Abstract
Trinidad and Tobago's oil and gas industry is well established and is one of the oldest in the world, which has led to a large and growing number of oil and gas Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) firms. These firms provide advanced technological or professional knowledge as intensive inputs into the business processes of other organizations. This paper aims to investigate innovation in KIBS firms in the oil and gas sector in Trinidad and Tobago, and to identify market and government failures that hinder their development to inform policy making. The factors that increase KIBS firm's likelihood of introducing an innovation are firm size, age, number of customers, internal research and development, and the use of external information. Moreover, several market failures hinder their potential for innovation and technology diffusion, including information asymmetries, difficulty in obtaining finance, lack of appropriate skills, and limited partnerships/collaboration with research institutions. This study recommends the development of a national innovation policy and program, greater dialogue, and clear communication channels among all industry stakeholders, and the expansion of several existing local policy initiatives, including trade missions and corporate governance programs and training and skills through tertiary educational institutes.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 112250 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Energy Policy |
| Volume | 153 |
| Early online date | 26 Mar 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:As a consequence, these policies do not result in improved innovation and competitiveness since domestic KIBS firms may not be internationally competitive on price, quality, and delivery (Warner 2011). There is also no national strategy to develop the oil and gas services sector that considers differences in sub-sectors. Currently, individual companies set their own local content levels and there is no medium to create alignment between individual company strategy and national policies and programs. Furthermore, the 2004 local content policy stated an intention to create a secretariat in the Ministry of Energy to support a local content committee, which may not be up and running. There are also currently no policies and programs to increase the export of oil and gas services. One possible solution to address these concerns is for greater dialogue between oil and gas exploration and production firms and local service providers. Currently there is no mechanism in place for sharing information and initiating dialogue among key stakeholders in the energy sector in Trinidad and Tobago.Despite the lack of major policy initiatives in Trinidad and Tobago, its oil and gas service companies have a strong brand in international markets and have the capacity to be internationally competitive. In addition to the ‘local content’ initiative spearheaded by the Trinidad and Tobago government, there has been some government-sponsored initiative to enhance the link between the oil and gas sector and the tertiary education sector, which must be developed further: the UWI, the UTT, and the NESC have been working towards addressing the skills gap in some sub-sectors in the oil and gas industry. However, the programs need to be expanded to cover skills across the entire industry. In addition, a communication mechanism between service providers and the educational institutions is required to identify the skills needed.The funding source is the Inter-American Development Bank.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd
Keywords
- Developing country
- Knowledge intensive business services
- Oil and gas
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Energy
- Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law