The Minister of Economy and the Sea defended this Friday in Leiria the need for new ideas to “transform the current economic model” and revealed that he would like to be able to register a patent a day.
“Last year we registered 7.6% more patents in the European patent system. There were 312 patents. My dream is that we register one every day. That is a big goal that I would like to see moving forward and then we can transform the patents in developing companies, in activities in companies that solve the many problems we have,” said António Costa Silva during the presentation of the results of the project ‘Link Me Up — 1000 Ideias’.
“There are still 20,000 people away from reaching five million working people in Portugal. In terms of employment and labor market they are at the maximum level. About 34% of these five million people, about 1.7 million people, are people with higher education,” he emphasized.
For Costa Silva, employees with higher education make companies “more dynamic, more innovative and more competitive.”
With the ‘Link Me Up – 1000 Ideas’ project, where 1,706 ideas were supported, the socialist ruler believed that “ideas are especially needed to transform the current economic model”, which “is based on the consumption of materials that are highly polluting substances”.
“We must develop on the basis of biological products, new solutions and biomaterials that biomolecules are great solutions for transforming the economy,” he explained, noting the “several ideas in various areas related to the bioeconomy and the economy of the sea” specified.
Noting that one of the next major crises could be the food crisis, António Costa Silva recalled that “algae and microalgae can provide new lines to feed the human species”.
The Minister of Economy and the Sea declared that society has made a “capital mistake based on arrogance”: “we have built a civilization completely separated from nature and which today is based on the frenzied consumption of fossil fuels, causing degradation, also unprecedented in Earth’s climate system.”
Citing a study by the US Geological Survey, Costa Silva said that “over the past 60 years, in percentage terms, we have consumed 618 times more oil, a thousand times more gas, 756 times more nickel and 1,500 times more bauxite.” which is ‘unsustainable’.
The project ‘Link Me Up – 1000 ideas’, a support system for the co-creation of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship, brought together the Polytechnics of Leiria – coordinator -, Beja, Bragança, Castelo Branco, Cávado and Ave, Coimbra, Guarda, Portalegre, Porto, Santarém, Tomar, Viana do Castelo and Viseu and aimed to strengthen the “collaboration of these institutions, as agents for the promotion of qualified entrepreneurship, of co-creation with business, involving teachers, students and companies, organizations, for the generation of innovative ideas and the creation of new companies,” says a note from the Polytechnic University of Leiria.
This initiative won the national stage of the EEPA 2023 – European Enterprise Promotion Awards on October 31, in the category “Promotion of the Spirit of Entrepreneurship”, said the President of the Polytechnic University of Leiria, Carlos Rabadão, recalling that this was a competition launched by the European Commission and took place in the 27 Member States of the European Union, as well as in the 11 associated countries of the COSME program – Program for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and SMEs.
Source: DN
