The continuing change of producer markets towards buyer markets has a strong impact on the competition between manufacturing enterprises. As a strategic answer collaborative networks such as virtual corporations, virtual enterprises or virtual factories have been discussed since the beginning of the 90ies of last century. Many models and concepts supporting the life cycle of such organisations - consisting of the creation, operation and dissolution phases - have been presented. An important aspect in the creation phase is strategic planning. This phase is supported by concepts of long-term networks like industrial clusters or regional networks which act as a virtual breeding environment and which enable the short-term creation of virtual organisations. Especially this phase needs support of strategic planning which can be seen as a part of the strategic management process. This paper shows that such virtual breeding environments can be seen as complex systems and how system oriented ...
