The emergence of a Technological region - The Beira Atlântico case
The great integration context transformation of the Portuguese economy produced a deep crisis resulting in a large industrial restruturation, where one of the main strategies to overcame this situation is based on a reinforcement of the competitiveness of our products and services by the improvement of the innovation and technology inserted.
The proposed Technological Master Plan and the Competitive Poles are the basis of the Government policy to develop the Portuguese economy in the next decade, so is interesting, in this context, to analyse the Beira Atlântico case.
The Beira Atlântico Region has resulted from a Candidature Program to a municipality (Cantanhede), that has been considered as a challenge, in 1999, in a region economically and socially poorly developed, where the centralism and isolation of Coimbra, and the policy and territorial orientation of Aveiro towards the North region, were major constraints for building a prosperous community.
The process began in a smooth mode, but integrating immediately a group of six municipalities, and an insertion perspective including the area integrating the cities of Coimbra, Aveiro and Figueira da Foz.
This region had a small level of industrialisation; the supporting services were of low quality and technologic intensity, with the emigration of the best human resources produced at the Aveiro and Coimbra Universities to Lisbon, Oporto or foreign countries.
Although, Coimbra presented a great vitality in areas like education and health care, most of the industry was in decline and with great survival problems, namely in the textile and ceramics sectors. The industrial specialization of Aveiro in telecommunications, software, mechanics and ceramic, with some difficulties had well supported the overall crisis.
The territory between these development points, was somehow aside at the regional economy level, what was eventually defeated by these six municipalities and the project of Science and Technological Park they successfully presented to the Government.
This first success as allowed the dissemination of a development process based on technology, innovation and Knowledge as the only way of years of under development recovery and improve the region's municipalities social structure, offering better life quality and support to young entrepreneurs and science workers.
The model upon which the process was based, has been a model of competitiveness and partnership among all the actors, namely the municipalities and universities, likewise the Silicon Valley in California, what eventually had granted the attention of several high class R&D Centres of Coimbra and Aveiro, developing an very dynamic entrepreneurship climate.
As result, a diversity of initiatives of infra-structures, international investment attraction, business development and research projects had a significant impact on the region's culture and way of life, with repercussions on the politics, economics and institutional levels, creating an ambition and dynamics unusual within our context.
Main Projects under development
By the end of this year (2006), there will be in operation or in final phase of erection four new incubator installations ( IPN, AIBAP, Figueira Paraindústria, WRC), a transfer technology centre (BIOCANT), a business park (Montemor-o-Velho) and a technology and science park ( Beira Atlântico Parque).
Additionally it are in development several new Technologies projects, with different origins, but mostly linked to start-ups from the Coimbra and Aveiro Universities, from Portuguese and foreign investors, from which we shall name the AGNI(Fuel Cells), NEC and Siemens(Telecommunications Software), Critical Software, Micro I/O, and others.
Some Venture Capital firms had begun its activities in the region, and is noted that local entrepreneurs and investors are looking for applications on high tech projects, and we expect several operations lead by "business angels" in the future.
The development of other projects and partnerships more market and Industrial R&D oriented by actors of the science and education systems is another point of this process. We shall refer the BIOCANT project, a partnership of Municipality of Cantanhede, Beira Atlântico Park and Coimbra's University Centre of Neuro Science, the Nanotechnology Industrial Research Centre and the Open Software Competence Centre resulting of a protocol between Beira Atlântico Incubator and Aveiro University, and the Cultural Industries Thematic Park developed by the Montemor-o-Velho Municipality, a private association and the Coimbra university.
We should point out, also, two projects with great dynamics, one in Coimbra, iParque, linked to the health sciences and another in Aveiro, supported by PT Inovação, specialized in information technologies, the Inova Ria.
Expected Developments
The region culture has experienced a deep modification, with the understanding by most of the political and entrepreneurial community the need of an innovative and technological investment as basis for a better economic competitiveness and structural enterprise attraction, granting new jobs and a better quality of life of their citizens, assuring the maintenance of their best human resources.
As result of this new territorial development vision, we have noted a diversity of initiatives of various typologies, aiming the attraction of qualified investment, the promotion of new companies lead by young professional and researchers, widely in the Beira Atlântico region.
The installation of two or three centres of excellence on the applied research and technology transfer in areas such as the Nanotechnology, the Biotechnology, the Information and Telecomunications Technology, cultural products and services, and in the health care, could allow this region to develop a basis of world level quality researchers, creating synergies and complementarities that can result in high technology clusters in specific activity areas, integrating knowledge and core competences, not usual in a such territorial dimension.
As example we could nominate:
- Bio - informatics, Bio - sensors and Bio - materials
- New materials and coatings
- New energies
- Multimedia products and e-learning
- Etc.
Conclusion
The process summarized above has resulted from a group of circumstances that reinforced each other, namely:
- High scientific level of the region's Universities
- Poor Job demand for graduated students and researchers
- Technological entrepreneurship dynamics
- Development policies from new municipality leaders
- High quality communication infra-structure
- EU grants for R&D infrastructure investment
- Quality of life - great regional centres in the vicinity
This environment allowed, with a strong leadership and promoting and catalyst elements, to begin a process of municipality partnership, and from these to the knowledge centres, creating an information and projects flow that were the basis for the competitive strategies design, that supported by political decision makers, have been established as different and concurrent initiatives. This project has been successful because it was a joint objective open to new regional actors.
The created environment, highly dynamic and in rupture with the conservative and rural tradition, has driven very sensitive transformations at the entrepreneurial and local politics culture, making the innovative and technological based investment attraction, with higher added value, a priority for any local politic decision person.
We shall keep in mind, in any case, that this innovative process has high level of risk, so it should be needed to design some alternative paths, that could minimize the impact of a less well succeeded Project.
Making the right choices in a era of global knowledge, technology and economy is indispensable to assure the competitiveness and sustainability of the Region and, also, the projects economic viability.
The lack of economic conglomerates with global intervention in Portugal, limits the ambition of any entrepreneur or politic actor can insert in this initiative, being the safest route the support of the local scientific community, although supported in projects with international reconnaissance.
The hard acess to international markets and to their distribution channels, should advise the sellection of market niches of high added value, basically oriented to industrial markets, namely the intermediate components or products, and based in technologies and knowledge from research groups with good international evaluation.
In this case, the existence of two nucleus of strong basic knowledge, the health care and the telecommunications, and an industrial specialization in metallic components and in ceramics should be the initial point for research, namely in the excellent science centres of Aveiro and Coimbra Universities, namely in the field of Communication and Information Technology, Biotechnology and Nanotechnology.
The risk evaluation should be carried out with care, taking special attention to the apparent unproblematic and success that some projects are involved.
So, finally, the major difficulty in this process will be the choice of emergent technologic areas to invest and the definition of the global competitiveness based specialization.
Victor Cardial, June 2006