Introduction
Intermodality
Time of travel or distance to particular places can be measured but their relevance for management are constantly changing, e.g. with telecommunications.
The concept of periphery is therefore relative and even cultural. In high tech industries, Helsinki may be described as a central city because it is half way between Tokyo and New York.
You are as peripheral as you feel!
Time and distance traveled vary greatly depending on the transport network, especially if there are inter-modal links. The circle line in London linked train stations early on whereas in other cities, including Lisbon, inter-modal links involving rail, subway and bus routes continue to meet with considerable resistance from each one of the companies involved.

Coordination
The legitimacy of, and the need for, coordination naturally follows from the intermodality of modern transport. The point is that such coordination is also a limitation on the management of each one of the modes.
Management relies on information and information implies an emission and a reception, so that human resources must be available to process the information. The emphasis on human resources translates into education and training for particular purposes.
The question then becomes periphery for what? Different means of transport are associated with different definitions of periphery and different coordination responses, but coordination will remain an essential lubricant almost anywhere.

Discussion
Blue banana
If periphery is relative, the concept of centrality bears examination, say in terms of expected industrial landscape in twenty years, taking into account that Portugal is at the border of Europe and therefore sensitive to developments at further borders, like the Maghreb. In Europe, centrality has been defined by the so called "blue banana" (London-Milan via Germany), yet Ireland had managed to overcome its peripheral status.
If Africa (especially Angola) and Latin America become significant markets for Portugal thanks to better education and training, the same may happen and Portugal would cease to feel peripheral.
Yet Spain has become a market for Portuguese products to such a degree that the economy may now be more closed than when export and import markets were more diversified.

Geographical fatalism
The fatalism of geography can be rejected by pointing to the energy market: Portugal was the last EU country without natural gas but thanks to a concerted effort of different governments this was overcome in ten years. Like geographical fatalism, cultural periphery can also be overcome through better public and private management.
The problem to find better managers than at the center is the small size of the domestic market (1% of EU) and the fact that firms and government do not yet think enough of the external market (via transhipment).
When they do, there is not enough effort to ensure quality and brand names.
Tax competitiveness and governance may also be problematic in Portugal.

Conclusion
Leapfrogging
The issue then is how could Portugal leapfrog? How could we be be put on the map like the blue banana, which in turn had originated in the medieval fairs. There is an emerging new "banana" going from Southern France to Catalonia.
Near Lisbon there are successful scientific and industrial ventures but not in Porto, because there has not been enough coordination to achieve the same objective, in part because of disputes in the academic world.
It is also worrisome that several Portuguese scientists who are working abroad say that they do not return because they have no one to talk to here.
Managing from the periphery meant creating a sense of common purpose between science and industry.