The development of open infrastructures to support Virtual Enterprises is attracting an increasing research effort worldwide. An extensive number of initiatives, namely in terms of international collaborative projects, have been launched and some preliminary results are already available. After an initial emphasis on the basic infrastructures, the focus is now on the management of cooperation. In this context, the goals of this conference are twofold: first to increase the awareness of SMEs on this new paradigm, and second to compare experiences and approaches of different research projects.