The paper aims to configure, based on the historical analyses of the theories regarding multinational enterprises and economic development (which, most of them, are unilateral, unidimensional and focused on just one theoretical background) a conceptual framework – subsumed to the idea of a matrix with variable architecture that integrates existing models – able to allow and favour the exhaustive and dynamic analysis of the relationships between multinational enterprises and economic development within the current and future spatial and temporal context – characterized by (enormous) complexity, turbulence and volatility.