'Half the time. Half the cost. Double the quality.'

If there’s one thing the Cayman Islands government has done right, historically, it’s been to get out of the way when private investors approach with proposals to bring money into the country.

By being relatively flexible to new business needs, the government has helped the islands leverage its meager resources far more effectively than one would expect from white sand, blue waters and a menagerie of endangered species.

Beginning in the 1960s with the establishment of Cayman’s international financial services industry, and through the build-up of Cayman’s luxury tourism sector, the government has been — if not of active assistance — at least accommodating to the requirements of entrepreneurs, professionals and developers.

This approach has earned consistent dividends for Cayman in terms of growing the financial services and tourism sectors generally, but also, more recently and specifically, in facilitating the creation of Cayman Enterprise City, enabling the construction of Health City Cayman Islands and, hopefully in the near future, securing a new cruise port and East-West Arterial highway extension.

Health City — backed by mega healthcare providers Narayana Health and Ascension Health Alliance — promises to have as great a positive impact on Cayman as any single project in the islands’ history, right up there with the Dart Group’s developments and anything in financial services.

While surgical patients will boost Cayman’s visitor arrival numbers and swell local coffers with taxes and spending cash, the most exciting aspects of Health City are the planned medical school and healthcare research facilities.

More than simply generating revenue, the education and research facilities, we hope, will become incubators for Caymanian brain power, leading to as-yet-undreamed-of spin-off technologies and commercial ventures.

In fact, Health City suggests a new identity for the Cayman Islands: As a cradle for cutting-edge technology, innovation and new ideas that can become our biggest exports.

This is exactly why Ascension Health has invested tens of millions of dollars in the Health City project: To experiment with new healthcare practices that might then benefit its much larger operations in the U.S. It can do so without the burden of excessive regulation, labor unions and an abundance of internal bureaucracy that is always in place in a $20 billion-plus organization.

Health City’s appraisal of Cayman’s qualities can be applied outside of the healthcare field. What’s stopping us from approaching companies, such as Microsoft, Virgin or Amazon, and promoting Cayman as a laboratory for their experimental products and services?

Cayman should have, for example, been an active participant in the “procurement process” by which Google selects cities to roll out ultra-high-speed Internet. There’s nothing holding us back now from calling up Tesla or Ford and inviting them to make Cayman the first country to move toward 100-percent electric cars. In that sense, our diminutive size works in our favor. Think of the worldwide positive publicity it would engender.

Why not contact Dow Chemical Company and pitch them the idea of buying Grand Cayman’s water and sewerage assets to further their research into providing the globe with potable water — a massive challenge in the 21st century.

The country’s special economic zone, Cayman Enterprise City, seeks to attract companies to Cayman, on the condition they won’t be doing business in Cayman. The principals might want to elaborate on that model, with government’s assent, of course, and actively seek out major companies to Cayman, precisely to do business in Cayman.

We are enamored with the words of Dr. Robert Pearl, CEO of The Permanente Medical Group (the largest medical group in the U.S.), uttered during his recent visit to Cayman for the opening of Health City. In bringing new products to market, said Dr. Pearl, the model going forward must be: “Half the time. Half the cost. Double the quality.”

If Cayman were to adopt this mindset, the country would be perfectly placed to become the world’s laboratory for innovation.