In the US there has been a movement particularly within the defense and advanced engineering sectors to try to develop more agility in supply chains by working differently with suppliers.

InterTradeIreland have just published a major (80 page) report Business Networks on the Island of Ireland which proves that networks and clusters are very much alive and growing in Ireland.

Foresight 2020 is a new research report (downloadable free) written by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by Cisco Systems, assesses likely changes to the global economy, to eight major industries and to corporate structures over the next 15 years.

High Definition TVs should be a huge success yet so far they have been an unmitigated failure - a great example of the launch of a high tech product whose supporting ecosystem was not sufficiently mature.

Thanks to Cory Sorice for pointing me to an article, Heres an idea: Let everyone have ideas, in the New York Times, March 26 which reports on Rite-Solutions a technology company who have created a vigorous marketplace for ideas inside their company in what Tim O’Reilly calls an “architecture of participation”.

One of the biggest issues facing collaborative business networks is what legal form they should take. Too loose and they lack accountability and robustness but too tight and they become hamstrung and inflexible. Enter the Unincorporated Association and the Consortium Agreement.

One of the Ten Trends to watch in 2006, according to the McKinsey Quarterly (Jan 2006), will be the emergence of new global structures with a barbell-like structure, with a few giants on top, a narrow middle, and a flourish of smaller, fast-moving players on the bottom.

At a workshop today,19 Jan 2006, in Belfast entitled Legal Frameworks to support clusters and networks, Marco Conte of Collaborative Engineering (Rome) presented a unique set of Model Contracts developed by the EU Alive Project which provides detailed guidelines and templates covering the pre-contract, contract and post-contract aspects of collaboration for businesses cooperating in virtual networks and clusters.

A CMM for collaborative networks

Over the last year months a group of cluster facilitators and network coaches in Northern Ireland, including myself, have been working under the auspices of the Cluster Facilitators Forum, to try and develop a non-proprietary open model to guide how collaboration can develop between businesses through clusters and networks.

I presented "Virtual Enterprise Networks - A proven network partnering model for SMEs" at the 14th National Quality Conference in Istanbul, Turkey on Thursday November 17, 2005.