This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2014, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in October 2014. The 73 revised papers were carefully selected from 190 submissions. They provide a comprehensive overview of identified challenges and recent advances in various collaborative network (CN) domains and their applications, with a particular focus on the following areas in support of smart networked environments: behavior and coordination; product-service systems; service orientation in collaborative networks; engineering and implementation of collaborative networks; cyber-physical systems; business strategies alignment; innovation networks; sustainability and trust; reference and conceptual models; collaboration platforms; virtual reality and simulation; interoperability and integration; performance management frameworks; performance management systems; risk analysis; optimization in collaborative networks; knowledge management in networks; health and care networks; and mobility and logistics.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2015, held in Albi, France, in October 2015. The 61 revised papers were carefully selected from 126 submissions. They provide a comprehensive overview of identified challenges and recent advances in various collaborative network (CN) domains and their applications, with a strong focus on the following areas: risks in collaborative networks; agility and resilience in collaborative networks; collaboration frameworks; logistics and transportation; innovation networks; governance in collaborative networks; collaborative communities; information and assets sharing; business processes; performance and optimization; and network formation.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2016, held in Porto, Portugal, in October 2016. The 57 revised papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 148 submissions. They provide a comprehensive overview of identified challenges and recent advances in various collaborative network (CN) domains and their applications, with a strong focus on the following areas: hyperconnected systems, managing data and knowledge, networked business processes, collective intelligence and decision making, creating supply and production networks, operating and management of networks, collaborative engineering, product services, intelligent product ecosystems, product personalization, service orientation, cloud technology aspects for VOs, design science research, business models in hyperconnected context, agribusiness value chain, and collaborative networks in circular economy.

This book aims to provide the latest research findings, innovative research results, methods and development techniques from both theoretical and practical perspectives related to intelligent social networks and collaborative systems, intelligent networking systems, mobile collaborative systems, secure intelligent cloud systems, etc., as well as to reveal synergies among various paradigms in such a multi-disciplinary field intelligent collaborative systems. With the fast development of the Internet, we are experiencing a shift from the traditional sharing of information and applications as the main purpose of the Web to an emergent paradigm, which locates people at the very centre of networks and exploits the value of people's connections, relations and collaboration. Social networks are also playing a major role in the dynamics and structure of intelligent Web-based networking and collaborative systems. Virtual campuses, virtual communities and organizations strongly leverage intelligent networking and collaborative systems by a great variety of formal and informal electronic relations, such as business-to-business, peer-to-peer and many types of online collaborative learning interactions, including the emerging e-learning systems. This has resulted in entangled systems that need to be managed efficiently and in an autonomous way. In addition, latest and powerful technologies based on grid and wireless infrastructure as well as cloud computing are currently enhancing collaborative and networking applications as a great deal but also facing new issues and challenges. The principal purpose of the research and development community is to stimulate research that will lead to the creation of responsive environments for networking and, at longer-term, the development of adaptive, secure, mobile and intuitive intelligent systems for collaborative work and learning.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 19th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2018, held in Cardiff, UK, in September 2018. The 57 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 143 submissions. They provide a comprehensive overview of identified challenges and recent advances in various collaborative network (CN) domains and their applications, with a strong focus on the following areas: blockchain in collaborative networks, industry transformation and innovation, semantics in networks of cognitive systems, cognitive systems for resilience management, collaborative energy services in smart cities, cognitive systems in agribusiness, building information modeling, industry 4.0 support frameworks, health and social welfare services, risk, privacy and security, collaboration platform issues, sensing, smart and sustainable enterprises, information systems integration, dynamic logistics networks, collaborative business processes, value creation in networks, users and organizations profiling, and collaborative business strategies.

This book provides the latest research findings, and discusses, from both theoretical and practical perspectives, innovative research methods and development techniques related to intelligent social networks and collaborative systems, intelligent networking systems, mobile collaborative systems and secure intelligent cloud systems. It also presents the synergies among various paradigms in such a multi-disciplinary field of intelligent collaborative systems. With the rapid development of the Internet, we are experiencing a shift from the traditional sharing of information and applications as the main purpose of the Web to an emergent paradigm, which locates people at the very centre of networks and exploits the value of individuals’ connections, relations and collaboration. Social networks are also playing a major role in the dynamics and structure of intelligent Web-based networking and collaborative systems. Virtual campuses, virtual communities and organizations strongly leverage intelligent networking and collaborative systems by means of a great variety of formal and informal electronic relations, such as business-to-business, peer-to-peer and various types of online collaborative learning interactions, including the emerging e-learning systems. This has resulted in entangled systems that need to be managed efficiently and autonomously. In addition, the latest, powerful technologies based on grid and wireless infrastructure as well as cloud computing are currently enhancing collaborative and networking applications significantly, but are also facing new issues and challenges. The principal purpose of the research and development community is to stimulate research that will lead to the creation of responsive environments for networking and, in the longer term, the development of adaptive, secure, mobile, and intuitive intelligent systems for collaborative work and learning.