REGIONAL
ENTREPRENEURS
By Filisha Bridge
Who are Regional Entrepreneurs?
Regional entrepreneurship (RE) is an emerging field within entrepreneurship research. It
reflects Maryann Feldman's frequently quoted notion that “entrepreneurship is primarily a
regional event.” In this article “regional” is defined as subnational (i.e., below the country
level).
Chris Blackwell
Christopher Percy Gordon Blackwell (born 22 June 1937) is an English businessman and former
record producer, and the founder of Island Records,which has been called "one of Britain's great
independent labels".
Blackwell currently runs Island Outpost, which he set up to operate and market a group of
elite resorts in Jamaica, including Strawberry Hill in the Blue Mountains (where Marley
recovered after being shot in 1976), The Caves in Negril, and GoldenEye Hotel & Resort in
Oracabessa.
The Marley Family
After years of legal battle and numerous bids by different companies claiming rights to the singer's
legacy, the island's Supreme Court determined that the exclusive right to use Marley's name, likeness
and image for commercial purposes would pass on to his heirs. So his widow and all of his children
walked away with the rights to profit from Marley's name, likeness and image, and that they have done
from the 1990s until today.
To date, although most of the Marley children have gone on to establish successful careers in the music industry,
some have opted to set up businesses using the Marley moniker. In 2009, with only 52 acres of farmland in
Portland, Jamaica, Rohan Marley established a coffee company known as Marley Coffee. According to a Business
Insider article from February 2014, the son of the late music icon said the business was born out of his father's
love for farming, as well as the need for him to meaningfully contribute to his father's legacy in a different way,
since he was not as musically inclined as his other siblings.
CONTINUING
Today, Marley Coffee is sold in thousands of stores worldwide, and although the company is still
relatively small, it has raked in millions in revenue since its establishment. Marley Coffee
continues to grow pesticide-free coffee under the 'Jamaica Blue Mountain' label, and sources
sustainably grown coffee from sister farms in the Jamaican Blue Mountain region, as well as
farms in Ethiopia and South America.
The family's latest business venture is known as Marley Natural and is a partnership with
Seattle-based company Privateer Holdings. The business venture will see Marley becoming the
face of marijuana as the company aims to sell cannabis-based
products.
Eddy Grant
Edmond Montague Grant (born 5 March 1948) is a Guyanese-British singer, songwriter and
multi-instrumentalist, known for his genre-blending sound; his music has blended elements of
pop, British rock, soul, funk, reggae, electronic music, African polyrhythms, and Latin music genres
such as samba, among many others.Grant's involvement with Trinidadian music began 20 years
before soca existed. As a child in Guyana, where his father played trumpet in a dance band, the
calypsos of Lord Kitchener and the Mighty Sparrow were radio favourites. In the late 1960s, when
Grant's band The Equals reached top 10 in London, his career overlapped the ska and calypso
scenes.Leaving the Equals in 1970, Grant pursued his entrepreneurial activities as vigorously as his
solo career, mainly in the Caribbean, as the big London record companies weren't interested. Ice
Records was set up in Guyana, and a London office opened in 1977.
By 1982, with Grant's second chart success ('Electric Avenue') peaking, he set up his studio in the
colonial residence at Bayley's Plantation, in Barbados, and injected a tougher bass line,
synthesizers, and a crispness into the sound of calypso.Grant's productions make Barbadian
artists among the most interesting in the formulaic soca genre. Grant has introduced a
Jamaican ragga-style chant on some songs, perhaps to attract a youthful audience; soca
having an older, more middle-class public than ragga, the street-kids' choice. Jamaica has an
edge with youth, but the ragamuffin style, Grant alleges, is based on the Trinidadian 'sagaboys', or 'bad johns' of the 1950s with their exaggerated, swaggering dance. Grant leaps up to
demonstrate, alarming Muriel.His latest venture sees him working as a DJ on the new
internet station United DJs.
Arthur Lok Jack
Born in Trinidad, Arthur Lok Jack had his schooling, both elementary and secondary, in
Trinidad. At the age of 18 or 19, he left College and started his first job at the Neal & Massy
Group where he stayed for approximately a year and a half. The young Lok Jack then went on
to work at Barclays Bank for two years following which, he joined an American multinational
that was in T&T manufacturing pharmaceutical goods.
Ambitious, driven by passion and determined to succeed, the young man never stopped
working. He is now highly accomplished and is known for his tremendous contribution to
business. It is therefore no surprise that years later, Arthur Lok Jack was conferred with an
honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies (UWI) in recognition of his influence
on Caribbean economic development.
Thalia lyn
Meet Thalia Lyn, the Founder, and CEO of the Island Grill Group of Restaurants. She
has accomplished many notable achievements and is an inspirational leader with years
of experience across many industries.
A restaurant selling fried chicken, Chicken Supreme, was launched that evolved into
Island Grill which is a quick-service restaurant chain with 18 locations across Jamaica
and one in Barbados at the Grantley Adams International Airport.
Island Grill has nearly 900 employees.
On November 1, Lyn was conferred with an honorary degree by the University of the West Indies for her
entrepreneurial success and tireless philanthropy. The honour was bestowed three days after she
became the 27th business leader and second woman, after close friend Lorna Myers, to be inducted
into the Private Sector Organization of Jamaica Hall of Fame.
Vincent Hosang
His parents migrated from China to Jamaica in the early 1900s.
He is the eighth (8th) child among ten (10) siblings.
He was raised with limited finances where he witnessed his parents’ struggle to survive and
care for a large family from a grocery shop in rural Jamaica.
He is a high school dropout.
When he saw things that the farmers used to bring back he thought that America was a good
place. He then later moved to America in hopes of making money.
He got married and had a child, this changed his economic situation.
He realised that in order to live the American Dream he would have to switch gears to the
ownership ranks.
He always wanted to start a business in the US but due to his lack of capital he kept saving his
money and building up his courage.
He is now the founder of Caribbean Food Delights (CDF). The leading Caribbean frozen food
manufacturer of Jamaican-style patties in New York City, which rose from a small business in the Bronx,
New York, to become the number one manufacturer of Jamaican beef, chicken and vegetable patties
across the globe.
He is the Vice President of US Royal Caribbean Bakery.
He partnered with the University of the West Indies (UWI) through the MSBM to create an avenue, the
Vincent HoSang UWI Venture Competition (UWIVC), to support talented student entrepreneurs .
Audrey Marks
Audrey Patrice Marks has served two terms as Jamaica's Ambassador to the United States
from 2008 to 2012 and again starting in 2016. She is Jamaica's first female Ambassador to the
US and the first individual to hold the position twice in two separate terms
Prior to assuming her Ambassadorial role, Ambassador Marks, an entrepreneur by profession,
started and operated six previous businesses, including a 100-acre banana exporting farm, a
transportation company, as well as a real estate sales and development company. She also
operated a Venture Capital Company with diverse investments, including manufacturing, travel, and
entertainment.
She is perhaps best known for having founded Paymaster (Jamaica) Limited, an online bill
payment system which she conceptualized and started in 1997. Paymaster operates payment
agencies from which all types of bill payments and remittances can be made and is the first
multi-transaction agency in the Caribbean.
Ambassador Marks has also served on several private and public sector Boards, including being
the Chairman of the Central Wastewater Treatment Company Limited (CWTC); Chair of the Tourism
Product Development Company (TPDCo); Deputy Chair of the Urban Development Corporation
(UDC); Director of the Board of RBTT Securities Jamaica Limited; Jamaica Trade and Invest (JTI);
National Health Fund (NHF); and the University of the West Indies (Mona School of Business). She
has the distinction of being the first female President of the American Chamber of Commerce of
Jamaica (AMCHAM), an organization which promotes investment and trade between the United
States and Jamaica.
Joan Duncan
Joan Duncan, a supreme entrepreneur guided by high ethical standards, introduced and
developed the Money Market concept in Jamaica in the early 1990’s in partnership with JMMB’s
co-founder, Dr. Noel Lyons. Joan rose from humble beginnings – once a dressmaker; she did the
hard work to get qualified in the area of finance and banking and developed the critical
competencies to successfully start and grow a new business grounded in the core values of
love, respect, compassion, honesty and integrity.Joan Duncan’s biggest idea came to fruition
when she was already in her fifties. It was her dream to start a company where any Jamaican
could walk in off the street, take a few hundred dollars out of his or her pocket and invest it.
She wanted all Jamaicans to take part in the money market. Her dream also encompassed the
creation of a different sort of work place from the traditional organisations she had encountered
in the Jamaican business world. She wished to begin a company that would be focused on
respect and love. A company where employees would work in a fun-loving atmosphere in which
there would be a commitment to innovation and creativity, to integrity and responsibility and to the
opportunity for each member of the team to learn and grow.
In 1992, Joan Duncan took the financial sector by storm when she founded Jamaica Money
Market Brokers Ltd. – virtually creating the local money market while developing her company
into Jamaica’s biggest money market trader. Her life proves that success is indeed a journey –
for her starting point, many years ago as a struggling single mother with five mouths to feed
was a world away from her ultimate position of Managing Director of one of Jamaica’s most
profitable and fastest growing investment brokerages.
It was during the latter years of the 1980s, while manager of NCB Investments, that she
recognized the need for the development of the money market. She continually pressed her
employer and other players in the financial sector to enter this market, but met with continual
resistance. Eventually, like the ‘Little Red Hen’, Joan Duncan knew she would have to do it herself.
She established JMMB in 1992 as a joint venture among the National Development Bank, Mutual
Security Bank, Jamaica Producers Ltd, Jamaica Venture Fund and Antrim Ltd. Dr Noel Lyon, of the
Jamaica Venture Fund, and JMMB Chairman, was her most ardent supporter from the start.
Today, JMMB is widely considered as responsible for the development of the secondary market in
debt securities in Jamaica. In 1994, the company was appointed as one of the first seven primary
dealers for the Bank of Jamaica. Many more achievements and innovations were to follow. When
Joan Duncan died at the age of 58, her dream, her company had realized a solid capital base of
$190 million and boasted four branches with over 20,000 accounts.
Aleem Mohammed
Aleem Mohammed is a Habitual entrepreneur. Aleem Mohammed is the chairman at SM Jaleel &
Co. LTD. He is a qualified doctor who previously worked at the San Fernando General Hospital.
Mohammed said that he never dreamt of becoming a businessman. He always aspired to be a
medical doctor as his sister died at the age of 18 due to an illness he did not disclose.Believe it or
not, Aleem Mohammed’s mother persuaded him into entrepreneurship.
It is a family legacy. His grandfather ; the former owner of SM Jaleel, who was almost 80 years old
decided to sell the business. Aleem’s mother bought the business from his grandfather to preserve
the family’s legacy and to continue the family tradition as none of his sons took a liking to the
business.
SM Jaleel & Company Ltd, also known as SMJ, is the largest manufacturer of non alcoholic
drinks in the English speaking Caribbean. Since inception in 1924 their portfolio of beverages
are distributed to over 60 countries worldwide.
SMJ’s products include a wide array of soft drinks, fruit juices, purified and flavoured water,
energy drinks, and other fruit flavoured beverages.
SMJ's blow molding facility is the largest in the Caribbean where they manufacture their own
PET bottles in different shapes and sizes for their numerous products.
The company was also the first in the world, in conjunction with Reynolds Metals Company, to fill fruit
juices in aluminum cans using nitrogen technology in the 1980s, thus eliminating the need for artificial
preservatives in the product.
Currently, SMJ’s products are found in over half a million wholesale and retail stores worldwide,
including Walmart and other international retailers. The company has more than 2000 employees in
five continents.
Dr. Anthony Sabga
The founder of the ANSA McAL Group who also held the title of Chairman Emeritus was awarded the the
Trinidad and Tobago Chaconia (Gold) Medal in 1998. In October of the same year he was named Master
Entrepreneur at the Annual Ernst & Young Entrepreneur-of-the-Year Awards Ceremony and later that month he
was the recipient of a Doctor of Laws Degree, Honoris Causa, from the University of the West Indies
His career started in the 1930’s when his family migrated to Trinidad from Syria. At the age of 13, he began
working working in his father’s business.
In 1945, being a visionary entrepreneur he established Standard Distributors Ltd and almost 19 years later he
formed the holding company Anthony N. Sabga Limited (ANSA)
One year later, (1965)the hugely successful ANSA Industries Ltd was established to manufacture household
appliances throughout the Caribbean.
In the government’s effort to industrialise Trinidad and Tobago after Independence in 1962
legislation was passed which made it impossible to continue importing refrigerators. Bosch,
however, refused to allow any of their products to be manufactured outside of Germany unless it
was under German supervision, which led in 1966 to the beginning of ANSA Industries. This
company was established to locally manufacture refrigerators, cookers and other electrical
appliances through licensing agreements with Admiral Corporation of the USA. This also included
Hitachi radios from Japan, Blaupunkt and Bompani cookers from Modena, Italy.
ANSA Industries put exports on the front burner, selling not only to the CARICOM countries but also
to other countries in the region in advance of the establishment of the CARICOM treaty. So
successful was it, that it went on to win the first Prime Minister’s Award for Export Performance in
1968.
Anthony Sabga other companies were also very profitable. Standard Distributors had become a
household name in Trinidad with six outlets nationwide, and Farmhouse Industries, a dairy product
company was thriving. ANSA’s subsidiaries in other Caribbean islands, later added to the success
of the group. ANSA Industries eventually became Consolidated Appliances Ltd.
Richard Branson
Sir Richard Charles Branson is an entrepreneur and adventurer. Born in the United Kingdom in
1950, he planned to become a successful businessman from his teen years. Branson, who was a
school dropout, entered into his first successful business venture as a teenager with the
magazine Student. When the magazine began losing money in the late 1960s, he formed Virgin
Mail Order Records (so named because Branson considered himself inexperienced in business)
to raise funds, and in 1971 he opened the first British discount record store.
In 1973 he helped form Virgin Records, which quickly became the principal label worldwide for
punk and new wave. In 1984 he became the majority backer of the airline that he renamed
Virgin Atlantic Airways. Beginning with a single aircraft, the carrier succeeded despite fierce
opposition from established airlines, and in 1992 Branson sold Virgin Records to raise
additional money for Virgin Atlantic.
By the 1990s the Virgin conglomerate, which was among the largest privately held companies in
the United Kingdom, comprised some 100 businesses, including Virgin Megastores. In 2004
Branson formed Virgin Galactic, a space tourism company that was working toward offering
commercial suborbital passenger flights.Rather than stay in one field, Branson has dedicated
both his personal and professional life to adventure and exploration.
He’s built business endeavors around everything from selling records to space travel. Learn more
about his illustrious life, exciting exploits, and far-reaching insights.In the decades since, he’s
founded or acquired more than 400 companies in various industries for the Virgin Group. He spent
the 1980s and ’90s spearheading air and rail travel initiatives, as well as exploring the telecoms
industry. He chronicled many of these experiences in his 1998 autobiography, Losing My Virginity.
More recently, he has turned his focus to outer space.
Bill Gates
Bill Gates, in full William Henry Gates III, (born October 28, 1955, Seattle, Washington, U.S.),
American computer programmer and entrepreneur who co founded Microsoft Corporation, the
world’s largest personal-computer software company.
Gates wrote his first software program at the age of 13. In high school he helped form a group
of programmers who computerized their school’s payroll system and founded Traf-O-Data, a
company that sold traffic-counting systems to local governments.
In 1975 Gates, then a sophomore at Harvard University, joined his hometown friend Paul G.
Allen to develop software for the first microcomputers. They began by adapting BASIC, a
popular programming language used on large computers, for use on microcomputers
With the success of this project, Gates left Harvard during his junior year and, with Allen,
formed Microsoft. Gates sway over the infant microcomputer industry greatly increased when
Microsoft licensed an operating system called MS-DOS to International Business Machines
Corporation—then the world’s biggest computer supplier and industry pacesetter—for use on its
first microcomputer, the IBM PC (personal computer). After the machine’s release in 1981, IBM
quickly set the technical standard for the PC industry, and MS-DOS likewise pushed out
competing operating systems.
Largely on the strength of Microsoft’s success, Gates amassed a huge paper fortune as the
company’s largest individual shareholder. He became a paper billionaire in 1986, and within a
decade his net worth had reached into the tens of billions of dollars—making him by some
estimates the world’s richest private individual.
Beginning in 1995 and 1996, Gates feverishly refocused Microsoft on the development of
consumer and enterprise software solutions for the Internet, developed the Windows CE
operating system platform for networking non computer devices such as home televisions and
personal digital assistants, created the Microsoft Network to compete with America Online and
other Internet providers, and, through Gates’s company Corbis, acquired the huge Bettmann
photo archives and other collections for use in electronic distribution.
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg is the co-founder and CEO of Facebook, one of the world’s largest social
media networks. He is a self-made billionaire and one of the most influential people in the world.
At a very young age he developed interest in computer programming , and also learned it, and at
very young age of 12 he made his 1st ever messaging app called “zucknet” which was made for
interoffice communication which was further used in his father’s office.He already started
showing signs of success at a very young age and was also doing great in his academics.
After completing his higher education, he got admission in Harvard University,
where he made a computer program which helped other students to choose their
subject of interest from the given list, but unfortunate the university made it
shut.In high school, Mark Zuckerberg developed an interest in computer
programming. He started making small programs and selling them to classmates
for $5 each.
Mark Zuckerberg always thought of making a social media platform of youth
around and with the support of his friends he was successful in doing so, he
launched ” FACEBOOK” which was only for the Harvard students, this platform was
officially launched on June 4th.
The company quickly grew in popularity and now has over 2 billion users worldwide. In addition
to being CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg is also a board member of several other
organizations, including The Giving Pledge and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
After the 2nd year of his college he made a very bold decision of dropping out, in order to
concentrate on Facebook, and guess what his decision was so right, his patience , passion and
hard work all those things that he had given to his “dream project“.
Currently more than 2.85billion people are active on Facebook. He is now known as one of the
influential personalities and one of the richest and youngest entrepreneurs in the world wide.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://www.britannhtica.com/biography/Mark-Zuckerberg
tps://www.biography.com › business-figure › mark-z...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates
https://www.forbes.com › profile › richard-branson
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Branson
https://chamber.org.tt/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/2008-sabga.pdf
https://trinidadyouthcouncil.org/aleem-mohammed/
https://www.islandoutpost.com/about-jamaica-luxury-hotels/our-founder/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Blackwell
https://bobmarleyfoundation.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_Grant
http://www.eddygrant.com/store/index.php?route=information/information&infor
mation_id=8