A virtual enterprise (VE) is a temporary alliance of businesses that come together to share skills or core competencies and resources in order to better respond to business opportunities, and whose cooperation is supported by computer networks. It is a manifestation of distributed collaborative networks. A virtual enterprise is a particular case of virtual organization. Virtual enterprises have become increasingly common in the area of research and development, with often far-flung organizations forming alliances that amount to a "Virtual Research Laboratory." Vassiliou (2007) outlined a broad continuum of possible virtual laboratory relationships, ranging from relatively simple outsourcing by a central organization to tightly knit consortia of collaborating entities. Definitions Several definitions include: "…a temporary network of independent institutions, businesses or specialised individuals, who work together in a spontaneous fashion by way of information and communication technology, in order to gain an extant competitive edge. They integrate vertically, unify their core-competencies and function as one organisation (or organisational unit)” (Fuehrer, 1997); “…a temporary network of independent companies, suppliers, customers – even rivals, linked by information technology to share costs, skills and access one another’s markets. It will have neither central office nor organisational chart… no hierarchy, no vertical integration…” (Byrne); “…a temporary network that exists through telematic networks and aims to share skills, resources, costs and benefits to achieve one or more projects answering to the market opportunities for products and services” (Pallet); "…an identifiable group of people or organisations whose use of ICT is substantially greater than with other types of organisation, thereby reducing the necessity of their physical presence together for the transaction of business or for doing work collaboratively in order to realise common objectives" (Hill, 1997); “…refers to a new organisational form characterised by a temporary or permanent collection of geographically dispersed individuals, groups or organisation departments not belonging to the same organisation – or entire organisations, that are dependent on electronic communication for carrying out their production process” (Travica, 1997); “…the VE does not exist in the physical sense but only on an electronic network representing a partnership of businesses existing as a nebulous form of business organisation that only exists to meet a market opportunity” (Campbell Alistair); "…a dynamic alliance between organisations that bring in complementary competencies and resources and that are collectively available to each other, with the objective of delivering a product or service to the market as a collective" (Ten Have amongst