Dr. Basil G. F. Springer is a Barbadian who trained as a mathematician, statistician and operations research scientist. He practised as a Biometrician in the Faculty of Agriculture, UWI, Trinidad; the Caribbean Community Secretariat; Food & Agriculture Organization; and the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute, between 1968/77.
He was a Management Consulting pioneer (1977) in Barbados and established Systems Caribbean Limited which was sold, in 2000, to local interests as the largest indigenous business development consulting firm in the Caribbean. During this period he specialized in Project Management primarily in the areas of Agricultural Development and Tourism Linkages to other sectors in Caribbean economies.
Dr. Springer, as a Consultant with the Caribbean Development Bank (1998-2001), had a mandate to establish an initiative to diversify the economies in the Caribbean by developing what are now called ‘sunrise’ enterprises to replace the fading ‘sunset’ industries such as commodity sugar and bananas. To this end he established and now leads the charge, as a change-engine consultant, with the private sector-led Caribbean Business Enterprise Trust Inc. (CBET).
CBET has repositioned itself to promote ‘The CBET Shepherding Model™ which partners with the entrepreneur (or institution) from concept to sustainable business success. CBET is in its sixth year and its legal domicile is in St. Lucia. CBET has developed several business plans for the sugar cane, cotton, agri-business, renewable energy, recreation, media, sports, ITC, financial services, health, education and film sectors, with prospects in the air transport sector and music sectors.
Now that the CBET model has been demonstrated to be a useful model, Dr. Springer is leading CBET into an Enterprise Development mode which is characterised by the effective optimal partnership between the entrepreneurial opportunity, business systems and appropriate financial instruments to stimulate economic growth and reduce poverty as the entrepreneur embarks on a journey from business concept to sustainable business success. He was Co-Executive Producer of “Hit for Six” a cricket themed full length feature film produced by the Barbadian company Blue Waters Productions Inc. which had its world première in April 2007.
He is a proponent of the Smart Partnership philosophy at the regional, national and company level as a necessary condition for holistic sustainable socio-economic development, which embodies the human factor and its socio-cultural characteristics. Dr. Springer was Chairman, Barbados Agricultural Marketing Corporation (1981/4). He was Chairman, Barbados National Productivity Council (1996/2001), was Deputy Chairman, Barbados National Bank (1994/2003) and a member of other public and private sector boards. He was founder President of the Barbados Cancer Society and served in that capacity over the period 1980-2000. He served on the Council until 2006. He is a director of The Caribbean Institute of Certified Management Consultants. He is a regular public speaker, a weekly newspaper columnist (since 1993) and a Rotarian. He is a founding Trustee of the Barbados Queen Elizabeth Hospital Trust (Jan 2007).
He was Chairman of The Future Centre Trust since 1995 and continued as Chairman of Counterpart Caribbean (the successor organization), a charitable trust and a member of the Counterpart International (www.counterpart.org) sustainable development family. Counterpart Caribbean is in the process of developing The Future Centre into a fully fledged educational and recreational tourism attraction that will foster holistic environmental (spiritual, physical, economic, social and cultural) sustainability in the years to come. He has been involved in CMEx (www.caribbeanmediaexchange.com) since its inception in 2001. In the 2000 Independence honours, Dr. Springer was awarded the Order of Barbados, Gold Crown of Merit (GCM).
