The culture of innovation is key to Trinidad and Tobago’s national progress, and the College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts of Trinidad and Tobago (COSTAATT) continues to highlight its importance.
On Wednesday, COSTAATT hosted its 14th Annual Entrepreneurship and Innovation Week, bringing together researchers to discuss how a culture of innovation benefits all of society.
According to industrial engineer at CARIRI’s Centre for Enterprise Development, Lyndon Millard, organisations must innovate by design or risk being left behind.
“None of the managers knew this; this employee made a jig that made the work ten times faster. So secretly he would finish everything, what you gave him for eight hours in about two hours, and he gone. Much less, I implemented a jig for the company and saved them a million dollars, and that is how innovation could exist in your company right under your nose and you don’t know it.”
He noted that the creation of an innovative culture policy is key to developing a roadmap of shared behaviour among staff, which requires a collaborative effort.
“You don’t write policy alone; you get voices from all your departments, all your workers, down to the cleaner. It is an everybody thing. It is not just a management thing. You have to get voice and buy-in from everyone.”
COSTAATT’s Vice-President of Digital Transformation Kevin Ramsoobhag and Director of Information Technology Darren Headley noted that bullying does not only occur in schools but also in the workplace.
The team’s innovative research through their cyberbullying initiative demonstrated how a large portion of those negative comments are either unrecognised, unidentified, or simply never addressed.
“So, what does that say for us as a society? Are we now making this thing a normal way of behaviour, operating online, or is this how we speak, and we just chalk it up and we move on? That is not the society that we have to recreate.”
This year marked COSTAATT’s 14th successful Annual Entrepreneurship and Innovation Week, which runs until June 13th at their City Campus in Port of Spain.