1. No economy generates and sustains competitive companies without a strong and specialized support ecosystem.
The most competitive economic centers have a highly evolved business support ecosystem, made up of specialized service providers that allow any start-up or large global company to focus on its business challenge and obtain contributions of the utmost relevance to build competitive differentiators. None of these companies succeeded alone. Even after reaching large dimensions, these companies maintain their competitive advantages with the support of a sophisticated set of specialized PSPs.
The Portuguese economy and Portuguese companies will be the more competitive the more work is done from a perspective of building businesses in an ecosystem logic and strengthening existing ecosystems. Why? What made companies successful in the past is not what will make them competitive in the future..
Digital technology has changed the way we compete, due to the impact of the internet and various processes and interactions of a digital nature. Data is the new measure of value, ushering in a new competitive dynamic. The combinatorial effect of various technologies – digital, materials, additive manufacturing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, among others – is opening up a new world of possibilities, full of opportunities and threats and rewriting business models.
But not only. The massification of the internet has put consumers in the driver's seat. It is consumers who guide the products and services that companies produce. And they are also increasingly “prosumers”, producers of content, services and products that they make available via the internet.
In such a specialized, complex and fast world, a company is no longer an independent strategic actor. Its success depends on structured collaboration with other companies in an organized ecosystem. But these ecosystems are also changing, from linear to highly complex, digitally connected, and towards platform models, where the increasing concentration of data generates network effects and enormous market power.
Added to this new competitive context are structural factors of the Portuguese economy (namely bureaucracy and the high level of indebtedness, which condition investment), and the ineffectiveness of Portuguese justice, which reduces the contractual reliability that companies need, as well as conjuncture factors global challenges associated with a context of recurrent geopolitical, energy, financial, economic, pandemic and supply chain crises.
2. Professional service providers (PSP) are indispensable accelerators of the agile and necessary adaptations to maintain and increase the competitiveness of companies, cities and the Portuguese economy.
In the new digital economy of the century. In the XNUMXst century, PSP assumes a triple relevance, especially those with intensive knowledge, namely in terms of strategy (new business models), innovation (speed of supply), operations (automation and requalification), internet, software development (platforms, data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity), and digital interface equipment: i) for their direct contribution to GDP and for qualified employment, ii) for the multiplier effect on the competitiveness of the rest of the economy, regions and cities, SMEs and strategic sectors and companies for the economy, iii) for its ability to attract and rapidly develop the best talent who later moves to the management of high potential companies or new start-ups.
PSPs are essential to prepare companies for the future, helping to innovate and implement transformations that bring them competitive advantages in an increasingly turbulent environment.
Without a strategy to strengthen the PSP sector to a level that exists in innovation centers and in the most advanced world economies, the Portuguese economy and companies will have greater difficulties in addressing the major transformations induced by the 4th Industrial Revolution associated with the emergence of data as a new factor in the competitiveness of companies, the restructuring of work and employment due to artificial intelligence and automation, and adaptation to a zero-carbon economy, to highlight just some of the enormous disruptions underway.
Evidently, this new competitive context adds structural factors of the Portuguese economy, namely bureaucracy and the high level of indebtedness, which condition investment; and the ineffectiveness of Portuguese justice, which reduces the contractual reliability that companies need; as well as global conjunctural factors associated with a context of recurrent geopolitical, energy, financial, economic, pandemic and supply chain crises.
Carlos Valleré Oliveira, managing partner LBC
Read the book “71 Voices for Competitiveness: It's mandatory to grow”, the third volume of the partnership between LeYa and ISCTE, which brings together seven dozen leaders from various organizations and relevant entities in Portuguese society.