There is an invisible muscle driving innovation in Portugal

Portugal has approximately 40,000 exporting companies, but only one in ten develops its own technology. This "technological autonomy deficit" limits the added value of exports and "reduces companies' ability to differentiate themselves in foreign markets." This diagnosis is made by COTEC Portugal, the leading Portuguese business association dedicated to promoting innovation and business technological cooperation. For over 20 years, COTEC has been working to anticipate and reflect on key innovation topics that impact corporate competitiveness, activating collaborative platforms and networks, and contributing to improving public policies on innovation.

Jorge Portugal has been working precisely to foster the business innovation ecosystem, "correcting structural deficits and fostering a more robust, innovative, and collaborative business base." Speaking to SAPO, the man who has been driving COTEC Portugal's strategies for a decade explains how some of the association's initiatives have been transformative for the economy, highlighting the results of the Innovative and Innovative Evolution Statutes. "Developed by COTEC in conjunction with the banking sector, they have enabled the identification of more than 1,800 innovative companies, already representing 30% of all corporate investment in Research & Development (R&D) this year, or approximately 8 billion euros."

In a country where innovation is so often lost between declared intentions and the harsh statistics, COTEC is building, almost silently, an invisible but crucial infrastructure for the competitiveness of the Portuguese economy. Led by companies but with solid connections to the public sector, the association has been building a coherent agenda to strengthen what it calls "business innovation capital," working on seven fronts with the ambition of "transforming knowledge into growth," combating structural deficits in funding, talent, academic connections, and even territorial vision. Financial, human, territorial, ideas, collaboration, collective intelligence, and public policy monitoring are the key areas identified, and Jorge Portugal explains how COTEC Portugal is working to shift the country's innovation paradigm.

Attacking chronic investment anemia and having PhDs where they count

In a business ecosystem that still resists serious investment in R&D, COTEC went to the root: money—or rather, the lack thereof—promoting "new financing solutions for Research and Development activities, by characterizing the fabric of innovative companies and thus supporting the launch of innovative financial instruments and strengthening ties with the banking system and the Banco Português de Fomento (BPF)," explains Jorge Portugal. Because innovation without financing is nothing more than a pipe dream, in addition to identifying innovative companies with the aforementioned programs, COTEC Portugal built bridges between banks and companies, which translate into "guaranteed credit lines for innovation projects of SMEs and mid-sized companies, developed technological risk mitigation mechanisms, and committed to the coordination between public guarantees and private funds to leverage investment in R&D and innovation." These instruments comprise a financial arsenal that aims to break the vicious cycle of "chronic undercapitalization of innovation, in an economy where financing for innovation investment still accounts for a fraction of total business investment financing," emphasizes Jorge Portugal.

On the other hand, securing financing isn't enough; it's necessary to ensure that companies are well-served by those capable of developing innovation, creating added value and leveraging export surpluses. If the best-prepared generation ever doesn't stay in Portugal, the country won't be able to take advantage of the excellent scientific talent it produces every year. Human capital is lost—to foreign countries or to inertia.

"Reality shows that only 18% of innovative companies in Portugal have PhDs on their staff, which highlights the enormous growth potential of this sector," considers the general director of COTEC Portugal. "Cooperation with universities is equally limited: only 7% of innovative companies maintain systematic collaborations with science and technology institutions." COTEC's response? Bringing academia and companies closer together, through advanced training models in a business context. To ensure results, in addition to awareness-raising sessions with companies, in partnership with the FCT, COTEC created a platform last year to match 100 companies with 100 PhD holders, fostering the connection between science and the market.

"COTEC's approach to Academia and the scientific system has been strengthened with the membership of the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria and the Polytechnic of Porto, the two largest Polytechnic Higher Education institutions, and the universities of Coimbra and Católica", Jorge Portugal also points out, highlighting the role of "D100-E100 (100 doctorates in 100 companies) in connecting companies with research problems, talent and the scientific system".

Territorial and ideas capital to mitigate asymmetries

In a small country, paradoxically, inequality in development remains a concern, and these differences have worsened, with the lack of territorial cohesion generating two speeds: Lisbon and Porto are the visible apex of innovation, while the rest of the country awaits development. Innovation is a fast track to progress in these more or less forgotten areas of the country—which is why COTEC wants municipalities to stop being mere spectators and become platforms for open innovation.

"Countering the territorial asymmetry in investment in innovation, strengthening the role of territories as platforms for open innovation and inter-institutional collaboration" is an objective that explains the work that COTEC Portugal has been pursuing with municipalities and intermunicipal communities (CIM). "This approach resulted in the first municipality joining COTEC and in projects with the CIM of Cávado and the Leiria and Oeste region, for which a competitiveness study with prospective scenarios was developed," he further explains, highlighting the need to increasingly "design and implement local strategies to attract innovative business investment, structure innovation ecosystems around specific territorial competencies, and train municipal staff in the management of innovation projects and business clusters ."

It's a movement that points to a more decentralized—and intelligent—vision of innovation policy. But if territoriality is a factor to be addressed, capturing the capital of ideas is crucial. And in this area, there's a natural aptitude that Portugal has neglected: we have a lot of talent in life sciences, but we lack scale and commercial vision. How can we resolve this dichotomy? For COTEC, the answer lies in developing initiatives to accelerate technology startups in healthcare and biotechnology, but also in creating business mentoring programs and connecting with venture capital, and in the ability to scale science-based companies.

These are steps COTEC is taking to relaunch its ambition and make a qualitative leap toward the commercial valorization of academic knowledge. "This program will build on existing entities in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, building on the COHITEC program, a pioneering initiative to valorize academic knowledge," Jorge Portugal explains. "This sector is particularly strategic, and the national scientific system has produced a highly relevant body of research, although its commercial value is low. It has the potential for Portugal's global positioning, benefiting from the convergence of clinical knowledge, applied research, and emerging entrepreneurial talent," he explains. The objective is clear: to transform cutting-edge research into products, companies, and exports, globalizing national science.

Collaboration at all levels: Ibero-Italian innovation axis, coherent public policies and learning from those who already do it

It is precisely in this logic of scaling innovative companies that the association has a significant asset: the COTEC platform, which brings together Portugal, Spain, and Italy. But how can this potential be fully leveraged? For Jorge Portugal, taking this step was essential to fulfilling the goal of empowering innovative SMEs, and to this end, a tailored protocol was signed at the last COTEC Europe meeting: a discreet project but with strategic potential that materializes as a trilateral platform for technological cooperation between Lisbon, Madrid, and Rome, bringing together leading companies, universities, and public innovation support agencies from the three countries, with a view to sharing best practices and jointly developing advanced technologies.

It's economic diplomacy at the service of innovation, an attempt to establish Southern Europe as a relevant hub on the map of European technological competitiveness. "While not replacing other existing collaborative platforms, the trilateral platform will promote joint projects and the sharing of best practices in advanced technologies," explains the Director-General, highlighting this instrument as a tool for cooperation between companies from the COTEC countries, economic diplomacy, and "strengthening Southern Europe's relational capital in innovation."

Aware that Portugal has approximately 40,000 exporting companies, but only 10% develop their own technology, resulting in a "lack of technological autonomy that limits the added value of exports and reduces companies' ability to differentiate themselves in foreign markets," Jorge Portugal also highlights the importance of the relationship with ANI, IAPMEI, and AICEP, COTEC members. With a firm but collaborative voice, the association positions itself as a kind of co-producer of public policies, taking an active role in guiding them toward concrete results.

Finally, COTEC is committed to the less visible but essential aspect: peer-to-peer learning. Through peer-to-peer platforms, which aim to share experiences and solutions among members, and through the awarding of awards such as the COTEC PME Innovation and Innovation in Internationalization awards, best practices and models of excellence are gaining traction and visibility, fostering positive contagion. In this same vein, the association is launching the new Innovation for Sustainability award and has been boosting its Business Open Days: innovative companies that open doors to other entrepreneurs, researchers, and decision-makers to showcase innovation in action, promoting "a culture of benchmarking, transparency, and continuous improvement." The goal is "collective intelligence," that is, raising the minimum acceptable level of business innovation in Portugal, contributing to the development of better executives and guiding organizations toward innovation results with added value and an export-oriented DNA.

"This framework for COTEC's intervention reflects a coherent effort to create systemic innovation capital, involving the business community, academia, financial institutions, local authorities, and public decision-makers," Jorge Portugal explained to SAPO, highlighting the assumed mission: "to create the conditions for more Portuguese companies to transform knowledge into sustainable and competitive growth."