Policies to Foster the Creation of Research-Based Spin-offs in Portugal

Abstract

This paper presents a brief overview of the main government and institutional policies and mechanisms that promote and support (directly or indirectly) the creation of research-based spin-offs, as well as of the institutional changes that have been introduced to facilitate the commercial exploitation of results from academic research. In addition, there is an attempt to conduct a very preliminary assessment of some of the results achieved by these policies, within the limitations of the information available. It is concluded that the conditions for creating a firm that brings to the market knowledge or technology originating from academic research substantially improved in the last decade. Technology-based (and sometimes also scientific) entrepreneurship has been the object of several government policies and incentives and have also attracted the attention of other public and private actors, who launched a variety of programs to fund and otherwise support firm creation. This also coincided with institutional changes that facilitated the entrepreneurial initiatives of academic scientists. Although this appeared to have had positive effects in terms of the number of research-based spin-offs supported, the paper concludes, based on the limited data on results, that there is still work to do to improve the quality and effectiveness of the assistance provided. One step in this direction is a greater concentration and coordination of efforts.