Intentionally thinking glocally to innovate

“Hey, young world, the world is yours.”
This lyric from Damian Marley’s song ‘So a Child May Follow ‘ echoed in my mind during the 2019 graduation season. It’s a simple phrase, but it carries a powerful charge—especially for a generation stepping into a world shaped by multiculturalism, digital connectivity, and global possibility.

Many of the students I teach, including my daughter, graduated from community college that year. Their lives are already glocal—rooted in local experience but shaped by global currents. My daughter, for example, carries the lived experience of being Vincentian, Jamaican, and American. She, like many in her generation, interacts with multiple cultures daily through social media, education, and community life.

As someone who has spent nearly three decades working in higher education across three national contexts, I offer this message to graduates:
Think intentionally in a glocal way.

Sociologist George Ritzer defines glocalization as “the interpenetration of the global and the local, resulting in unique outcomes in different geographic areas.” Most of us do this intuitively—borrowing ideas from beyond our borders and adapting them to our local realities. Glocal thinking sits between two extremes: one that seeks to homogenize the world into a single set of norms, and another that resists all outside influence.

In today’s information and communication revolution, creativity and innovation are prized. The creative economy is worth billions, and it thrives on people who produce and distribute ideas across borders. Intentional glocal thinking gives graduates an edge—whether they’re entering business, education, the arts, or public service.

The Caribbean, in particular, has shown its global impact in music, athletics, culture, and academia. Yet we also hear about high youth unemployment across the region. The solution lies in unlocking the creativity and skill already present in our youth. Society and government have provided the opportunity for higher education. Now it’s up to graduates to use it.

I emphasize intentional because some drives are innate, but others must be cultivated with patience. It’s like mango season. You spot a ripe mango high in the tree. You throw stones, shake branches, climb halfway—but it won’t fall. Then, with time and a gentle breeze, it drops. That’s how some ideas ripen. That’s how critical thinking works.

Really productive thinking doesn’t end with graduation. Ideas can become oppressive orthodoxies if we don’t challenge them. Intellectual humility and rigor take time to develop. Picking mangoes is a metaphor for problem-solving: do you climb, use a stick, throw a stone, or invent a drone? Someone might even build a robot that selects only the ripe ones. That’s innovation. That’s glocal thinking.

I say glocally and not globally because those rooted in local wisdom have something vital to offer. Caribbean culture itself is a hybrid of European, West African, Indigenous, and Asian influences, blending into something unique. That hybridity is a strength.

These days, mangoes are prized. I buy mango, peach, and mango coconut drinks at the supermarket. But in my youth, mangoes were either food or ammunition to fend off a ferocious dog. A mango tree in full season was a menace—too many fruits, too many flies. Yet it was also an abundance.

We had a mango tree in front of our yard, which we called the No-Name Mango. It wasn’t one of the well-known varieties like Celon, Debique, or Horse mango. I later speculated it was a hybrid—a spontaneous cross between nearby trees. Biologists tell us that spontaneous hybridization is real. Nature mixes things up. So do cultures. So do people.

To the graduates: you are part of a generation that mixes cultures naturally. You are hybrid thinkers, global citizens with local roots. As Damian Marley sings, the world is yours. Wherever you go, whatever you build, think glocally. Make things for the world. And as the Good Book says, your gifts will make room for you.