Community Responsible Innovation in Portugal: Building the Country’s Competitive Advantages

The history of industry in Portugal is tangled. In the early 1990s, the government was letting non-viable, uncompetitive companies collapse while targeting those bolstered by European funds for their “success stories.” One of the findings of a study on Portugal’s competitive advantages emphasised the importance of the country’s traditional industries for the development of new technologies and industrial sectors. This article is a historical account of community innovation in Portugal during the 1990s. It analyses two illustrative case studies: the Portuguese automobile cluster and the AutoEuropa development in Setúbal; and the Portuguese science and technology sector exemplified by the Taguspark – a science and technology park in Oeiras near Lisbon. It is argued that Portuguese industry had to develop strong links and establish viable R&D relationships with science and technology institutions in order to help strengthen the country’s competitive advantages in an increasingly globalised economy.