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

Chairman of COTEC,
Secretary of State for Energy and Innovation,
Director General of COTEC,
President of the Steering Committee of the SME Innovation Network,
President of the Executive Committee of BPI,
Entrepreneurs and Managers,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Once again I join the COTEC SME Innovation Encounter, this year dedicated to the topics of networks covering entrepreneurial innovation and innovative collaborative management.

I greet all the entrepreneurs and managers who are here today. Your attending this Encounter is a sign of your exertion in a crucial area for our collective future.

We are still feeling the effects of a financial and economic crisis that further stressed the negative trends of the Portuguese economy and the difficulties of many of our companies, with special regard to those that are smaller sized.

It is well known that, in an economy such as ours, only through the strengthening of the companies’ export capability can we achieve levels of economic growth compatible with the expectations of improvement in quality of living and social participation of our people.

Throughout the last few years, we have watched a weakening in the level of investment directed towards the production of goods and services which compete with international production, and a worrying lack of competitiveness in several productive sectors, with visible reflections in the erosion of export capability and in the loss of market share.

It is urgent and vital that a new route is found to increase productivity and to strengthen the competitiveness of our economy.

I cannot see a better alternative to overcome low productivity than that which is based on the use of a greater intensity of knowledge and on the permanent investment in innovation.

We thus need to accelerate the pace of change and modernization of our productive fabric, providing it with more innovative enterprises and with companies which are technologically more advanced.

Only by way of achieving greater competitiveness relative to our contenders can we mitigate the structural constraints of the Portuguese economy, which the current crisis has made more acute, specifically at the level of the deficit in the public accounts, the imbalance of external accounts and in foreign indebtedness.

The weakness of our trading relations can only be reduced if companies improve their competitive capability compared to foreign production. This is the true measure of economic competitiveness and the reflection of the efficiency of investments in innovative systems.

It is during the recessive stages of an economic cycle that the needs and the challenges which innovation can answer appear more clearly. This is where the stimulus lies for the materialization of new ideas which will fructify in the post recessive stage.

The following query must thus be placed: are your companies, especially those which are smaller sized, duly prepared to answer this stimulus?

I understand that many of our entrepreneurs and managers believe that an unfavourable economic climate is not the better time to agree to investment in innovation.

But if there is a lesson we can learn from the past, it is that economic cycles operate as motors which energize the capability of reinvention of the economies. Opportunities are not rare in periods of crisis, and those companies who are able to take these advantages are those which may achieve greater benefits.

We must look ahead of the current crisis and be able to overcome the natural feelings of fear with self confidence, in our merits and in our capabilities.

Entrepreneurs and Managers,

I renew the appeal which I launched three years ago, that COTEC associates lead, in their companies, the deepening of a culture which helps muster the Portuguese for change.

A culture of achieving better and doing differently, a culture which searches merit and excellence.

A culture which is the result of an attitude which does not waste time with grumbling or moaning, which does not live in the dependency of grants or in being subservient to political power.

This is the culture that brings about successful innovation and which already exists in many of our companies.

It is to these companies, mainly small and medium sized, and to their leaders, that I address a word of recognition and encouragement for the effort which they have been developing to resist the effects of the crisis and the temptation of immobility.

I have visited several of these companies and know that, notwithstanding the limitation of resources, financing constraints and lower foreign demand, they have been capable to generate distinctive factors and growth opportunities, asserting themselves internationally and even in the global market.

In an economy more than ever based on knowledge, the size of companies, such as that of countries, is not in itself determining. What is determining, in effect, is the opening to innovation and to the world, the will to undertake, the capability of integrating knowledge and to transform it into new business and into new working methods.

There is a point I must emphasize. It will be from small and medium sized companies and from local communities that will arise the supplement Portugal requires to return to a path of economic and socially sustainable development.

This is the reason for the Route to Innovatory Local Communities, which I recently launched, with the objective to promote an active front of economic recovery, through the encouragement to strengthen the productive base of the local authorities and the competitive capability of small and medium sized companies to act in foreign markets. Within the definition and execution of economic policy, we must never lose sight that 94 per cent of Portuguese companies have less than twenty employees.

The company “We Do”, distinguished today with the SME Innovation Prize, provides us with a good example of a culture which must be disseminated. Its business activity has resulted in qualified employment, strong technological content, competitiveness and sustained growth in intensely competitive global markets.

This company has also the great merit of having mustered its resources and the necessary talent to achieve, in just a decade, international recognition. For this achievement please accept my sincere congratulations.

Entrepreneurs and Managers,

In a strongly competitive world, but which is simultaneously a world of increased complementarities and interdependencies, it is imperative to provide a culture for innovation, cooperation and exchange of information between entrepreneurs, and the development of partnerships and contact networks, both nationally and internationally.

I congratulate COTEC’s officers. Their activity is, more than ever, in line with our reality.

I salute the continued growth of COTEC’s SME Innovation Network. But the Portuguese economy still needs many more really innovatory companies. For this reason I want to emphasize the importance of COTEC’s programme which aims to sensitize more than five hundred small and medium sized companies to apply innovatory tools of internal management.

With reference to this, I want to again recall the opportunity which represents, for our country and for our companies, participation in the European Area of Knowledge and Innovation.

COTEC may carry out, also in this area, a decisive role, easing the access of national companies to the available tools for developing the transfer of technology and knowledge.

This is, in effect, an opportunity of great interest in order that the Portuguese economy approaches a prime position in the dynamics of European innovation.

COTEC knows it can continue to count with my wholehearted support in the development of its mission.

To all those present, thank you very much.