Collaborative Networks: Virtual Enterprises & Alliances
“A virtual enterprise is a temporary alliance of enterprises that come together to share skills or core competencies and resources in order to better respond to business opportunities, and whose cooperation is supported by computer networks.”
Participation in a collaborative network has the potential to bring significant benefits to the involved entities:
- “Survivability” in a context of market turbulence.
- Acquisition of a larger dimension.
- Access to new/wider markets and new knowledge.
- Sharing of risks and resources.
- Joining of complementary skills and capacities.
- Focus on core competencies while keeping a high level of agility.
- Better achieving common goals by excelling individual capabilities.
This fosters the creation of new value through the confrontation of ideas and practices, combination of resources and technologies, and the creation of synergies.
Understanding Collaborative Networks
A collaborative network (CN) is characterized by:
- Variety of Entities: Organizations, people, and even machines. These entities are:
- Largely autonomous.
- Geographically distributed.
- Heterogeneous in terms of their operating environment, culture, social capital, and goals.
- Collaboration: Entities work together to better achieve common or compatible goals.
- Computer Network Support: Interactions are supported by computer networks.
Key Concepts in Collaborative Networking
- Networking
- Involves communication and information exchange for mutual benefit.
- Coordinated Networking
- In addition to exchanging information, it involves aligning or altering activities to achieve more efficient results. Coordination, the act of working together harmoniously, is one of the main components of collaboration.
- Cooperation
- Involves not only information exchange and adjustments of activities, but also sharing resources for achieving compatible goals. Cooperation is achieved by a division of labor (not extensive) among participants.
- Collaboration
- A process in which entities share information, resources, and responsibilities to jointly plan, implement, and evaluate a program of activities to achieve a common goal. Meaning “to work together,” it can be seen as a process of shared creation; thus, a process through which a group of entities enhances each other’s capabilities. It implies sharing risks, resources, responsibilities, and rewards, which, if desired by the group, can also give an outside observer the image of a joint identity. Collaboration involves mutual engagement of participants to solve a problem together, which implies mutual trust and thus takes time, effort, and dedication.
Approaches for Complex Industrial Systems
Many complex industrial systems are socio-technical systems, requiring multi-disciplinary approaches:
- Combination of computational intelligence (soft issues modeling) with graph-based modeling, social network analysis, and causal reasoning – a promising approach to capture behavioral aspects.
- Data mining mechanisms to be embedded in systems’ architecture.
It is important to note that we do not have much historical data regarding new organizational structures.
Collaborative Network Life Cycle
Phases of Successful Collaboration
Successful collaboration typically involves several phases:
- Collaboration Opportunity (CO) Identification:
- Who?
- Where and How?
- Which brokerage policy?
- What is of interest?
- CO Characterization & Virtual Organization/Virtual Team (VO/VT) Rough Planning:
- Who?
- Which patterns of collaboration?
- How to structure the VO/VT?
- Any initial template model?
- Partners Search & Selection:
- Who?
- Where?
- Which criteria?
- Which base information? Profiles?
- Decision support?
- Negotiation & Agreements:
- Who?
- Negotiation process?
- Contracts, rules & templates?
- Agreements?
Requirements for Collaborative Networks
While Collaborative Networks offer several benefits, their successful implementation requires addressing various aspects:
- Organizational models
- Governance principles and policies
- Legal aspects
- Business models
- Intellectual Property models
- Infrastructures / platforms
- Support tools
Types of Collaborative Networks
Goal-Oriented Networks
- Virtual Enterprise (VE)
- A temporary alliance of enterprises that come together to share skills or core competencies and resources to better respond to business opportunities, with cooperation supported by computer networks.
- Virtual Organization (VO)
- A concept similar to a VE, comprising a set of (legally) independent organizations that share resources and skills to achieve a mission or goal, but not limited to an alliance of for-profit enterprises. A VE is a particular case of a VO.
- Extended Enterprise (EE)
- Represents a concept typically applied to an organization in which a dominant enterprise “extends” its boundaries to all or some of its suppliers. An EE is a particular case of a VE.
- Virtual Team (VT)
- Similar to a VE but formed by humans, not organizations. A virtual team is a temporary group of professionals that work together towards a common goal, such as realizing a consultancy job or a joint project, using computer networks as their main interaction environment.
Long-Term Alliances
- Virtual Organization Breeding Environment (VBE)
- An association of organizations and their related supporting institutions, adhering to a base long-term cooperation agreement and adoption of common operating principles and infrastructures. The main goal is to increase their preparedness for rapid configuration of temporary alliances for collaboration in potential Virtual Organizations. Specifically, when a collaboration opportunity is identified by one member (acting as a broker), a subset of VBE organizations can be selected to form a VE/VO.
- Professional Virtual Community (PVC)
- An association combining the concepts of virtual community and professional community. Virtual communities are defined as social systems of networks of individuals who use computer technologies to mediate their relationships. Professional communities provide environments for professionals to share the body of knowledge of their professions, such as similar working cultures, problem perceptions, problem-solving techniques, professional values, and behavior.
Reasons to Join a VBE
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