We must think bigger about ourselves

Ms Lisa Hanna’s column in this week’s Sunday Observer offers a timely and important intervention in the national conversation about Jamaica’s economic future. It also reinforces an argument we have consistently made: Being small is not a barrier to competing successfully in the global marketplace. Thinking small is.

Drawing on her transition from politics to building a global beauty business, Ms Hanna provides a valuable perspective on what it means to create, move, and capture value in an increasingly borderless economy. Her experience should prompt policymakers and business leaders who have not yet done so to look beyond the traditional measures of economic progress and ask a more fundamental question: What are we building that the world wants to buy, and how much of that value will remain in Jamaican hands?

That question is particularly relevant given the stark imbalance between Jamaica’s merchandise imports and exports. A country that imported roughly US$7.5 billion in goods in 2025 while exporting about US$1.65 billion cannot afford to be satisfied with economic stability alone.

And, as Ms Hanna correctly observes, stability is merely the foundation; eventually, we have to build the house.

For too long Jamaica’s economic ambitions have been framed primarily around creating jobs. While jobs matter enormously, employment cannot be the ceiling of our aspirations. We should also be focused on creating more Jamaican-owned enterprises capable of growing beyond our shores, owning intellectual property, attracting more investment, increasing exports, and capturing a greater share of the value created along global supply chains.

This is where Ms Hanna’s insistence that Jamaica must “think globally and act locally” resonates so strongly. Our size should not be treated as a permanent disadvantage. In fact, it can be an advantage. A country of three million people ought to be able to experiment, coordinate, and respond to changing circumstances more quickly than much larger economies.

The digital revolution makes that opportunity even greater.

Technology has dramatically lowered some of the traditional barriers to global commerce. A small Jamaican company can now reach consumers in New York, Toronto, or London through a smartphone, social media, and e-commerce in ways that would have been unimaginable a generation ago. The challenge is not merely having access to these platforms, but developing the skills, products, financing, infrastructure, and business discipline to exploit them.

This brings us to another particularly important point in Ms Hanna’s column: Education must catch up with the economy our children are entering.

Her call for schools to concentrate on equipping students with skills for a digitally-driven world is sound advice. Teaching children for yesterday’s economy while asking them to compete in tomorrow’s world is simply untenable.

Coding, robotics, digital commerce, data literacy, artificial intelligence, and other technology-enabled skills must become integral to preparing young Jamaicans to create, rather than merely consume, in the new economy.

Indeed, our objective should be to nurture problem-solvers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and future owners of intellectual property and businesses.

Ms Hanna is also right that speed matters. In a world being transformed rapidly by AI and shifting consumer behaviour, an education system, regulatory framework, or investment programme that takes years to respond to risks becomes irrelevant.

We therefore welcome the thinking behind her column because it aligns with an idea Jamaica desperately needs to embrace: We must think bigger.