Collaborative networks, although still an open area of research and development, represent a promising paradigm in a knowledge-driven society. This paradigm is already established as a main trend in industrial production systems. A wide variety of early forms of collaborative networks have emerged during the last few years as a response to rapidly evolving challenges faced by business entities and the society in general. As such, highly integrated and dynamic supply chains, the extended and virtual enterprises, virtual organizations, and professional virtual communities, as well as the long term networks, clusters, and breeding environments for virtual organizations are examples of this trend that are indeed enabled by the advances in information and communication technologies.
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