Most collaborative ventures don't turn out quite the way we envisage. It would be great if we could determine in advance if a particular collaborative project or joint venture will be worth the required investment. Here is a simple way you can assess the merits of any collaborative endeavour BEFORE you invest time, effort and money in failing to make it work.

I am pleased to launch the YouNetFast blog/online resource which is a unique and up-to-date resource on leading, facilitating and benefiting from collaborative business networks. YouNetFast is the third website in my YouWorkFast series.

The most common approach to business collaboration (Planned Collaboration) involves prior analysis of the participants to try to identify shared interests in collaboration (e.g. as complementary players in a collaborative supply network). Another more radical approach (Serendipitous Collaboration) involves putting a random mix of companies in a room and seeing what develops. Guess what - Serendipitous Collaboration works really well provided you have a good process for uncovering synergies!

One of the hardest things for a group of companies to do is to find some quick-win low-risk area where they can build trust by working together BEFORE they embark on something major. The Collaborative Opportunities Dashboard Tool allows companies to quickly explore a dozen practical ways to work together with the goal of meaningful results in 12 weeks or less.

There are 10 really critical foundations to make a Virtual Enterprise Network a success: 1) Communities and Project Dynamic, 2) Network Ground Rules, 3) Group Membership Structures, 4) Practical Group Structures, 5) Complete set of Network Roles, 6) Appropriate Legal Frameworks, 7) Practical Exchange Model, 8) Viable Stakeholder Ecosystem, 9) Realistic Network Development Model, 10) Proven Development Road Map. This article offers an introduction to these ten foundations.

A unique reference card for printing on 2-sided A4 (Landscape) which folds into 6 sections showing the key priorities and resources in developing The Networked Enterprise through its 7 maturity stages with the 8 key techniques and their checklists. A must-have for all group collaboration coaches, leaders and practitioners!

Thanks to mollfrey for posting my presentation on VENs at Connecting Innovation in Brighton (UK) on myplick.com. I like the way the slides are automatically previewed in flash with the text transcript also shown. Nice one!

A few years back I developed a simulation to expose key dilemmas in the incubation stage of Virtual Enterprise Networks. I used a powerful simulation-building tool called ithink from Isee, the newest version of which now allows deployment of simulations over the web. So I just republished the VEN simulation for free on www.bioteams.com.

NEWLY RELEASED 15-minute video of me (Ken Thompson) introducing the concepts of The Networked Enterprise (TNE) and Virtual Enterprise Network (VEN) at an event "Connecting Innovation" in Brighton (UK) organized by Use8 (The User Experience Society).

I (Ken Thompson) spoke on the theme of The Networked Enterprise at an event "Connecting Innovation" organized by the University of Brighton and Use8 in Hove (UK) on 26 March. My full slide set is available here for download.