Innovation Europe > News > Innovation EU Vol1-1 > Portugal

It shows above average scores in “ICT expenditures”, whch reflects the strong policy commitment towards the information society, which has been one of the main tenets of the Technological Plan.

Looking at Portugal’s innovation performance, as shown by the EIS, two main findings emerge: (1) a weak overall performance, with most indicators below the EU average, especially with regard to education and skilled human resources, business R&D involvement and intellectual property, and (2) some recovery, but at too slow a pace to enable a fast catching-up. To overcome the main challenges, there is a need for a committed and systemic innovation policy. This requires the fostering of linkages and collaboration among the main players of the National Innovation System, the strengthening of human resources skills, the promotion of companies’ in-house capabilities and a significant increase in public administration productivity.

Main innovation challenges

• Improving human resources capabilities and strengthening linkages.
• Promoting the emergence of new knowledge intensive players.
• Fully exploiting the opportunities stemming from the implementation of the NSRF 2007-2013.

Action

A new round of innovation support measures has just been launched, so it is therefore too early to appraise its effectiveness and to indicate new avenues for innovation policy.

A key issue is the interaction, under the CFOP, between company incentives and collective efficiency initiatives: the two areas should be related in a way that might be simultaneously consistent and flexible, to learn from experience. The design of the CFOP is clearly influenced by the learning from earlier experiences. A more demand-side approach is followed, avoiding the supply-side orientation of earlier innovation policy in Portugal. Unfortunately, the technological bias seems to persist, at least in the labelling of some measures. There is a need to overcome linear models and to understand that innovation is not just of a technological nature: it may also concern marketing and organisational issues. Therefore, the three incentive systems under CFOP, while separated, should be inter-related to fully capture the integral, though multi-faceted, nature of innovation in companies.