Even if you call the organization whose goal is to promote international business on the Azores, you may get someone on the phone first-line who does not even speak English. It shows in a nutshell how ready the islands really are for the arrival of international activities.
The geographical conditions still make face-to-face contact a necessity for anything you would like to achieve on the Azores. They want to see you, physically. And sound practical information for outsiders you can easily consult about setting up a business is mostly lacking. That makes this kind of process, especially if you are operating from abroad, a viscous and costly affair.
” The geographical conditions still make face-to-face contact a necessity for anything you would like to achieve on the Azores. There are many silent barriers that you don’t understand.”
There are many silent barriers that you don’t understand, data is often not clear or unambiguous, painfully administrative, the (tax) legislation complex, often not translated into English either, and not also calculated for (intra-community) internationalization, making you dependent on professional assistance for all sorts of things.
A typical example is a recent project on Terceira that was designed to train people in IT and turn it into an international hub. A potentially very promising development vision for the Azores, but unfortunately insufficiently thought out and developed to really get it off the ground with activity from outside Portugal.
More in general, to initiate activities you usually need locals. But not everyone in the community sees introduction of activity from outside as very helpful in maintaining the current status quo. Don’t underestimate that subtle undercurrent. You can basically use it to frustrate any well-intentioned initiative from within before it has had a chance.
Based on this, the most promising approach will still be to establish yourself locally and develop a small-scale initiative from there that can be built upon when it has shown potential.
