Four decades of innovation and entrepreneurship
On October 8th, the second session celebrating the 40 years of INESC will take place. Few things have remained unchanged in these four decades, as witnessed by those who are reading these lines and have participated in the creation of the institution, in the 1980s. Technologies, tools, people and institutions have all changed. What remains the same is the enthusiasm that led the founders of the institution to believe that knowledge, competence and hard work could make the country change for the better. INESC, which has become a group with institutions in Lisbon, Porto and Coimbra, in addition to other locations that, over time, have followed their own ways, has always been a place where knowledge was applied to create innovation and value for the society.
This first resulted of this push for innovation was the creation of a new institutional model, based on private non-profit organizations (NPOs), independent and autonomous, but with strong links with universities. In time, this model became the most popular model for research and development institutions in Portugal. There are now hundreds of NPOs that have copied or adapted the institutional model first pioneered by INESC.
But the push for innovation also led to the creation of new startups, based on the knowledge and technologies developed in the research institutions of the INESC group. The session on October 8th focuses precisely on this process of creating value by incorporating knowledge and intellectual property in new startups, created by entrepreneurs who were once part of INESC, and who have themselves become national references in entrepreneurship and innovation. We invited the CEOs of eight companies, from the more than two dozen enterprises that were created as a result of INESC’s activities since 1980. Four of these companies were created more than two decades ago, and the other four were created only in the last decade. The CEOs and founders of these companies will share with us the experience and memories that always remain from a process that is often painful but always instructive.
We hope that these four decades of experience inspire the next entrepreneurs, those who will believe enough in their ideas to push them to face the challenge of creating, promoting and developing new companies. With the evolution of technology and the different and more open economic framework of today, we now live in an environment that is increasingly competitive and challenging but also, curiously, more amenable to the creation of innovative solutions with global impact.
Arlindo Oliveira
INESC Diretor
IST Professor
Upcoming Events
NII International Internship Programme Presentation and Q&A by Emmanuel Planas
On April 30, Emmanuel Planas, the acting director of the Global Liaison Office (GLO) and responsible for the internationalisation program at the National Institute of Informatics (NII) in Tokyo, Japan, will give a presentation to introduce the NII and its internship program to INESC-ID students and IST’s Master’s in Computer Science students.
Date & Time: April 30, 14h00
Where: Sala Polivalente, Técnico – Taguspark
“The NII International Internship Program is an exchange activity with students from institutions with which NII has concluded a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreement. This incentive program aims at giving interns the opportunity for professional and personal development by engaging in research activities under the guidance and supervision of NII researchers.
The NII Internship Program is open to Research Master’s and PhD students who are currently enrolled at one of the partner institutions that have signed an MOU agreement with NII.”
Educational Workshop on Responsible AI for Peace and Security (UNODA)
On June 6 and 7, The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) are offering a selected group of technical students the opportunity to join a 2-day educational workshop on Responsible AI for peace and security.
The third workshop in the series will be held in Porto Salvo, Portugal, in collaboration with GAIPS, INESC-ID, and Instituto Superior Técnico. The workshop is open to students affiliated with universities in Europe, Central and South America, the Middle East and Africa, Oceania, and Asia.
Date & Time: June 6 a 7
Where: IST – Tagus Park, Porto Salvo
Registration deadline: April 8
Summary: “As with the impacts of Artificial intelligence (AI) on people’s day-to-day lives, the impacts for international peace and security include wide-ranging and significant opportunities and challenges. AI can help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals, but its dual-use nature means that peaceful applications can also be misused for harmful purposes such as political disinformation, cyberattacks, terrorism, or military operations. Meanwhile, those researching and developing AI in the civilian sector remain too often unaware of the risks that the misuse of civilian AI technology may pose to international peace and security and unsure about the role they can play in addressing them. Against this background, UNODA and SIPRI launched, in 2023, a three-year educational initiative on Promoting Responsible Innovation in AI for Peace and Security. The initiative, which is supported by the Council of the European Union, aims to support greater engagement of the civilian AI community in mitigating the unintended consequences of civilian AI research and innovation for peace and security. As part of that initiative, SIPRI and UNODA are organising a series of capacity building workshops for STEM students (at PhD and Master levels). These workshops aim to provide the opportunity for up-and-coming AI practitioners to work together and with experts to learn about a) how peaceful AI research and innovation may generate risks for international peace and security; b) how they could help prevent or mitigate those risks through responsible research and innovation; c) how they could support the promotion of responsible AI for peace and security.”