What growth model for Portugal? – Observer
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I am from the 60s/70s generation, I took a Management course at Católica and saw the country develop with the dynamics of multinationals and the support of the European Union. After so much investment, and so many generations so well prepared to embrace the future, I feel uncomfortable with the anemic state of our economy. Situation diagnoses abound and the statistics are increasingly dismal.
We easily create illusions and are a people of hardworking people. But illusions and effort do not mean efficiency, productivity and growth.
Culturally, we have both ingenuity and collective inefficiency, and the results turn out to be meager. Why? Because there is little food fed by a critical awareness of alternatives and opportunity costs, well-founded and with impact measures. In other words, you throw money at problems and hope that they are resolved. Do not resolve themselves!
Recently, the term “investment consortia” has entered our business lexicon, but are we prepared to collaborate and explore collective synergies? What are we doing to develop this strategic competence that we still haven’t demonstrated?
When we talk about entrepreneurship and innovation, the promising generation of beginners technologies and the six unicorns that are already worth more than 34 million euros and give Portugal so much notoriety. They are companies “born global”In every sense, they have agile, highly efficient associations, and are scaling their business to succeed in the global market. Are we doing what is necessary to facilitate the growth of these companies and retain value in the Portuguese economy?
In McKinsey’s article “How Europe’s top tech start-ups get it right”Portugal does not appear among the“12 main countries of origin of the main European start-ups and scale-ups”. Worth reading…
And in addition to the beginners, What we have? We have medium and large companies that make a significant contribution to the national economy. But, according to Pordata, productivity per hour worked is 33% below the EU27 average and stabilized at the 1995 level. To create more value, these companies need to make changes that do not happen overnight. They can accelerate this process by investing in knowledge and skills development, working in a network, and capitalizing on the experience of those going forward. And have the institutions and agents promoting economic development already repositioned themselves to facilitate this structural transformation?
According to Informa DB, 40% of national exports are ensured by companies with foreign capital. The business fabric has just over three hundred and thirty thousand companies, and only fifteen hundred medium-sized ones, motivated by 45% of exports. Many have gone international in the last fifteen years. And you can count on the fingers of your hands those who have already made direct investment abroad.
Insufficient internationalization is, in my opinion, the biggest deficiency of our economy.
We know that the risks of internationalization are very high, it is necessary to have financial strength to withstand the cycles of entry into new markets – why don’t entrepreneurs collaborate to explore synergies and mitigate the risk?
We also know that scale is significant, but entrepreneurs claim that our tax system encourages the proliferation of small and medium-sized businesses – can it change this reality?
In short, we need culturally open leaders, prepared associations and favorable conditions for the internationalization of our companies.
There is so much to do that we only have to wake up every day with a sense of mission and a universal truth in mind to give us encouragement: the path makes itself walk, and in a network.
There is a way!