Due to the economic and financial crisis, which began in 2008, the global economy faces demanding challenges in terms of economic growth, combating unemployment and improving competitiveness. The emergence of new business models based on innovation, cooperation networks, and the enhancement of endogenous resources, currently constitutes an important set of opportunities for the dynamic and competitive repositioning of regional ecosystems, opening new strategic avenues of cooperation between regional, national and international actors, academia, business and policy makers.

It is intended, into the Smart Entrepreneurial Ecosystems logic, that the event is not based on a purely academic but also technological and entrepreneurial dimensions, across the most diverse sectors of activity.

The emergence of new business models based on innovation, cooperation networks, and the enhancement of endogenous resources, are assumed to be a strong contribution to the development of competitive economies and regions. This is a matter of special concern for low density and peripheral territories, where capacity for innovation and internationalization should be understood as a priority. The objective is also to make this moment an opportunity to show the set of entrepreneurial and infrastructural capacities at regional level, as well as to transmit to all the participants an overview of the vast and endogenous patrimony that the Centro region of Portugal possesses, and in Particularly its inland sub-regions, potentiating the foundations for the creation of networks of knowledge and entrepreneurial cooperation, involving the regional stakeholders.