PIOJ Growth-Inducement Strategy - Planning Institute of Jamaica

Develop formal and informal links to the technological academic institutions in
Jamaica and other regions, particularly the Caribbean and the Americas.
Develop working links with key international venture capital funds in order to
access overseas capital and technical assistance for projects/businesses which are
being established in international marketplaces.
Develop links with Research Centres.
Develop links with technology incubators.
Develop links with corporate investors seeking new, emerging technologies.
Develop links with key International Development Partners to partner in
providing technical expertise and capital.
Provide economies of scale thereby lowering transaction costs and improving
access to funding.
This entrepreneurial hub will enable the developing local VC Industry to focus its
resources and develop a core of expertise. The hub would facilitate access to public
sector input and capital along with private capital in order to undertake investment in
high risk start-ups and seed investments. The model provides an avenue for risk sharing
between public and private investors, and even more importantly the supportive advisory
and business development services.
As noted above, the local model would involve establishing linkages among academia,
entrepreneurs, business support and research centres. Within the local environment, the
Technology Innovation Centre (TIC) at the UTECH already has some of the basic
elements of such a model, as it is an incubator for technology- based companies.
Additionally, Entrepreneurial Chairs and Competitiveness Centres have been established
at UTECH and UWI, respectively.
Business service providers exist but such services are fragmented and are mainly ‘standalone’
providers with limited expertise in other areas. Many of the services are also
costly to start-ups and lack the expertise needed to identify and focus funding and
advisory services.
4.0 Recommended Actions
In order to create the ‘entrepreneurial hub’ described above, the following sequence of
actions is recommended:
1. As a first step, a study tour is to be conducted of the Ben Franklin Institute to
understand the business model, the resources and the infrastructure required to
develop such a system in Jamaica. The participants on this Study tour would
include persons from PIOJ, DBJ, SRC and the Universities as well as a Private
Sector representative.
2. In the second phase, a Consultant would be engaged to undertake a study of the
TIC, other existing incubator facilities and the entrepreneurial centres at UTECH,
UWI and NCU as well as the SRC, in order to assess their activities and to
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