Identification of forms and components of VO inheritance

Abstract

Virtual Organizations (VO) are created from a VO Breeding Environment (VBE) or a network, to serve a specific task. In addition to the task-based value the VO and its participants gain valuable experience and create other types of assets. Most often this achieved value is not saved. It is distributed, not managed and sometimes not even identified. The practise of preserving and reusing the common experience and other non-proprietary assets created in the VO is called here "VO inheritance". VO inheritance aims to enrich the VBE "bag of assets", thus improving the preparedness of the VBE for business opportunities. The added value, or the contents of the VO inheritance, is called here "VO heritage".The paper identifies different forms and components of VO heritage. The identification uses previous development of "lessons learnt" in project management field, and a collection of views of SMEs operating in collaborative networks. © 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.