Exporting the Portuguese Way of Life
Why do people now want to work and live in Portugal? Maybe the Portuguese lifestyle is the precious raw material that can become the foundation of growth in the economy.
Conrad Fritzsch came to Lisbon to open Mercedes-Benz’ digital delivery hub. He chose Lisbon because the city is — much more so than Stuttgart — a cool place where their engineers, marketeers, and designers, coming from all parts of the world, like to live and work. And, of course, because in this digital world of ours, this sort of activities can take place anywhere they like.
Like Mercedes-Benz, Nestlé, Google, and many other companies are coming to Lisbon to set up highly qualified service units.
Philippe Starck now lives in Cascais and works from home on projects for China or the US because, he says, the Portuguese are the kindest people in the world.
Like him, thousands of artists, professionals and free lancers choose Portugal as the home base for their global activities.
Nova SBE just launched a call for Zero Gravity, a B2B startup acceleration program. There were 335 candidates from 67 countries.
Udai Dhamija, an Indian citizen living in London after studying in the US, joined Julian Quirke, his Irish co-founder, to come to Lisbon to start a recruitment platform for the restaurant and hospitality industry using our country as a testbed. Eduardo Soares, Brazilian, and Uliana Torkunova, Ukrainian, came to launch LetMePark with our corporate partners Brisa and Emel.
Alex Villarreal, a Mexican living in Australia joined the program to push his Augmented Reality into the European market. We can only imagine that there are several thousand more foreign entrepreneurs in all the incubators, accelerators, and co-work spaces that pullulate the Lisbon area…
Lilia Chemetova, Navjeet Singh Gill, Julian Kohl and Chuang Chen Li are taking my Investments class this quarter — four of the 755 international students at Nova SBE (not counting Erasmus exchange students).
These students came to a top business school that gives them access to global careers but also to take advantage of the lifestyle in Lisbon — in Carcavelos soon. Higher education is the second largest export industry of Australia and, if our Architecture, Engineering and Medical schools get to work, it could be big here too.
What is it with these people that now want to work and live in Portugal? This country is attractive in many ways.
Some are often mentioned: a people that is welcoming to foreigners, the sea and the sun, the food and the culture, a peaceful society, quality that is affordable, modern education and healthcare…
But others may matter even more: access to the European single market, a cutting edge digital and transport infrastructure that makes it easy to move people and data, widespread acceptance of technology and an early-adopter mentality, and municipalities like Cascais at the frontier of digital governance.
Above all, Portugal is part of Europe, with its history and culture, values and beliefs… but without the arrogance and exclusivity that you see in some parts of the old continent. Portugal is an open part of Europe when others are closing their doors, with an historical tendency for tolerance and dialogue with other civilizations.
What if this (let’s call it) Portuguese way of life was our most valuable of assets? A precious raw material that can be the foundation of the growth of the economy. Tourism is, and has been for decades, one of the major industries of this country.
But, as the examples above suggest, there are many other ways of exporting the Portuguese lifestyle by attracting all sorts of different visitors: units of multinationals, artists, professionals, entrepreneurs and students.
These visitors have a large impact on the economy.
Just like tourists, they spend money on housing, food, transport and entertainment, but their economic activities also generate local jobs and, above all, bring knowledge and the reach of their networks. If only we can find ways of involving them more into our economy and society, these visitors can change our place in the world. In the words of Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of another cool city, “talent attracts capital much more effectively and consistently than capital attracts talent”.
All this has happened almost too quickly to absorb — only two years ago this country was
in a severe depression, now it’s the coolest place on earth — but when we see Madonna’s kids going to school in Lisbon wearing Benfica uniforms, we know it’s the real deal.
Now, we can sit idly and take all this as mana from heaven… but then I’m afraid it won’t last. Alternatively, we can take advantage of this opportunity to build a brighter future.
Invest to improve the quality of the lifestyle and make it sustainable.
Improve taxation, the legal framework, and cut red tape not to kill the golden goose. Above all, change the mindset to take up the challenge.
If we work hard, we may even develop other industries based on lifestyle like healthcare or retirement hospitality.
And build on this newfound international coolness to develop Portuguese brands, just like Italy developed many of its well-known fashion brands after the country itself became fashionable in the 60’s.
As Tyler Brûlé puts it, “all the world is going to Lisbon”. Embrace it!
