(article published in Diário Insular & Correio dos Açores)
I'm one, I confess, geek when it comes to entrepreneurship and here I make my disclaimer Before I start the opinion piece itself: I've been studying the subject for almost 15 years, I'm a professor of entrepreneurship at ISCTE-IUL, I've specialised in entrepreneurship in medium-low population density territories and I've spoken to entrepreneurs in all four corners of the world, from millionaires to shanty towns, among other adventures. I've analysed hundreds of business concepts, developed projects in the Nordic countries, but also in Africa. I've never been given anything and I'm trained to see opportunities in crises and try to find the good in chaos. Today I can look at the Azores with (sometimes) my feet outside, but my heart always inside.
I've seen a lot of national and international reports that seek to reflect on the future of work. Since last March, much of the Western world has been forced to work from home due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has created (and will create) immense challenges, but also opportunities.
If it used to be almost an offence to hold a meeting via Zoom with the client, supplier or partner you were meeting with, today it's normal. Working from home is no longer a ‘shame’, today it's a reality and a necessity. If before ‘home’ was the place where (in big cities) we basically went to sleep and watch series, today it's a place that mixes personal and professional life, which has to coexist. Companies are already adapting and there are even organisations (already in Portugal) changing their offices, turning them into pleasant spaces for socialising, holding meetings and equipped with studios that allow contact between the (few) teams in the office and the others who work and will work more and more remotely.
This is here to stay.
As a result of this reality that is knocking on our door, living and working in Lisbon, London, New York or in Fajãzinha on the island of Flores, in the vineyards of São João da Pesqueira or in a house overlooking the beaches of Porto Santo in the Madeira archipelago will be more or less the same because, after all, work is done on a laptop. We've gone from a culture where you had to fulfil schedules sitting at a desk in a particular office to one where you have to create value and meet objectives by a certain deadline, regardless of where and when you do the work. Responsibility and daily self-management is the responsibility of each individual.
The direct consequence of this? A complete reinvention of the way people work and live and, it seems to me, a golden opportunity to combat the phenomenon of bipolarisation in Portugal and give medium and low-density territories room to grow economically and socially. And let me tell you, Fajãzinha (or any other parish in the Azores) is much more interesting than London. Of course, going to the shops in London might be nice occasionally, but where we come from we have fresh air, beautiful waterfalls, much lower house prices and an absolutely unbeatable quality of life.
If we add to this (finally) our geostrategic position, in the middle of the Atlantic and in the centre of the world, we are facing a golden opportunity as a Region to position ourselves as a point of settlement not only for digital nomads who travel the world working from their computers, but also for a sea of people who, I believe, will start to leave the big cities and look for places where they can have a better quality of life and a better balance between their personal and professional lives.
I know of several medium-low density regions around the world that are already making great strides in this direction... few have what we have: calm, peace, tranquillity, sea views ‘everywhere’, centrality and infrastructures.
Maybe this is an opportunity for us to really make the Azores happen in an integrated and sustainable way?
