Fostering Knowledge-intensive Entrepreneurship: a conceptual model of a Regional Entrepreneurial Learning Center

The paper presents a thematic conceptualization of a Regional Entrepreneurial Learning Center, conceived as a catalyst of the knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship in the regions and a strategic asset for their growth in the scenario of the entrepreneurial economy (Thurik, 2008; Audresch and Thurik, 2001). Incardinated on the Knowledge Triangle and aimed to enhance, primarily, the social and economic valorization of the Key Enabling Technologies, the Center will promote the synergic integration between the universities, primary actors in the process of the knowledge creation, the companies, that allow the socio-economic valorization of the knowledge available through the innovation and entrepreneurial processes, and the governmental institutions, supporting their knowledge exchanges and knowledge valorization processes. Coherently with the emerging nature of the knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship as entrepreneurial learning process and inspired by the current debate on the innovation ecosystems, the Center will promote the development of continuous and dynamic entrepreneurial learning processes to create a young knowledge intensive entrepreneurs, the evolution of the Universities towards an entrepreneurial configuration, and to accelerate the diffusion of entrepreneurial behaviors and culture in all the regional organizations and institutions.