Cotec Portugal

COTEC Portugal - Associação Empresarial para a Inovação was created in April 2003, following an initiative of the President of Portugal with the support of the Prime-Minister and a group of companies established in Portugal, which gross added value represented, in 2002, about 14% of the Portuguese GNP. Since COTEC Portugal began, the President of Portugal has been its General Assembly President. COTEC now has 122 Associates.  

With the mission of «promoting the competitiveness of companies established in Portugal, through the development and the diffusion of a culture and a practice of innovation as well as of knowledge, especially that generated in our country», COTEC Portugal is a not for profit business association that counts on the support of its associated companies and all agents of the National Innovation System (NIS) to accomplish its goals through the implementation of initiatives in a variety of areas.

For the first time, Portugal witnessed the creation of a private project (where a significant part of the enterprise sector has organized to promote national innovation) with special characteristics, such as to start-up following an initiative of the President of Portugal and to have the support of all agents of the NIS, which allow this associative structure to join conditions to lead the changing process in Portugal considered on its mission. COTEC Portugal believes that this leadership must be won, trough the intelligibility, accuracy and effectiveness of its intervention. And this is a commitment assumed by its Board of Directors.

The plan that COTEC Portugal has proposed to materialize is part of a social context of extreme complexity, involving a large amount of potential actors (companies – being ones associate members of COTEC Portugal and others not –, associative structures, public institutions – being ones related to the central power and other to the local power –, etc.) with different and potentially conflicting objectives, constraints of various orders – economic, social, educational and cultural – that determine the more significant changes to perform are necessarily medium or long-term, and with very different evaluation points of view.

Accordingly, it is absolutely necessary for COTEC Portugal to act in network within the NIS, which implies to know, seize and strengthen the work developed by the public and private organizations on the field that have proven to be competent, while challenging other institutions that, not having adapted to change, need encouragement and support to achieve it.

COTEC Portugal knows that only with a culture of accuracy, of concentrated action and with a policy more focused on “doing” than “promising” can be an important part of the NIS. This is the way of being and the culture that have been guiding COTEC Portugal in its work so far and that will continue to advocate in the future; within borders, with the support of the associate members and of the institutions and actors of the NIS, and, at European level, through the special partnership with its spanish and italian counterparts: Fundación Cotec and Fondazione Cotec.