The Caribbean–LATAM innovation corridor must produce, not perform

By Jonathan Joel Mentor and Emerson John-Charles
For Digital Nomad Weekly — Dominican Today Regional Edition

From Emerson John-Charles
The Caribbean’s global image — pristine beaches and warm hospitality — has long defined its exports. Yet as the world automates and digitalizes, that image has become a constraint. Tourism, once a strength, now risks becoming a trap: an economy of service without sovereignty.

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, awarded to Philippe Aghion, Peter Howitt, and Joel Mokyr, reaffirmed that innovation-driven growth is not optional — it is the only durable path to prosperity.

But the Global Innovation Index tells a different story for our region: Jamaica (83rd), Barbados (84th), the Dominican Republic (97th), and Trinidad and Tobago (114th).

These gaps are consistent and critical: minimal R&D spending, negligible venture capital, and near-zero high-tech manufacturing. The data reveal a painful truth — we produce ideas, but not industries. Our innovation input scores lag our output scores, meaning we generate sparks of creativity but fail to sustain them as scalable enterprises.

Trinidad and Tobago offers a telling snapshot. In October 2025, the Shaping the Future of Innovation Programme — a USD $10 million grant initiative launched in 2021 — came to an end. While it financed promising SMEs, the country’s innovation ranking still hit its lowest point in history. The signal is clear: capital without continuity is noise.

Still, there is progress. Trinidad and Tobago became the first Caribbean nation to adopt ISO 56001 as a national innovation standard — a bold step that could set the framework for accountability and measurable outcomes. Yet a standard without operators is scaffolding without architects. Here lies the opportunity for deeper cross-border alignment.

The Dominican Republic, through its participation in MIT REAP and the United Nations World Summit Awards, offers a complementary case study. Both nations are learning different dialects of the same language: innovation as infrastructure. If competition evolves into collaboration — anchored by real accountability — the region can finally convert innovation from slogan to sovereign strategy.

From Jonathan:

Innovation without velocity is vanity.

Across the Caribbean and Latin America, governments host forums, issue press releases, and celebrate “ecosystem growth” — yet their economies remain structurally unchanged.

The Dominican Republic stands at the center of the region’s digital migration corridors, but its startup economy still functions as a museum of pilots rather than a market of products. Through ProDominicana, the country has exported the language of innovation, not its returns. MIT’s Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (REAP) and participation in the United Nations World Summit Awards proved Dominican capacity for visibility — not yet for velocity.

Even Successment’s Provoke Visibility Campaign, nominated by the United Nations World Summit Awards, served as a case study in how visibility engineering must be converted into economic inclusion. Visibility is not victory until it pays dividends in jobs, exports, and investment.

The Dominican Republic receives over US $10 billion in remittances annually — nearly nine percent of GDP. That flow represents diaspora-backed venture capital waiting for structure. Add the digital-nomad economy, which injects high-value foreign income directly into services and creative sectors, and the country possesses two under-leveraged sources of innovation funding.

If policymakers connected these flows to Dominican startups and Dominican accelerators, the nation could build an export-driven innovation economy financed by its own citizens — not forever dependent on external grants.

It is time for regional innovation to graduate from celebration to calibration.

Blueprint for a Functional Innovation Economy

Failure Patterns

1. Fragmented ecosystems — agencies and accelerators chasing overlapping mandates.
2. Vanity over value — success measured in events and awards instead of capital raised or jobs created.
3. Externally funded, internally hollow — international donors front the money; domestic institutions absorb the credit.

Outcome Metrics That Matter

• Export-ready startups graduating from Dominican accelerators.
• Private capital raised per public dollar invested.
• Innovation-linked employment sustained beyond 24 months.

Policy Shifts for the Caribbean–LATAM Corridor (and How to Implement Them)

1. Tie standards to funding accountability.
   Adopt regional benchmarks — ISO 56001, MIT REAP, and WSA — as eligibility criteria for innovation funding from IDB Labs, BCIE, and national development banks.
   How: Establish a Regional Innovation Compliance Framework audited annually to score funding efficiency and ecosystem ROI.
2. Channel diaspora and digital-nomad capital into structured innovation funds.
   How: Create hybrid investment vehicles matching every US $1 of diaspora capital with public or multilateral co-funding. Extend digital-nomad visas with innovation credits directed toward certified accelerators and VC funds.
3. Export innovation services, not just talent.
   How: Establish Innovation Export Zones — tax-preferred districts where consulting, creative, and data firms sell globally under incentives once reserved for tourism.

Yet, even as the Dominican Republic brands itself as a startup hub, its own institutional accelerators still confuse optics with output.

Cree Banreservas, the nation’s flagship accelerator, remains the pre-seed gatekeeper but misses the mark by chasing political validation over venture viability — producing founders skilled in presentation, not performance.

Meanwhile, Punta Bergantín, touted as the “Silicon Beach of the Global South,” is building hotels rather than venture funds. Without capital pipelines to turn real-estate branding into R&D financing, the Dominican startup dream risks becoming a tourism campaign with Wi-Fi.

The Operator Era

Firms like Successment and Innovatus Consulting are not commentators — they are instruments of change. The region’s innovation institutions must now collaborate with operators who can translate vision into velocity.

The Caribbean–LATAM innovation corridor is no longer an idea — it is a mandate. Policy must now meet production; the era of performative innovation is over.

Author’s Note:

This marks the first joint publication between Dominican Today’s Digital Nomad Weekly and regional innovation leaders from the Dominican Republic and Trinidad & Tobago — a signal that the Caribbean and LATAM innovation corridor is no longer a concept, but a coalition of builders.

Jonathan Joel Mentor is the CEO of Successment and architect of the Provoke Visibility™ campaign, scaling startups and challenging institutions to evolve. UN World Summit & ADOEXPO Award nominee. www.jonathanjmentor.co

Emerson John-Charles is the Chair of the Innovation Association of Trinidad and Tobago and the National Mirror Committee on Innovation Management at the Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards. He is also Founder of Innovatus Consulting, advancing innovation management and policy design across emerging markets.