Much has been said about the Crisis in Science in Portugal. The message coming from the large international markets is very clear – only with a serious commitment to intelligent Science will it be possible to develop an intelligent economy, with effects on the market. Portugal needs to be on this path and it is important to show that there is a new capital of nationally based strategic competence capable of taking on this challenge. In a time of complex crisis, the objective of investing in Smart Science involves mobilizing national skills for a New Agenda. Portugal must know how to seize this new opportunity associated with European options and the integrated participation of companies, universities and innovation centers will be fundamental.
The Portuguese Economy is clearly faced with a challenge of effective and sustained growth in the future. The numbers from the last twenty years could not be more evident. The inability to modernize the industrial sector and a new approach, based on innovation and creativity, to global markets, associated with the maintenance of the paradigm of an internal economy of services with a limited reproductive nature, created the illusion at the end of the 90s of artificial growth based on cyclical consumption that was manifestly incapable of projecting itself into the future.
Portugal needs to enhance its active presence in the New Smart Networks of Innovation and Competitiveness, with all the consequences from the point of view of impact on its economic and social matrix. Public policy must be clear – priorities must be defined in terms of structural investment in sectors and territories, otherwise objective results will not be achieved. We are in time for this opportunity. Clear definition of the “Competitiveness Poles” in which to operate (they will have to be few and have a clear impact on the economy); selection, according to criteria of strategic rationality, of the territorial areas where it will operate and effective mobilization of “active networks” for the commercialization of existing skills to capture “Innovation FDI”.
Foreign Direct Investment plays a unique role in leveraging change in this context. Portugal needs a clear way to successfully enter the Innovation FDI route associated with attracting Companies and R&D Centers identified with the most dynamic sectors of the economy – Information and Communication Technologies, Biotechnology, Automotive and Aeronautics, among others. This is a distinct approach, led by “active networks” operating in global markets involving the main sector protagonists (Leading Companies, Universities, R&D Centers), with public agencies playing an important role in contextualizing the conditions for successful customer approaches.
A New Economy, capable of guaranteeing a sustainable New Economy, will have to be based on a logic of focusing on clear priorities. Ensure that “Innovation FDI” is vital in attracting Skills that induce an active structural renewal of the national economic fabric; effectively mobilize the “Centers of Competence” for this active approach in the Global Market – but do so taking into account criteria of strategic rationality defined at the outset, according to global public policy options, which take due account of the need to maintain coherent levels of social and territorial cohesion.