On WebSummit 2025
Published on linkedin
A few days after Web Summit Lisbon 2025, one impression remains very clear to me: how differently national hashtag#innovationecosystems choose to present themselves.
As someone working at the intersection of precision diagnostics and ecosystem development, I pay attention not only to the technologies on display but to the systems behind them.
One of the most striking examples this year was the contrast between hashtag#Portugal’s presence and that of hashtag#Qatar.
🇶🇦 Qatar appeared with a single, coordinated pavilion, bringing together funding agencies, regulators, investors, research institutions and startup programmes.
In one place, an entrepreneur could understand the national strategy, the pathways to build in Qatar and the actors involved.
I approached the pavilion with a few questions and ended up spending almost an entire day in back-to-back meetings, each one consistent, aligned, and able to place my work in the context of a national vision.
I left with a clear understanding of how a precision medicine company can scale in Qatar, structured follow-up meetings and and a real sense that the ecosystem speaks with one voice and one direction
This level of coordination is rare, and it shows.
🇵🇹 Portugal, my home country, has enormous talent, creativity and technical capability. We have also made company creation significantly easier in recent years, faster and more straightforward than most people expect.
But our presence at Web Summit was far more fragmented: multiple pavilions, different narratives, different institutions operating independently. The substance, I believe, is there; the alignment is clearly not.
🌍 What this week reinforced for me is that innovation nations compete not only on incentives or technology, but on clarity: clarity of message, clarity of pathways and clarity of institutional coordination.
Qatar’s approach made that visible. Portugal has all the ingredients, but we still struggle to present them as a unified ecosystem. To work together. It seems to me that in hashtag#innovation ecosystems, alignment is a force multiplier.
hashtag#Qatar2030 hashtag#QF hashtag#QSTP hashtag#QRDI hashtag#ResearchInnovation