1 April 29-30, 2001 SwarmFest, Santa Fe 1 Pietro Terna pietro.terna@unito.it University of Torino - Italy, Department of Economics and Finance “G.Prato” jVEFrame: a Virtual Enterprise Frame in Swarm Abstract. jVEFrame (Java Virtual Enterprise Frame, written in Swarm) is built to simulate the effects of deep modifications that may occur in the life of a firm - for example, the adoption of B2B and B2C strategies - and to investigate the role of knowledge into this kind of economic organizations. April 29-30, 2001 SwarmFest, Santa Fe 2 The jVEFrame structure is highly decentralized: the “orders”, i.e. electronic forms (objects in Swarm contest), contain all the information needed for production. There is one order for each product to be done; it reports its production recipe, the performed phases, the cost accounting etc. The production units that execute the orders may be a part of the simulated enterprise or even be structured as external bodies. The model can also be used to evaluate the relations between the adopted information management systems (i.e., P2P knowledge management) and the behavior of the enterprises. In a more theoretical perspective, the model represents a step toward the simulation of the interactions among and within enterprises, to search for a better definition of entrepreneurship, in the Austrian economic sense of discovering new fields of innovation.