"UP is proud of the entrepreneurs that have gone through its classrooms and, so as to continue with the good results, this new edition of the SIE has raised the challenge of integrating issues, giving an interdisciplinary approach to entrepreneurship," said Elsa del Castillo, president of the university, during the inauguration of the event. 

On its first day, this meeting focused on the theme of ecosystems and public policies that seek to promote the development of entrepreneurship in our country, where the 98.3% of enterprises are small and medium-sized (SMES). Most of the national economy is triggered by the entrepreneurial activity.

As a result, Juan Carlos Mathews, vice minister of production, considers that public policies on economic development should focus on the  formation of ecosystems at SMEs level, which will allow better coordination and associativity within the same productive sector in order to  curb the accelerated rate of business mortality in the country and to prevent Peru from remaining one of the most informally-based countries  in Latin America. 

In that sense, Mathews said that the Ministry of Production (Produce) is promoting a series of initiatives to address this situation. For example, the simplification of requirements in the register of Conformity Assessment Bodies, the digitization and automation of services such as TUPA, training and technical assistance for entrepreneurs, financial support for SMEs through the Entrepreneur Capital Fund, etc. 

From the macroeconomic point of view, it is interesting to analyze how the Pacific Alliance, a block of cooperation between Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, may lead the rise and empowerment of the also called start-ups through international collaboration.

To clarify this point, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) senior advisor, Adrián Magendzo, pointed out that the Pacific Alliance is one of the  strongest cooperation blocks in the Latin American region and can make the four countries that compose it jointly turn into the fourth largest economy in the world, equivalent to Germany.

According to Magendzo, "the Pacific Alliance has as one of its objectives promoting the formation of new patterns of trade that take into account the entrepreneurs through the creation of specific policies aimed at the development of this sector, as well as through the exchange of experiences and tools that enable you to establish an innovative interconnected ecosystem." To sum up, the work being done internally in Peru to develop the entrepreneurial ecosystem through effective public policies is well underway, but still requires a greater political will to reduce the high  level of Peruvian entrepreneurial mortality. 

Javier Salinas​, director of Emprende UP; Karen Weinberger, professor at UP; and María Pía Espinel, general coordinator of the Innovation Lab at UP, attended the event.