Carlos Fiolhais, a professor at the University of Coimbra and one of the biggest science promoters in Portugal, was the main speaker of this session and made a reflection about the presence of people with PhDs in the business environment. Although the number of doctorates is growing, which shows the development of our country, in Portugal only 1% of doctorates are working in a business environment.

Alongside this issue, and in an atmosphere of debate moderated by Daniel Deusdado, director of programs at RTP, many other questions about innovation were raised. Alberto Figueiredo, director of the Impetus Group, stressed that many times “companies are unable to sell”, creating products with a lot of potential but whose sale is not easy.

In this context, also Susana Silva, Amorim Cork Composites Innovation Project Manager, stressed that, although investment projects are a great help in implementing innovation in companies, “the return on technological investment does not arrive in six months or a year. It is a dynamic that we have to get used to! ”.

In turn, Mário de Araújo, retired professor at the University of Minho, stressed that “companies have to get used to solving people's problems” and, for this reason, any business must “start by analyzing the market ”, Added Elisabete Ferreira, from J. Walter Thompson Intelligence.

Vladimiro Feliz, Head of Smart Cities and ICT Director of CEiiA - Center for Excellence and Innovation in the Automotive Industry, believes that “the future depends on sustainability” and that one of the priorities of his organization is “to know the cutting edge trends of the market and try to call national players into play ”, using platforms such as Fibrenamics.

This event also included the presentation, by Raul Fangueiro, Fibrenamics coordinator, of the new strategy of the platform, which with this “Impulse” will act in four key pillars (Intelligence, Science, Technology and Governance), all of them interconnected with a single objective, to consolidate the knowledge transfer model implemented now in a long-term and sustained logic.

With this initiative, Fibrenamics, which has been working over the past 7 years in the transfer of university-business knowledge, having recently been recognized by the EU as a case study in this field, wanted to bring the academic media once again and business, in seeking and implementing responses to emerging societal challenges, fostering the analysis of trends in society and technology and encouraging companies to face the challenges that the future presents, helping them to convert these opportunities into business.