Online virtual worlds, electronic environments where people can work and interact in a somewhat realistic manner, have great potential as sites for research in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences, as well as in human-centered computer science. This article uses Second Life and World of Warcraft as two very different examples of current virtual worlds that foreshadow future development...

A challenge of Grid computing is to provide automated support for the creation and exploitation of virtual organisations (VOs), involving individuals and different autonomous organizations, to which resources are pooled from potentially diverse origins. In the context of the presented work, virtual organizations trade grid resources and services according to economic models in electronic market...

Garment virtual design has been evolved significantly with the rapid development of 3D CAD tools, especially with the convenient availability of NURBS surface modeling capability. Parametric development of clothes is demanded in line with the trend of mass customization according to the true measures of customers or regulated sizes of certain markets. Virtual design features with welldefined as...

Innovation is increasingly seen as a collective action which involves many different actors operating in a cluster context. These clusters are usually conceived as local agglomerations. In this paper it will be argued that they are an important tool to study innovation, but the globalisation of companies and markets and the specific requirements of innovation processes require the expansion of ...

This article describes the current problem in the business environment from the department of Cauca – Colombia (South America), and the proposed solution called Project CVN (Spanish initials) “Business Virtual Community for the department of Cauca Internet Commercial Platform or BVC”. Based on a markets research, the architecture of the added value conceived by the project is described; these v...

The ever-increasing complexity of contemporary products and services demands business supply chains that involve a large number of autonomous organizations. Competitive markets require that these chains are highly agile, effective and efficient. This is achieved by forming dynamic virtual enterprises within supplier networks, which we call instant virtual enterprises (IVEs). We present the Cros...

This article looks at the negative images on cash trades of in-game assets in Taiwan, through interview of participants in this activity, we believe the blurring of boundaries between work and play, adulthood and adolescence, real and virtual is what distinguishes this market from previous markets of virtual goods, resulting in its social stigma. We then discuss how the participants confront th...

The explosive growth of the virtual space such as internet and on-line service networks as well as proprietary corporate networks will change the business environment of the 21st century fundamentally. Capability of the instantaneous communication among business partners and availability of the near perfect information on the marketplace will strengthen the responsiveness and intelligence of th...

Nowadays small and medium enterprises try to develop new competitive advantages in order to access global markets. Virtual Industry Clusters (VIC) are an alternative for these companies, in such a way, that the companies can joint forces and competencies in the development of Virtual Enterprises (VE). Once the VICs are created, a structured process that manage the members’ core competencies, al...