During his tenure as President of the University of PEI, Wade MacLauchlan, has spawned a niche of entrepreneurial activities in his province most notably in the area of bioscience. These initiatives, he says, have helped the PEI economy chug along, rather than experience the economic turmoil that other provinces have experienced in the past year.

In an in-depth interview with The Globe and Mail's Report on Business, MacLauchlan talks about how the entrepreneurial spirit on this largely agricultural island allowed the local economy to resist the devastating setbacks of the global economic meltdown.

“We didn't see the peaks and valleys, and the makeup of our economy is different from places that got hit hard,” MacLauchlan said “part of it is that public spending is a big factor here, and governments are now in a stimulus mode.”

But the ‘culture of dependency’ that is reliant on transfer payments is wearing thin he says. Students at UPEI are used to multiple roads to success rather than a single path handed to them from the government. Couple that with the strength of what he calls the ‘Internet economy’ and you have a recipe for sustainability that is unique to smaller communities.

In fact, the advantages of scale can be seen when communities are small rather than monstrous. “If we do it and do it in a sustainable way, we can make a powerful difference” says MacLauchlan “I'm thinking of the things than can be done away from the big centres - like what PEI is doing in biosciences.”

Click here to read the full interview.