Knowledge management and supporting tools for collaborative networks

摘要

Recent organisational trends show an increase in the formation of collaborative networks (CNs) to improve competitive advantage and provide world-class excellence and flexibility to address dynamic and turbulent market conditions. Collaboration of various forms can increase profits by improving chances to capture valuable business opportunities, address market demands and share resources and competencies in very competitive and rapidly changing environments. CNs can take a variety of forms, including highly integrated and dynamic supply chains, extended and virtual enterprises, virtual organisations, collaborative virtual laboratories, professional virtual communities, and virtual organisation breeding environments and collaboration pools. A major reason for collaboration is to exploit the core competencies of all the enterprises concerned, to form strategic alliances and enhance competitiveness by integrating value-added activities, information, resources and knowledge between enterprises. These benefits are enabled by the advances in Information and Communication technology (ICT)-based infrastructure and services. For more than a decade, the European Commission has been funding several projects in the area of ICT tools,' techniques, methods and infrastructure for CNs. Currently, enterprises are adopting advanced ICT solutions for gathering, storing, organising and accessing enterprise knowledge easily.