EIT Community RIS Hub in Portugal

Despite being considered a Moderate Innovator according to the European Innovation Scoreboard in 2023, Portugal has revealed itself as a booming European innovation ecosystem considered 12th on the Top 100 Emerging Ecosystem Ranking of Startup Genome. Its capital city, Lisbon, was awarded the European Capital of Innovation, considered #6 on the Startup Heatmap on Europe according to DEEP Ecosystems Report 2023, and hosts Web Summit, the biggest European conference that brings together the tech industry, an event that has contributed a lot the affirmation of the country as a Startup Nation.

The country is home to more than 4000 startups and together they represent around 1% of the country GDP, according to Informa D&B 2022. The same report allows us to conclude that Portuguese startups generated more than 2 million in turnover, represented more than 1 million in services exports and created 25 000 jobs in the same year. There are also 6 unicorns with Portuguese DNA operating and the Portuguese scaleup ecosystem is growing twice as fast as European average.

It’s also important to highlight that Portugal has an above-average position in international talent rankings. According to the Institute for Management Development (IMD), Portugal is ranked in 25th in the World Talent Ranking, 9th in the English Proficiency Index of Education First and 13th in the OECD Indicators of Talent Attractiveness.

There are also several universities in the country that are ranked above average and gaining recognition by the excellence of their academic and research activity. Their investment in R&D is increasing and the number of patents has been on the rise too. They also play a critical role in fostering entrepreneurship through different areas of contribution such as educational programs, acting as research hubs that drive the creation of startups and providing support to the development of business ideas through university-linked incubators and accelerators which are some of the best ranked in the country.

Corporations are also engaging more and more in R&D activities and across different sectors investing in collaborative efforts with startups and scaleups.

Public policies and incentives are also on a positive trajectory of support to innovation and startup creation. In 2023 a few policies contributed to that, namely: the recognition status of startup and scaleup with tax incentives to their specific activity, a change in the stock option regime in startups, the strengthening of the tax incentive benefits to R&D (SIFIDE) and several public instruments to invest in startups, scaleups, foreign entrepreneurs, unemployed people pursuing a business idea, as well as incubators and accelerators. 

Lastly, the capital for startups and scaleups in Portugal underwent a significant decrease in the past few years according to data from Dealroom. This has a huge impact on the ecosystem given that venture capital is the most common type of investment available for innovative startups and scaleups.

Nevertheless, there are still some setbacks to be address namely the lack of collaboration between academia and industry that could facility a more market pull and less technology push orientation, the lack access to funding especially in very early stages of development and on the scaleup phase, the need to professionalize and bring an international perspective to practices of relevant stakeholders of the ecosystem and insufficient collaboration among those same stakeholders. Therefore, the presence of and EIT Community RIS Hub in Portugal can contribute positively to impact some of the above mentioned challenges.