Imagine a city with a dynamic and sustainable environment where entrepreneurs can develop their businesses, working side by side with mentors, investors and universities, sharing their knowledge and innovative ideas. A city that offers a strong support structure to help them grow and find their own space on the international markets! This is the reason why the ScaleUp Porto Manifesto was created.
Through this Manifesto, the city of Porto is initiating an important commitment for the implementation of a scaleup programme that can be reflected all across Europe, to foster the development of sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems.
But really, what are Scaleups?
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “Scaleups are enterprises with average annualized growth in employees (or in turnover) greater than 20 per cent a year over a three-year period, and with 10 or more employees at the beginning of the observation period.”
With this new scenario in place, and with hundreds of startup companies ready to grow all over Europe, the challenges are now related to scaling these companies in a sustainable way.
The ScaleUp Porto Manifesto comes together to:
- Foster local development by focusing on cities’ role as aggregators in a complex and heterogeneous European network;
- Support companies ready to scale to achieve sustainable development and growth in a global economy;
- Involve citizens and empower them to take advantage of the growing innovation environment that provides new highly qualified job opportunities.
The Manifesto was developed by listening to the city, in a collaborative effort between several parts – facilitators and influencers, public and private entities. This is a document that provides more information about the pillars that will lift the program, such as:
The city of Porto reaches out to all the stakeholders – citizens, enterprises, public authorities and European partners – to join this movement in a broad attempt of co-creating the most appropriate strategies, as well as jointly implementing them in the years to come.
So, the time is now! The Manifesto is live and you can find it here: www.scaleupporto.pt
Read it, share it and spread the word. The city of Porto wants to know your opinion and invites everyone to send tips that might be of interest for this movement.
