The profound challenges underway throughout the world in all imaginable spheres -globalization, for example, understood as a process of generating interactive networks at exponencial growth rates in the areas of commerce, finance, information, or the political changes associated with radical structural adjustment programmes- are turning conventional development paradigms into virtual museum pieces. There is a universal clamour for new knowledge, without which we would be literally overpowered by the changes; we move from one state to another without comprehending the actual process of change and, hence without any power to intervene. The greatest threat is never being able to move up into the category of agents of change and thus being reduced to mere objects to be used, dispose of, or pushed aside. The eternal quest for that elusive thing development, is a matter of growing urgency not only for nations but also, increasingly, for subnational regione, which under the neo-liberal and decentralist models -notwithstanding the merits of these theories- are left to their own devices in terms of what they are capable of achieving. Is growth today endogenous, as the new growth theories suggest (Romer, Lucas and others)? If so, does it also apply at the subnational level? Surely a greater degree of analytical refinement will be required the further down one goes in the territorial scale in order to distinguish the exogenous nature of growth from the endogenous nature of development? The document explores these and other questions and put forward a set of hypothesis for growth and regional development that can be used as a basis for concrete action. The hypothesis are based on “Hirschmanian” concepts of relationships of cause and effect, rather than on the choice of particular growth or development factors. The metaphor illustrates the fact that territorial development requires endogenous factors, exogenous factors and, above all, an intelligent approach and a certain art in managing them.