Collaborative networks in industry – Trends and foundations

Collaborative networks offer a high potential for survival and value creation in enterprises under turbulent market conditions. Collaboration manifests in a large variety of forms, including virtual organizations, virtual enterprises, dynamic supply chains, professional virtual communities, etc. In order to support preparedness of enterprises for participation in such dynamic coalitions, breeding environments for virtual organizations are being developed in many application sectors. A large body of empiric knowledge related to collaborative networks is already available, but only recently the research community started to focus on the consolidation of this knowledge and building the foundations for a more sustainable development of the area. The definition of reference models and the establishment of a scientific discipline for collaborative networks are strong instruments in achieving this purpose. In this paper a brief survey of the main characteristics of the area is presented, current baseline is discussed, and future trends are pointed out.