Until recently, it was not
‘natural’ to be a high-growth entrepreneur in Portugal.
“It used to be ‘if you cannot find a good job, you become an entrepreneur by creating your own small business,’” says INSEAD Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, Filipe Santos, who is also the Director of the school’s Rudolf and Valeria Maag International Centre for Entrepreneurship (Maag ICE).
“There was a tradition of family business, a long tradition of industrial organisations that dominated sectors; we had government-held companies that were privatised.” High-growth, high-impact entrepreneurship was not mainstream.
Today, the status of entrepreneurs is evolving and, in order to recognise the achievements of the country’s entrepreneurs, the INSEAD Portuguese Alumni Network presents an annual entrepreneurship prize at a ceremony in Lisbon. Dozens of companies applied, judges created a short list of eight, and the top prize this year was shared by two: Frulact, a fruit processing company, and TIM, a mobile and interactive global marketing company. A global technology company, ISA - Intelligent Sensing Anywhere, received an honourable mention.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Entrepreneurship; Portugal
Author: Shellie Karabell
