Portugal faces major challenges for the coming decade, the most important being the transformation of the productive profile of its economy, the renovation of its production structure to make it more competitive, technological innovation to create products and services with high added value and that can have a multiplier in the economy. This transformation is essential to cope with the less positive characteristics of the Portuguese economy, which is a small economy, with a limited domestic market, a still poorly diversified production structure, the chronic thin capitalization of companies, a high public debt and the urgent need for the country’s need to attract more investment and increase productivity.
To make this transformation, it is essential to continue investing in the qualification of human resources and the skills of employees; promote the capitalization of companies and the change in their financing paradigm with an increase in equity; bet on innovation with the intensification of the technological revolution – robotization, automation, 3D printing, the mass adoption of digital technologies; improving the innovation ecosystem with more efficient interfaces between the production system and the scientific and technological system; improving financial and management literacy; supporting the internationalization of companies with more dynamism and expansion in foreign markets and a national strategy to replace imports.
The future of the Portuguese economy must necessarily consist in creating the conditions for the country to generate greater wealth by leveraging the competitiveness of traditional sectors and consolidating emerging sectors. It must go through creating new engines for economic development and strengthening industrialization capacity and strategic autonomy. It must go through increasing productivity, which has stagnated. It must go through increasing efficiency in the use of resources and energy. It should go through the greater integration of national content in exported products and the emergence of value chains with greater involvement of Portuguese companies in international markets.
The transformation of the productive profile of the Portuguese economy, progress in value chains, the creation of new products and services with high added value cannot be done without reinforcing innovation and accelerating the technological and digital transformation of Portuguese companies. And what is happening in the country at this level is remarkable.
In the last ten years, Portugal has been one of the countries in the world that has increased the most in patent registration. In 2021 this record grew by 13%. The value of Portuguese technology companies, which corresponded to 1% of GDP in 2015, reached 37 billion euros in 2021, which corresponds to 18% of GDP. Venture capital investments in innovation and technological development, which amounted to 20 million euros in 2015, reached 1100 million euros in 2021. Of the 10 unicorns that exist in Southern Europe, seven were born in Portugal. Portugal is on track to establish itself as a “Startup Nation” and the choice of the country by the European Union to host the European Startup Agency, ESNA, is another step on this international path of affirmation.
Portugal currently has an ecosystem of more than 2200 startups, which is vibrant but needs more funding, more connection to international investment networks, more support in multiple dimensions, especially in cross-fertilization with the productive tissue.
Innovation does not depend on the size of a country or its physical geography. It depends on the size of the ideas and the mental geography. The secret of innovation is realizing that there are no experts about what will happen in the future. There are specialists in what is being done today who can have a vision of projecting what is being done today into the future and transforming existing paradigms.
Therefore, in the field of innovation, it is necessary to dare to do and to think, to have tolerance for failure, to accept risks and to work with a mental box in which complacency, conformity and grayness do not enter. No pessimist is a builder of the future. No conformist is a builder of the future.
The young generations of Portuguese entrepreneurs understand this mentality and are on the side of innovation. If the country and the government succeed in creating the right institutional and macroeconomic conditions from the outset, with the right policies and incentives, with a new law for start-ups that will strengthen Portugal’s position on the innovation map and attracting investment and capital. we will be able to further confirm the country as the “Startup Nation” of the 21st century. The future of Portugal in the 21st century will depend on teaching our young people how to set up businesses and not being afraid to invest in innovative ideas. The history of the human species shows that an idea can change the world. And the century of sustainability, of the marriage of the economy with the protection of the environment and biodiversity, the century of digitization, artificial intelligence and data processing, the century of energy transformation and the change in the paradigm of cities, the century of change of production and consumption model, this century awaits ideas that will change the world.
NEW SECTION
Countdown to WebSummit 2022 is a new entry in Diário de Notícias, which previews some of the trends that will mark the next global startup meeting in Lisbon at the end of October. Until the week of the event, opportunities and challenges for investors, inspiring examples and news that will mark the agenda of national and global entrepreneurs are analyzed. The stage passes here, with the reflection of experts in a new series of opinion articles. The article published today is signed by António Costa Silva, Minister of Economy and the Sea.
Source: DN
