Cluster
Fundão Cluster: A burgeoning center for innovation in Portugal.
Fundão is a small city and a municipality (second level administrative subdivision), located in the Central region of Portugal, with an area of 700km2 and 26509 inhabitants, is the seat of an essentially rural county. Like much of the Portuguese territory, the population loss and the economic activity weakening over the last decades seemed irreversible. Since 2012, the Municipality has been implementing a smart territorial innovation strategy to reverse this decline, and boost the economic transformation of the region. The Fundão Innovation Plan, aims were to:
- create infrastructural and competitive conditions for the settlement of technological companies;
- boost an innovation ecosystem capable of leveraging creativity and entrepreneurship;
- promote urban regeneration through the settlement of new businesses and residents;
- involve the community, working in partnership.
Today, and for the first time in decades, Fundão has a positive migratory balance and is the home for talented people of 63 different nationalities, who have found here an integrated innovation ecosystem to accelerate ideas, host businesses and train talent. Composed of a specialised support team, infrastructures, competitive incentives, agile mobility programmes, and initiatives with a strong social impact, such as bootcamps to convert unemployed into IT (97% success rate), and a welcoming and friendly community, Fundão aims to assert itself as a living laboratory for the development, demonstration, maturation and scale-up of new technologies. This strategy has been recognised various times, namely in 2015 with 1st place in the European Enterprise Promotion Awards; in 2016 as Municipality of the Year awarded by University of Minho; and in 2018 by the European Commission with 1st place in the RegioStars awards. Furthermore, Fundão was identified as a competitiveness pole that can have a transforming effect in the Country and contribute to the construction of a fairer, balanced, and inclusive economy, within the scope of the “Strategic Vision for the 20/30 Recovery Plan”.
The Municipality of Fundão, more recently, has been taking big steps to foster economic development and employment from the creation of an integrated ecosystem with infrastructures and specialised services for game developers, that empowers and promotes synergies between different cultural and creative trades (writing, drawing, music, plastic arts, photography, video, 3d, etc) necessary for the creation of a game, that creates dedicated training programmes with universities, and promotes events B2B dedicated to the business development in the sector, namely by enhancing the participation of publishers and investors, as well as the organisation of pitching and showcasing actions.
Fundão Invest in Games strategy aims to create the first Portuguese co-living and co-working space for game developers from all over the world. Providing bedrooms, offices, amenities, and most important: a local community.
Currently, the Cowork Fundão Network consists of 5 coworking spaces with a total of 95 places. Here remote workers find all the facilities to develop their work productively, in a creative and innovative environment, within a welcoming and diverse community with whom they can exchange ideas and experiences. The Game Developers HUB was designed based on the same principles, with a space designed to stimulate innovation, creativity and collaboration & co-creation so desired in the indie industry. Thus, the Municipality has been taking tangible policy steps to promote the growth of the industry within it, not only by providing the relevant infrastructure, but also by promoting connections with the local universities (University of Beira Interior) and relevant companies in the sector in Portugal. In fact, the best Portuguese video game produced in Portugal in 2022, was developed and produced in the Incubator A Praça, located in Fundão.
