Most of the innovations arise from a complex exchange of ideas, products and experiences, from projects that have lasting results, from interactions between agents, within a competitive environment that induces each one to try and surpass itself. Innovation involves different agents, but it is important that it reaches the market and favours the administrative modernisation.

Yet market malfunctions are a reality, namely at the level of investment in human capital and in Innovation, Research and Development (IR&D) activities. These malfunctions are due to the fact that the benefits associated to investment in education and in research, development and innovation activities are not sufficient or are not totally appropriated by the agents who develop them. Therefore, there is an under-investment in these areas, which are nevertheless critical for economic growth. In Portugal, those malfunctions are the more significant since it is recognised that the quality of human resources, the technological capacity and the permeability to innovation are precisely some of the greatest obstacles to economic growth.

It is also recognised that there are malfunctions within the present national innovation system. With the assistance of the previous Community Support Frameworks a large set of scientific, technological and support to innovation infrastructures has been set up. In global terms, a better linkage between all the system components, and closer links and cooperation between the relevant agents – namely between public R&D laboratories, higher education institutions, enterprises and business associations – are missing.

The Technological Plan recognises the need to qualify the Portuguese population and to stimulate innovation and technological modernisation, by putting into place policies designed to speed up the present adjustment process of the specialisation model of the Portuguese economy, with a view to differentiating between manufacturing and services based on research and development activities and increasingly directed to external markets.