We are on the cusp of a New Year and there are many challenges ahead of us. This global crisis – marked by great uncertainty and complexity – is causing profound changes in our economy and society.
In the new year, it will be very important for the state, companies, universities and citizens in general to establish a new contract of competence and trust that allows finding appropriate answers to a set of problems that will become more acute, with uncertain and complex impacts at the level of the economy’s value chain and the balance of society.
We therefore need to know how to respond in a collaborative and intelligent way to various challenges in this new era, of which I highlight five:
1 – MORE SOCIETY – Many people who, as a result of this crisis, are at risk of being left behind. Unfortunately, not everyone will be able to regain a context of economic stability and new mechanisms of social solidarity will be needed that allow, with dignity and a sense of responsibility, to provide all these people with a context of opportunity for the future. We need a true integrated social innovation policy that positively integrates our citizens into a new world in which, as we are not equal, we will have to do our best to be less different;
2 – MORE COMPETITIVENESS – Companies will need to regain the competitiveness and value creation agenda. And state support will be essential to activate this true restart and reconnection of companies. A Program for Competitiveness and Internationalization must force effective dynamics of investment in technology, whether in terms of designing new ideas for services and products, in terms of operationalizing profitable modern production centers, or above all in terms of construction and active participation in international networks for the marketing and transaction of products and services. Only in this way will the New Competitiveness be ensured.
3 – MORE TERRITORY – With this crisis, Portugal has a unique opportunity to promote a new paradigm of medium-sized cities, focused on quality, creativity and ecological sustainability. True centers of participatory modernity, which make us forget the suffocating dynamics of the “commercial anchors” that are the modern shopping malls that dominate the country. A Territorial Program for Modernity is vital to give strategic content to the occupation of medium-sized cities and to the new desire to also know how to invest in the interior. Here too, this crisis has created new opportunities for a country that needs to be discovered.
4 – MORE CULTURE – Portugal has a strong culture based on the historical potential of the language. It is a unique asset. An Intellectual Program for Portuguese Culture must know how to truly boost the ability to practice and consume the many national “cultural products” available on major international circuits. The “culture of the Portuguese language” has to help create value for our country and this crisis has shown that we have to know how to regain the agenda of our language in its different dimensions.
5 – MORE COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE – Everything involves, at the beginning and end, knowing how to be and participate. A culture of positive collaborative participation and a true collective intelligence agenda are necessary for the future. We need to regain the agenda of a sense of trust in which everyone is available to have an individual intervention marked by a sense of civic responsibility and creative freedom.
The Next Normal we are already in will force citizens and institutions to a new sense of economic and social convergence. Never as now will it be so important to return to a sense of community in which everyone sees each other and is available to build a new collective path of competitive intelligence with positive results for everyone’s future.