Where the Atlantic Ocean meets Innovation …

May, 2024

Portugal became the latest hotspot for the innovation crowd in Europe. Young folks from Lisbon, Faro and Porto venture out into the global innovation community and we from Industrial MakerSpace in Landsberg wanted to explore the scene. Here are some impressions:

SIM (www.startupportugal.com) – the conference for Start-Up and Investment Matching took place from May 2-4 in the city of Porto. I would guess there were more than 100 start-ups from all over Portugal presenting their ideas in various stages of market readiness. The focus is a representation of Portugals economy – e-commerce, agritech, fintech, wellness/tourism, edutech plus a few outliers in wind energy, 3D-printing, healthcare and AI-enabled B2B productivity solutions. I found founders to be well-versed in their respective fields and incredibly street-wise. Valuations for seed stage or Series A stage start-up in the single millions are not too different from Munich or Silicon Valley. Noteworthy is the start-up “muro” from Lisbon (www.join.muro.art) with the vision to connect your body touch-sensors (by example (iWatch) to a screen (by example MuseFrame) to display emotionally-induced art – exciting when you are ready for it, relaxing when you need it. Since we have a MuseFrame in our Foyer, I was intrigued. The accompanying workshop program featured also a talk with Tim Ferris, known as author of books on superpowers such as Tools of Titans. The title of that particular talk exemplifies the difference between Silicon Valley and Europe: Growing a start-up or work life balance – can a founder have it all? Sam Altmann was recently quoted with: The difference between Europe and Silicon Valley is that here (in SV) we develop a vision and work day and night to accomplish it …

In Porto you’ll find the oldest MakerSpace and FabLab OPO’Lab (www.opolab.com). Established in 2010, and built according to rules of the FabLab movement started at MIT, Boston, it features a fully developed workspace with all the digitally-enabled machinery you can dream of plus a co-working space on approximately 400 qm in a down-town building that formerly housed an automotive repair-shop. The founder, João Feyo, architect and designer, was kind enough to explain his journey and current challenges. They had organised an innovation and maker conference for 5 years in the early 2010s front-running the open-innovation movement in Portugal. Just as we experience in Germany, the idea of sharing space, machinery and other assets is surely the way to go but takes a generation or two to become fully accepted. Thus, in order to keep the OPO’Lab running, they are providing fabrication services to third-party customers, like building architecture models. In addition, they are part of the “precious plastics” (www.preciousplastic.com) movement: The OPO’Lab team is developing, building and selling machinery, process and training to recycle thermoplastic materials in order to create new building material and avoid new landfills. I can highly recommend to corporate innovation teams to use their workspace and open innovation methodologies. To me, OPO’Lab is a profound workspace with brilliant techno-design knowhow.

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Pictures: MuseFrame, SIM, OPO’Lab, Matching room