The Caribbean’s metaverse evolution accelerated due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper focuses on the metaverse, XR, and NFT and emphasises the Caribbean’s contribution to the virtual environment. A bibliometric analysis of metaverse-themed research identified the rapid increase in publications in 2021 and 2022 and that titles with XR (AR, VR or MR) occurred three times more than blockchain (including NFT). An evolving dataset was created based on a continuous scoping literature review of Industry 4.0 and its enabling technologies. This enables the creation of a new definition of the metaverse, understanding the UX benefits of XR and its applications' areas of foci, highlighting investment in XR-based projects, and illustrating the Caribbean-themed NFT and XR projects. This dataset revealed that UX benefits are linked to XR element features that are relevant, contextual, customised, hands-free and intuitive. It also revealed that XR applications have areas of foci that can enable machine control or data interface, designing and testing, remote support, education, customer engagement, remote collaboration or entertainment and escapism. Analysis of 54 XR papers revealed that the most popular area of focus was education (including training, learning and understanding). An evaluation of global investments in XR development showed funding ranged from USD 70K to USD 100M, and there needs to be focused financial support for Caribbean projects. This justifies continued research into factors influencing funding and encouraging Caribbean XR development. In addition, this research promotes regionally developed XR projects and NFTs. The paper's originality is the reductionist definition of the metaverse: a space designed for users by users, which can satisfy whomever, whatever, however, wherever and whenever. It manifests the user's extended reality, facilitated through XR technologies that enable Industry 4.0 (I4.0). As such, the metaverse can be considered the practical implementation of I4.0.

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XR provides benefits in innovation, competitiveness and sustainability that offset disruptions in and enhances physical reality. The Caribbean’s metaverse evolution started before the pandemic with the development of XR projects and creatives’ NFTs. The physical isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the Caribbean’s interest in the metaverse and XR. In 2020, only 83 participants from Trinidad and Tobago entered the CARIRI AR/VR Challenge to demonstrate their XR ideas. There is a need to encourage and accelerate regional XR development. The purpose of this research is to explore Caribbean XR developers’ experiences to provide an understanding of the factors affecting their XR development. This paper addresses the question: What factors of influence will encourage the development of XR projects in the Caribbean to advance their metaverse development? Online questionnaires issued to Caribbean XR developers from July to December 2021 obtained responses from 77 participants throughout 13 regional countries. The primary data were statistically insignificant and skewed towards two countries (Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago). Comparative and inferential analyses identified factors of influence, industry sectors, and design foci. The originality of this research is an XR development strategy that incorporates the I4.0, UX, and financial strategies. It establishes the XR project design foci (the user, the purpose and the location). The factors of influence minimum criteria and the industry sector(s) influence each design focus. An initial reference list of industry sectors is education (the preferred option), healthcare, tourism, culture, manufacturing for export, construction, entertainment, game development, agriculture, and environmental protection. The strategy’s value is in enabling content creators to design XR applications to meet consumers’ needs and increase the regional adoption of XR. The impact of the research on the Caribbean is to facilitate a path to the regional metaverse evolution. This research identified the need for a regional XR development policy.

Innovation is fundamental for companies to exploit changes in their environment and maintain a competitive advantage. Access to information and the ability to quickly utilise available resources are key enablers for in-company innovation. Both of these are elements associated with Industry 4.0, which can now be identified as a facilitator of innovation. The Industry 4.0 framework integrates evolutionary advances in manufacturing, production technologies, information technology, Internet of Things (IoT), distributed processing power, and visualization tools, which facilitate organizations to more effectively create enhanced value propositions for their customers, encouraging innovation in processes and products. Three local firms are analyzed, and opportunities for innovation are clearly identified in the process of transitioning to Industry 4.0 through reconfigured value chains; the creation of a cluster to facilitate the development of innovative cloud-based solutions; and product configurator and an augmented reality interactive display.

The rise of plug-in battery electric vehicles presents an excellent opportunity for small island developing states such as those of the Caribbean. The vehicles offer improved energy efficiency, enhanced energy security, and reduced foreign exchange expenditure. Incentivizing the uptake of electric vehicles seems to be an obvious policy decision, but there could be unintended consequences. Real-world driving cycles are essential for validating electric-vehicle energy and economic benefits using simulation studies. In drive-cycle methodologies, the microtrip method is the preferred choice for countrywide representation and is ideal for fuel consumption estimations. This paper reports on the first such real-world driving cycle for the Caribbean, specifically Trinidad and Tobago, which is developed using a microtrip construction method with a novel approach to establishing a slope profile. Highway and suburban segments show some distinct characteristics, including relatively high average accelerations and decelerations in the highway and suburban cycles and low average speeds of 40.2 km/h (highway) and 21.74 km/h (suburban). The driving cycle is unique but reasonable when compared with others derived in emerging economies.