Portugal’s expansive golden age strikes right into our own time. It is an incredible story of a small people who maximized their resources, their abilities, and their daring to seek new trade routes and unimagined opportunities.
They stretched out from their limited starting point and threw themselves into the unknown.
“Why are you coming here?” the Indians asked the first Portuguese who arrived in India. “We are looking for Christians and spices,” was the precise answer. Small steps, small trading enterprises, brought the Portuguese to become the merchants of the Indian Ocean. In the 15th century, the Portuguese prince Henrique (called the Navigator), sent expeditions south along the coast of Africa to find markets and a Christian fabled king. The Portuguese did not find what they were looking for, but gradually realized that they could find something far more valuable: the sea route to the Indian Ocean and the source of all exotic goods. A small people, who with small steps developed a unified strategy. Their scope and their limitations framed the strategy.
Emergent strategy invites the same. A plan is nothing, planning is everything. Reverse the reasoning! Don’t find a hairy goal from which you derive actions. Follow Portugal’s example. Go from the bottom up to the overall goal. Value your heritage, core differentiators and pride, and throw yourself into the space of possibility. Avoid the impossible, what lies outside the framework. Complete the reasoning from the concrete to the strategic. Then you may discover other goals and other routes. A new era requires Portuguese cleverness and entrepreneurial spirit.
If the world had been bigger, the Portuguese would have discovered it.
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