others, 1997); “…a strategic alliance amongst non-competing companies who share forces – using mostly ICT – for the accomplishment of a specific goal without losing their autonomy – except for the undertakings set forth in the VE agreement – and with the aim of avoiding the formation of a new legal entity” (Maurizio Raffaini, 2001). Characteristics All of these definitions indicate some common characteristics summarized as: boundary crossing complementary core competencies geographical dispersion complementary nature of the partners participant equality extensive use of information and communications technology temporary no creation of a new legal entity Projects Several European Union projects in the Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development focused on virtual enterprises: Business Integrator Dynamic Support Agents for Virtual Enterprise (BIDSAVER) from January 2000 through June 2002 Working group on Advanced Legal Issues in Virtual Enterprise (ALIVE) from January 2000 through December 2002 Legal issues for the advancement of information society technologies (LEGAL-IST) from April 2004 through March 2007 European collaborative networked organizations leadership initiative (ECOLEAD) from April 2004 through March 2008 Secure Process-oriented Integrative Service Infrastructure for Networked Enterprises (SPIKE) from January 2008 through December 2010 Glocal enterprise network focusing on customer-centric collaboration (GloNet) from September 2011 through August 2014 Business Innovation and Virtual Enterprise Environment (BIVEE) from September 2011 through August 2014 Another example of virtual enterprise is found in the United States Army Research Laboratory's Federated Laboratories, or "Fedlabs." These began in 1996, and represented close partnerships between ARL and several industrial and academic organizations, as well as various non-profit entities. The first three FedLabs were in Advanced Displays, Advanced Sensors, and Telecommunications. Each FedLab was a large consortium, with both an overall industrial leader and an ARL leader. The cooperative agreements forming the FedLabs were somewhat unusual in that the ARL was not a mere funder of research, but an active consortium participant. An overview of related projects (up to 2005) can be found in a book by Camarinha-Matos et al. (2005). Communities Since 1999 the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and Society of Collaborative Networks (SOCOLNET) sponsored an annual conference called the Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises (PRO-VE). Over the last couple of decades, we have seen a major shift from an industrial economy to that of an information economy. This led to new technology to help capitalise on the information economy. Virtual enterprises allow businesses to specialize and be flexible within their