Increasing collaboration preparedness and performance through VO inheritance

Virtual Organisations (VOs) are created from a collaboration network or a VO Breeding Environment (VBE) 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 common assets. This achieved value is often unsaved and unidentified. This paper proposes an approach to preserve the common VO experience and other assets by applying a practice called 'VO inheritance'. VO inheritance aims to enrich collaboration network assets, thus improving the preparedness of the VBE for business opportunities. Here, the added value (or the contents of the VO inheritance) is called 'VO heritage'. The paper identifies the different forms and components of VO heritage and discusses the inheritance mechanisms and processes. The identification uses previous developments of the 'lessons learned' in the project management field and a collection of views of the Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) operating in collaborative networks.