A new infrastructure designed to put data, artificial intelligence, and technological innovation at the service of sustainable development in the Alentejo region. This is the mission of the Alentejo Competitive Intelligence Center (CIC Alentejo), officially inaugurated today in Campo Maior. The initiative is led by the local municipality, in partnership with NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS) and the Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre.

“This center aims to become a hub for fostering and qualifying human capital within the region’s business ecosystem, promoting the development of analytical skills. Its ambition is to support the growth of the Alentejo by encouraging data-driven decision-making and by bringing together companies, public administration, associations, and civil society in a regional ecosystem focused on technology transfer and innovation, in close cooperation with scientific and technological institutions,” explains Miguel de Castro Neto, Director of NOVA IMS and Scientific Coordinator of CIC Alentejo.

Luís Rosinha, Mayor of Campo Maior, adds: “We are proud to present this infrastructure, designed from the start to channel data, artificial intelligence, and technological innovation into the sustainable development of the Alentejo. This project is the result of a partnership between the Municipality of Campo Maior, NOVA IMS from NOVA University Lisbon, and the Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre. Looking ahead, we hope to welcome new partners—both regional and beyond—as part of a shared effort to enhance technological capacity. This center places Campo Maior in a privileged position, working alongside some of the country’s leading institutions in this field.”

The Alentejo Competitive Intelligence Center (CIC Alentejo) will operate through a collaborative network model, aiming to create value with analytical products and services, provide innovation support, and offer talent development programs in key areas such as information management, data science, and artificial intelligence.

CIC Alentejo’s Mission

• To build a multidimensional regional knowledge base with granular spatial and temporal coverage;
• To support companies, public administration, academic and research institutions, and civil society in accessing new information products and services, based on descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics derived from the CIC Alentejo knowledge base;
• To drive the development of data-based products and services with an impact on strategic regional sectors such as agri-food, industry, tourism, energy, and services, supported by generative AI engines built on the CIC Alentejo knowledge base;
• To foster collaborative innovation through acceleration programs, hackathons, prototyping, and co-creation challenges;
• To deliver specialized training for companies and public administration in emerging fields such as information management, data science, artificial intelligence, marketing analytics, business intelligence, blockchain, and more.

Three specialized spaces to support CIC Alentejo’s services

• Immersive Room: Dedicated to generating value through analytical approaches applied to the Alentejo region’s multidimensional knowledge base, explored through three perspectives – intelligence, sustainability, and governance.
• Collaborative Room: Focused on applying analytical methods to innovation processes, exploring the potential of data science and AI in the regional economy through pilot projects and co-creation with companies, public administration, and other local stakeholders.
• Training Room – NOVA BI & Analytics Lab: Dedicated to delivering training programs in various formats (on-site, blended, and online) on critical topics for today's organizational competitiveness. These programs will be supported by experts from the two higher education institutions behind CIC Alentejo and will cover areas such as Business Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, GenAI, Prompt Engineering, Blockchain, among others.

The inauguration of this center, housed in the former “Cooperative Elementary School”, marks a new chapter for the Alentejo, positioning the region as a living lab for data-driven innovation. The knowledge base developed at CIC Alentejo, along with the analytical capabilities brought together in this space, will help drive economic development and promote territorial cohesion, starting from Campo Maior.

Further details about the Alentejo Competitive Intelligence Center, including its full range of products and services, access formats, and calendar, are available here.