Desenvolvimento Rural na Sociedade do Conhecimento

Globalization has a concrete territorial expression, with remaining regional asymmetries. Writers in growth and development are far away to achieve consensus about the underpinning reasons of heterogeneity in regional performance. This constitutes an important regional policy issue. This paper is based upon a concrete developing planning experience in a Portuguese rural and peripheral region. The aim of this paper is to build a methodological and procedural setup enabling to mobilize economic agents in order to use the new knowledge-based technologies. In fact, we think that this kind of methodology provides a better decision environment to take advantage and promote new business opportunities, increasing existent firm competitiveness.