The creation of the Agency for Research and Innovation aims to resolve a historical weakness of the Portuguese model: the distance between scientific production and business innovation.
By concentrating functions traditionally associated with the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the National Innovation Agency (ANI) in a single entity, the State takes on a more integrated vision of research and innovation policy. A vision that seeks to link the production of scientific knowledge to its economic and social valorization. This approximation is not a technical detail. It is a political, economic and cultural opportunity. But an opportunity only comes true if used.
For years, the public debate on innovation focused mainly on direct financing: competitions, notices, thematic programs, mobilizing agendas. Despite being essential, as they guide priorities, create critical mass and enable strategic areas to be enhanced, these instruments are intermittent, competitive and, often, insufficient to keep up with the real pace of companies. Innovation does not happen by warning. It happens through consistency.
This is where tax benefits for research and development (R&D), such as Sifide, gain strategic relevance. Although less visible in the public debate, these instruments allow companies to invest in R&D on a continuous basis, aligned with their strategy and not just the State’s calendar.
In a system that now wants to be integrated, tax benefits are the invisible thread that connects the pieces. In a model that aims to integrate fundamental science, applied research and business innovation, they play a structuring role. They are a risk-sharing mechanism between the State and the private sector, encouraging investment in activities with a high degree of scientific and technological uncertainty, but with potential for economic and social impact.
The very logic of AI² points in this direction. By bringing together the functions of FCT and ANI, the new agency recognizes that business innovation depends on a solid scientific basis and that science benefits when it finds concrete applications. This convergence creates particularly favorable conditions for strengthening collaborations between companies, universities and research centers – one of the most effective elements for bringing together fundamental and applied science.
These partnerships allow companies to access advanced knowledge, highly specialized skills and scientific infrastructures that would be difficult for them to develop internally. For research institutions, they represent an additional source of financing, greater proximity to the economic fabric and a direct way to value the knowledge produced. It is a relationship of mutual benefit, which reinforces the system as a whole.
The fiscal framework recognizes this importance. Expenses incurred by companies on R&D projects developed with reputable entities – such as universities, associated laboratories or recognized research centers – are 100% eligible under SIFIDE. This apparently technical detail has a huge impact: it reduces the effective cost of collaboration, reduces risk and encourages more ambitious projects, with greater scientific and technological uncertainty.
In practice, it allows private investment to help finance academic research and, at the same time, fundamental science finds more direct paths to application. This is not about replacing public funding. It’s about complementing it, reinforcing it and creating bridges where there were previously silos.
AI²’s new strategic orientation, with a greater focus on impact and evaluation of results, will inevitably require more rigor. This shouldn’t be scary. On the contrary. Projects developed in collaboration with universities and research centers tend to be more solid and better founded. Thus, tax benefits in R&D can no longer be seen as an end in themselves and can be seen as one of the drivers of real innovation.
For companies, this framework implies a change of perspective. R&D tax benefits should not just be seen as an accounting exercise carried out at the end of the year, but should be integrated into the innovation strategy from the beginning. What knowledge is missing? What skills do not exist internally? What partnerships can make a difference? The answers to these questions are as strategic as any business plan.
For the scientific system, the rapprochement between FCT and ANI, now implemented in AI², will only make sense if these connections are effectively promoted and valued. Proximity to the business fabric does not diminish the importance of fundamental science. On the contrary, it gives you new means, new challenges and new ways to grow.
Innovation does not come out of nowhere. It needs time, risk and trust. It needs science and it needs companies – not as parallel universes, but as parts of the same system. Above all, it needs instruments that know how to connect these two worlds.
The creation of AI² opens a window of opportunity to align strategy, instruments and practices in this direction. But this opportunity will only be fully utilized if tax benefits for R&D are recognized as an integral part of this strategy and not as a peripheral element. Ignoring them would be wasting the bridge at a time when, finally, there seems to be a desire to cross it.
Leave a Reply