Mechanisms for assessing and enhancing organisations' readiness for collaboration in collaborative networks

Collaborative networks are an increasing trend in highly competitive globalised economies, where collaboration is essential to succeed. Some specific challenges in collaborative networks, either for a virtual breeding environment (VBE) or a virtual organisation (VO), are in the first instance, to support the VBE members' integration process to the source network in order to establish: cooperation agreements, common operation principles, common interoperable infrastructures, common ontologies, and mutual trust towards guaranteeing that potential VO partners within the VBE are ready in advance to participate in dynamic coalitions and collaborative endeavours. In the second instance, the VO partners' selection process faces the challenge of matching a particular collaboration opportunity with specific competency requirements available in a set of potential VO partners. This paper presents a readiness for collaboration assessment and enhancing approach aiming at identifying critical evaluation elements referred to as readiness for collaboration assessments in order to determine if a potential VBE member has the needed elements to collaborate and participate in a collaborative network such as a VBE or a VO. In case it lacks these elements, the approach will provide enhancing mechanisms to improve its readiness level for collaboration towards increasing both its chances and preparedness towards collaboration in potential VOs.