João Paulo Carvalho, Co-founder and CEO of Quidgest, is a central figure at the forefront of technological innovation. Founded on May 10, 1988 by Cristina Marinhas, João Paulo Carvalho and Jorge Guerreiro, Quidgest remains at the forefront of using generative artificial intelligence to drive innovation and competitiveness in the business market. With more than 120 employees of eleven nationalities, the company maintains a startup spirit, even after 36 years of history. Genio, developed since 1990, represents the essence of this innovation. Offering a revolutionary approach based on models and artificial intelligence for the development of management software, Quidgest's platform can produce systems that easily evolve and are independent of generation frameworks, making it the preferred platform for complex products and urgent projects. In an exclusive interview with Empreendedor, João Paulo Carvalho shared the company's strategic vision and the next steps in Genio's evolution. He highlighted the importance of modeling and automating software generation as a sustainable competitive advantage that effectively responds to the demand for quality solutions in today's digital revolution. For João Paulo Carvalho, artificial intelligence is not a challenge, but a source of immense opportunities. He emphasized that Quidgest has been riding this technological wave for decades and is well positioned to capitalize on the advantages offered by the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence. Challenges and Opportunities with Generative AI "We have discovered and developed a sustainable competitive advantage, which other market players somewhat underestimate, and which results from the combination of modeling and the automation of software generation," he explains. "Not only is it a powerful combination, but it also responds very well to a requirement of the current digital revolution: the availability of good solutions and excellent programmers." One of the innovations that Quidgest introduced was the concept of knowledge engineers, rather than programmers, says João Paulo Carvalho, highlighting the creative role that these professionals play in developing models, rather than code. "All true innovations need to create their own concepts. Since programming is generally understood as writing code, we call the creators of solutions at Genio knowledge engineers, because they don't write code, they create models. They translate their knowledge of reality into models." "Then you just press a button and Genio's generative artificial intelligence infers all the code from the model," he emphasizes. Thus, for João Paulo Carvalho, Artificial Intelligence is not a challenge, but the generator of "immense opportunities", with the advantage that Quidgest "has been surfing this technology for decades". "If, before the ChatGPT explosion in December 2022, we were seen as rare birds, today we are often the center of attention. Investors, for example." But the rapid development of this technology also allows Quidgest to add new functions and perfect its platform, reducing development costs and increasing the effectiveness of the software. "The only real challenge is to be able to show that we've been riding this wave for decades and everything we've learned along the way," he says. For years, Quidgest has been ahead of its time. Models, code generation, artificial intelligence or non-monolithic ERP were not mainstream. People in the know didn't understand these concepts or didn't believe it was possible to use them to create complex software solutions. But from the outset, modeling and AI have always distinguished Genio from traditional low-code and no-code platforms. Quidgest's "Genio": Revolutionizing Software Development The name Genio is immediately associated with the new generative artificial intelligence ("Gen" AI) and has the same meaning. The "I" stands for "Input", the ability to collect structured knowledge in models. And the "O" refers to "Output", the facility to generate millions of pages of code. "Our Genio was born 34 years ago in Portugal, already with that name, already being artificial intelligence and already with that generative capacity. Ahead of its time, but always aware of what's happening in the areas of software engineering, modeling and artificial intelligence, which it continually incorporates into its capabilities." With the recent boom in generative AI, driven by the success of ChatGPT, Quidgest is once again at the forefront of this innovation. This technological advance promises to revolutionize various industries and professions, driving the democratization of knowledge, the multiplication of innovation and increased productivity. The success of the platform has also boosted the expansion strategy, centered on nine lines of use of generative AI with Genio and on expanding to new markets in North America and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). "This strategy includes the global dissemination of the new paradigm of software development through generative AI and the offer of solutions created with this paradigm for sustainable development, for government and for the most competitive companies in all sectors of activity, but with an emphasis on health, banking and insurance, business services, consulting, engineering and the environment," explains João Paulo Carvalho. "Somewhere in the future, this process will snowball and accelerate exponentially." Vision for the Future of Technology and Society With a degree in Economics from the Instituto Superior de Economia (now ISEG) and a Master's in Business Sciences (Management Information Systems) from the Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa (now ISCTE-IUL), João Paulo Carvalho highlights a number of influences that have marked his career, such as professors Mário Murteira, Simões Lopes, Augusto Mateus and Correia Jesuíno. The Quidgest CEO's list of books and authors is longer: "That's a long list. I would highlight the ethics and intellectual honesty of Bertrand Russell; the abstraction of the system concept of Von Bertalanffy, Russel Ackoff, Joel de Rosnay or Alain Resnais (yes, the director); the beauty of modelling by Eduard Codd; the quality practices of Deming, Juran and Taiichi Ohno; the organizational culture of Mintzberg; the strategic thinking of Hamel and Prahalad, Kaplan and Norton; the software revolution explained by Watts S. Humphrey; the fascinating study of the organizational culture of Mintzberg; the strategic thinking of Hamel and Prahalad, Kaplan and Norton; the software revolution explained by Watts S. Humphrey; the fascinating study of the organizational culture of Mintzberg; the strategic thinking of Mintzberg; the strategic thinking of Hamel and Prahalad, Kaplan and Norton. Humphrey; the fascinating study of the brain, intelligence and human behavior by Carol S. Dweck ("Mindset"), David Rock ("Your Brain at Work") and Uderzo and Goscinny ("Asterix the Zaragata"); and entrepreneurship by Eric Ries ("Lean Startup"), Marty Cagan ("Inspired") and Gene Kim ("The Phoenix Project")." To young entrepreneurs, João Paulo Carvalho advises identifying a competitive advantage and, through continuous learning, promoting autonomy in the team and prioritizing ethics and respect in business. "Do what you love. Leave it to others to waste time distinguishing whether you're working or having fun. Never stop learning. Promote autonomy and initiative in your team. Surround yourself with facilitators. Care about detail. Use stories to create your company culture. From the outset, you are the guarantor of ethics, respect and justice in your company." "It's true that your company is unlikely to be the one with the most means or financial resources on the market. So identify barriers to entry for new competitors. Sometimes this barrier is as simple as others not believing that you will succeed. But you need it," he recommends. As for the future, João Paulo Carvalho has an optimistic outlook. There are risks of increasing authoritarianism and nationalism, he warns, but he hopes that these will eventually be overcome by rationality, humanity and environmental preservation. "I'm structurally very optimistic. For example, I don't share the fear that so-called artificial intelligence - which in reality is always human - will cause the extinction of the species. But I have to acknowledge that we are at a possible turning point. In a few years' time, will we identify 2022 as the year of the invasion of Ukraine or the emergence of ChatGPT?" he asks. "We are in a world shaken by the anachronism of authoritarian, imperialist, nationalist and fanatically religious temptations. We thought they had been forgotten by the middle of the last century, but they've come back in force. Technology and AI are no strangers to this situation. Algorithms have created a schism of opinions in which factions of society are only exposed to people and content," he stresses. However, João Paulo Carvalho points out that "the global response to the Covid-19 epidemic was a good example of global coordination. Humanity was able to question almost everything without collapsing." Like the response to the climate crisis, "the discovery of the key to language, with the LLM, is a civilizational leap that we must consider ourselves privileged to be contemporaries of." [Additional Text]: João Paulo Carvalho - Quidgest Entrepreneur