Tool maps 160 co-creation and knowledge transfer organisations in Portugal

Since 2016, the National Innovation Agency (ANI) has been characterising the ecosystem of organisations that promote innovation among the business community in Portugal. This work identifies as Technological Organisations all entities that, with or without legal personality, have their own competences and resources for the co-creation and transfer of knowledge between the scientific and technological system and the business fabric.

The tool now launched distinguishes between seven types of organisation: Technology and Innovation Centres, Collaborative Laboratories, Other Technology Enhancement and Transfer Centres, Technology Transfer Offices, Organisations Integrated into Higher Education and R&D Institutions, Technology-Based Incubators and Science and Technology Parks.

The work identifies 160 organisations, which employ around 12,700 human resources (in 2023), and generate a volume of revenue of around 1.35 billion euros in the period from 2020 to 2023.

This edition introduces methodological updates, namely the distinction between Technology Organisations (actors) and Technology Infrastructures (facilities), in line with the recent European approach. Another innovation is the publication of the report in PowerBI format, allowing the reader to personalise their analysis, namely in terms of the type of Technological Organisations, the NUTS II Region, the Technological Domain, the Area of Application or the Date of Incorporation of the Organisations.

This exercise is an important tool to help companies identify potential partners for the creation of technological solutions, as well as the organisations themselves, helping to strengthen partnerships. It also helps policymakers to understand and maximise the role of these players.

The survey also sought to identify the Technological Infrastructures made available by the mapped Organisations, according to the following definitions:

• Laboratories or other Test Facilities: physical or virtual environments in which companies, academia and other organisations can collaborate on the development, testing and introduction of new products, services, processes or organisational solutions in selected areas. Laboratories or Test Facilities generally operate on three levels: laboratory environment, simulated environment and real environment. They often also provide access to other scientific and technological infrastructures and complementary support.
  
• Clean rooms: enclosed spaces that allow extremely low levels of contamination to be maintained. These are well-insulated rooms maintained under strict control systems against air contamination and in which other relevant parameters, for example temperature, humidity, pressure or lighting, are controlled as required.
  
• Pilot plants or demonstration plants: pre-commercial production lines that produce small volumes of new technology-based products, or operational units that use new technologies to demonstrate and test a particular industrial process or technology, prior to its commercial implementation on an industrial scale. They include small-scale systems or operational units designed to replicate and simulate key aspects of a larger industrial process. Their main purpose is to collect data, assess the feasibility and efficiency of a process, test it under real conditions and identify potential challenges before moving on to a full-scale implementation.
  
• Digital Infrastructures: digital environments designed to carry out trials, tests or simulations in various areas of technology and engineering. They provide a platform for exploring and validating hypotheses

With regard to Technological Infrastructures, as these are recent concepts applied by the European Commission, the information gathered was not sufficiently reliable to be included in detail in this work. ANI stresses that, in the future, it will continue to work on these concepts and methodologies so that the facilities and strategic resources made available through the Technology Bodies can also be mapped and characterised, in order to gain a better knowledge and understanding of this ecosystem.

This work aims to take a step forward in identifying these strategic players, providing a broad and diverse base of information, taking into account the interests of the readers, whether they are Technology Organisations, Companies, Researchers or Policymakers.

For more information on updating the Mapping of National Technological Organisations and Infrastructures, see here.

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