Garfield Sinclair - iWish

Garfield Sinclair is the managing director of LIME Jamaica and Cayman.

I have never been one to complain about the hand we've been dealt as a nation since I firmly believe that every country gets the government and economy it deserves. I believe that the current state of our country and its economy has more to do with the quality of the governed and the governance that we have demanded, than anything else.

My wish for the next 10 years is that we dramatically improve the quality of the average Jamaican's dreams, socialisation and aspirations by providing a modern international preschool curriculum-based early-childhood education system for every single preschooler, along with multiple educational opportunities for the legion of 15- to 17-year-olds who will more than likely have been alienated by our current secondary-school system.

To make this a reality, we must develop a comprehensive and recurring skills-audit processes and identify skills gaps that will need to be filled to fulfil Vision 2030 - in general - and the specific human resource requirements of mega projects like the logistics hub, fledgling animation industry and others. We should also equip our national educational institutions to provide the required technical, scientific or vocational training in addition to training in the humanities and the more liberal arts, in order to develop a model Jamaican that will ultimately demand the level and quality of governance to improve our nation and its economy as a whole.

To aspiring young business people I say, workable ideas are less important than are bankable ideas, which come from starting with customers first and determining what the need is before deciding how to fill it, as opposed to the other way around, where you start with what you believe is a great idea. While the 'eureka moment' big idea has been wildly successful for a relative few, the vast majority of successful entrepreneurs have very blandly just filled a 'plain vanilla' need held by vast numbers of customers.

Fresh thinking requires the emerging class of entrepreneurs to identify the need by asking customers what they want first, then relentlessly attempt to fill the need ... and never ever give up.