In the aftermath of a global pandemic, the road to recovery will undoubtedly run through small and medium-sized businesses. In recognition of this, Amazon Web Services Inc. has announced the global launch of its Think Big for Small Business Program for small and minority owned partners.

The global expansion follows a pilot introduction of the program last August. Think Big for Small Business helps governments focus on emerging enterprises and provides guidance and AWS resources to smaller partner firms while promoting diversity.

“The heartbeat of countries globally are small and medium businesses,” said Sandy Carter (pictured), vice president of worldwide public sector partners and programs at AWS. “During COVID, we learned about what really matters, and this program focuses on those things and helping others. These small and medium businesses are the engine for inclusive growth.”

Carter spoke with John Furrier, host of SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming video studio theCUBE. They discussed how AWS solicited feedback from its partners to design the new program and examples where startups are collaborating with local governments to improve the community.

Support in challenging times

According to data gathered by The World Bank, small and medium enterprises account for 90% of businesses and 50% of employment worldwide, and AWS’ program is an outgrowth of its philosophy of working back from the customer. The cloud giant spoke with a number of its small business partners to better understand how AWS could provide more support in a challenging economic climate, according to Carter.

“We listened to them to see what was happening,” Carter said. “They told us they needed a little bit more help, a little bit more push around programmatic benefits. This program enables us to support this partner group to overcome the challenges they are seeing today in their business, with some benefits specifically targeted for them.”

Those benefits include the creation of a support community based on AWS’ significant presence in both the public and private sector. The company has seen initiatives driven by its partners to help the public good.

In one country, businesses in the private sector were able to provide data to local government in an effort to identify and improve bicycle routes that were particularly hazardous.

“The private sector was providing the data that enabled our public sector application to identify places where bicycle accidents happen most often,” Carter said. “They measured results in terms of ROL — return on lives — rather than ROI, because they saved so many lives just from that simple application. Startups are driving that innovation, and we’re then able to open access to that innovation for governments, agencies, healthcare providers and space.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations.

Photo: SiliconANGLE