Welcome to the Official page of the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to start by thanking IBM for inviting me to participate in this business forum and to address such a distinguished audience.

The shape of the global economy has been changing very fast.

The traditional economic and trade dominance of the United States, Europe and Japan is giving way to a “multi-polar world”, where developed economies can no longer take their long-standing lead in innovation for granted.

This is a world with unprecedented levels of connectivity and convergence, arising from the power of Information and Communication Technologies;

A world of increased economic and financial openness and interdependences;

A world where access to new sources of efficient capital and labour, as well as to emerging pools of talent and innovation, is now shaping global competition and business organization.

Complex as it is, this environment opens in fact a wide window of opportunities for countries like Portugal. Our open economy, geographical situation and the historical habit of looking to the world in a global way may turn up to be significant advantages.

I believe that competing under a global innovation agenda raises, however, three major challenges for our policy-makers and businesses:

The first is to motivate new generations of start-ups to be “global-born” companies.

The second is to provide the right incentives to retain the new generations of talented entrepreneurs and to attract high-value skills.

Finally, going global should also mean gaining access to global sources of capital together with the capacity to persuade investors around the world that successful high growth businesses can be generated in Portugal. This is already the case with biotech’s or semiconductors.

I have sponsored, last year, the creation of a Globalization Council to allow the reflection of influential leaders of multinational companies on how to promote and engage their organizations, and society at large, in the endeavour of a pluralistic globalization.

I wish this IBM Business Forum in St. Petersburg a full success.