A Semantic Framework for Knowledge Management in Virtual Innovation Factories

Knowledge management is a crucial aspect for enterprises that want to effectively cope with business innovation. However, the full control of the knowledge asset is often missing due to the lack of precise organizational models, policies, and proper technologies, especially in Virtual Enterprises (VEs), which are characterized by heterogeneous partners with different policies, skills and know-how. For such reasons, the need for technologies that enable knowledge sharing, efficient access to knowledge resources, and interoperability is felt as primary. This work proposes a semantics-based infrastructure aimed at supporting effective knowledge management for business innovation in VEs. Knowledge resources are formally represented and stored in a semantic layer, which is exploited by a set of semantic services for enabling efficient retrieval and reasoning capabilities to derive additional knowledge.