The Institute of Island Studies launched “Entrepreneurship in Small Island States and Territories” on Friday.
The UPEI community, led by the Institute of Island Studies, celebrated the launch of a new publication about the creative side of enterprise in small island states and territories on Friday.
“Entrepreneurship in Small Island States and Territories” documents the considerable resourcefulness islands and territories display in facing the challenges of size, scale and peripherality.
Baldacchino edited the book, and is an Island Studies Teaching Fellow at the university.
“In spite of much received wisdom, being on a small island is also a business opportunity, a condition that permits specific island-based businesses to emerge, thrive, and survive.”
The contributors to this book explore the local ingenuity, coupled with strategic investments and the support of the diaspora, that has led to a suite of products and services from citizenship and higher-level internet domain names, to place-branded foods and beverages, and from electronic gaming to niche manufacturing.
The book includes a chapter by Dr. Jim Randall at UPEI on the growth of the biosciences on Prince Edward Island, and specifically on the company BioVectra Limited.
Dr. Robert Gilmour, UPEI’s vice-president of research and graduate studies, said “the impact of entrepreneurship on P.E.I. in particular has been felt through the development of a number of small and medium size enterprises, including the over 40 companies that comprise the PEI BioAlliance.”
“In addition, UPEI has the capacity to transform the entrepreneurship of its faculty into real-world outcomes through Synapse, its recently restructured technology transfer unit.”
“Entrepreneurship in Small Island States and Territories” dispels the myth of farming and remittances being the only components to small island survival by showcasing an aspect of life in small island states and territories that is rarely documented or critically reviewed.
