UPTEC — Science and Technology Park of the University of Porto

UPTEC is the Science and Technology Park of the University of Porto, active since 2007 across three centres in Porto (Baixa, and two sites in Asprela), supporting business projects that commercialise university research.

What it does: UPTEC incubates startups, 'Innovation Centre' units of larger companies and anchor projects, runs acceleration programmes, and manages the transition of graduated companies out of the park; the University of Porto has separately been ranked in the European top 10 for spin-off creation.

Results: since 2007, UPTEC has supported more than 700 business projects and 98 companies have graduated from the park; more than 3,600 direct jobs have been created (86% classified as highly qualified), drawing participants from 37-40 nationalities. An independent economic-impact study by Isabel Mota and Armindo Carvalho (Faculty of Economics, University of Porto) found that in 2024 UPTEC's 223 installed and 84 graduated companies together contributed EUR 866 million to GDP, supported 15,900 jobs (direct, indirect and induced), generated EUR 514 million in wages and EUR 182 million in tax revenue — with GDP, employment, wage and tax growth between 2022 and 2024 all running several times faster than the corresponding Portuguese national averages.

Caveat: the economic-impact study captures the combined footprint of UPTEC's company portfolio in the wider economy rather than isolating UPTEC's own causal contribution versus what those companies would have achieved otherwise.

Why it's a good practice: a university-owned park with 15+ years of continuous growth, backed by a rare independent, quasi-experimental economic-impact evaluation with a named academic team and national-benchmark comparison.

Read the full analysis: https://uptec.up.pt/