Abstract
Collaboration with other companies has long been a practice in several industrial fields like construction and one-of-a-kind manufacturing. During the last decades, it has, however, increased and extended further to other industries and operations. One catalytic factor is, of course, the extensive development in ICT. Also, research in collaborative networks is substantial. It has often focused on ICT tools, components, and infrastructures supporting the collaboration. The basic rules, operating principles, and practices in the collaboration world are still dispersed and not well defined. A need to consolidate and synthesize the existing knowledge of collaborative networks by creating a scientific discipline for it has been announced (Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2004).
Key Terms in this Chapter
VO Inheritance: VO inheritance is the practice of storing and passing on the experience and other non-proprietary assets created through collaboration in a VO (ECOLEAD, D33.1).
VO Management: Denotes the organization, allocation, and co-ordination of resources and their activities as well as their inter-organizational dependencies to achieve the objectives of the VO within the required time, cost, and quality frame (ECOLEAD, D32.1).
VO Heritage: Comprised of the different assets, which are inherited from a VO to the VBE (ECOLEAD, D33.1).
VO Inheritance Management: Takes care of gathering, storing, refining, integrating, and re-using experience and other non-proprietary assets created through collaboration in distinct VOs of a VBE (ECOLEAD, D33.1).
Virtual Organization (VO): VO is a temporary consortium of partners from different organizations established to fulfil a value adding task, for example a product or service to a customer (Kürümlüoglu et al., 2005).
Virtual Organization Breeding Environment (VBE): Represents an association or pool of organizations and their related supporting institutions that have both the potential and the will to cooperate with each other through the establishment of a “base” long-term cooperation agreement and interoperable infrastructure (Camarinha-Matos et al., 2005).