine to be named Dapper, although known studies and speculation indicate that publishing is the most complex area in which to start a small business.
Meanwhile, Peta-Ann Long, who helped to design a multimedia lesson delivery device for possible use in basic schools, is hoping that with funding from JNSBL, “the text book digitization and interactive system that we developed will successfully rival what we see being offered by other publishers.”
Jamaica has one of the highest levels of entrepreneurial activity as measured by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). According to GEM’s 2006 report, early Stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) was impressively high, with approximately 17 per cent of the adult population.
The students, from the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC), wrote business plans in a final year course on Entrepreneurship.
