A research fellow at an economics center in Western Australia who soon will join the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization has offered ways Hawaii may grow its economy through diversification.
Steven Bond-Smith, a senior research fellow at Curtin University’s Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre in Perth, Western Australia, told Hawai’i Public Radio that Hawai’i’s tourism industry is conducive for transition into new business activities.
“When you’re going to get serendipitous, innovative ideas in Hawaii, they’re more likely to be in something that’s highly related to the visitor industry,” Bond-Smith, who will be an assistant professor at UHERO, said. “So ideally, you want to be supporting the sort of activities and the sort of businesses that might start off that would branch out from the exiting knowledge base that Hawaii’s got in (the) visitor industry.”
Hawaii could host a new industry of training world-class hospitality chefs who would learn from the existing knowledge base of chefs in the state, Bond-Smith said. Hawaii also has an opportunity to facilitate business meetings as a halfway point between China and Brazil, he said.
“Hawaii’s existing visitor tourism industry has some capabilities that could be offered to help facilitate these business transactions, “Bond-Smith said.
Bond-Smith, who according to his LinkedIn profile will join UHERO in August, wrote the brief “Location, Location, Location! A uniquely Hawai‘i economic development strategy.”