Project description
ECOLEAD aims to create the necessary strong foundations and mechanisms for establishing the most advanced collaborative and network-based industry society in Europe:
“In ten years from now most enterprises will be part of some sustainable collaborative networks that will act as breeding environments for the formation of dynamic virtual organizations in response to fast changing market conditions.”
The fundamental assumption in ECOLEAD is that a substantial impact in materializing networked collaborative business ecosystems requires a comprehensive holistic approach. Given the complexity of the area and the multiple inter-dependencies among the involved business entities, social actors, and technologic approaches, substantial breakthroughs cannot be achieved with the incremental innovation in isolated areas. Therefore ECOLEAD addresses the three most fundamental and inter-related focus areas that are the basis for dynamic and sustainable networked organizations: Breeding Environments, Dynamic Virtual Organizations, and Professional Virtual Communities.
The proposed holistic approach is reinforced and sustained on two horizontal activities: the theoretical foundation for collaborative networks and the horizontal ICT infrastructure. These activities are “horizontal” in the sense they support and affect the three vertical focus areas. The theoretical foundation provides the basis for technology-independent understanding of the area and its phenomena. The existence of an invisible, low-cost ICT infrastructure is a pre-condition for the establishment of truly dynamic collaborative networks.
ECOLEAD is expected to significantly impact industrial competitiveness and societal mechanisms, by providing means to effectively exploit opportunities deriving from the deployment of Virtual Organizations, and by designing and enabling new professional work paradigms, capable of enacting the Knowledge-based Society.