A software platform for semantics-based enterprise knowledge management Francesco Taglino, Fabrizio Smith, Maurizio Proietti National Research Council, IASI “Antonio Ruberti” Viale Manzoni 30, 00185 Roma, Italy {taglino,smith,proietti}@iasi.cnr.it Abstract. In this paper we address the problem of knowledge management and interoperability in virtual enterprise environments where knowledge is often fragmented and heterogeneous. We propose a knowledge repository and man- agement infrastructure, called Production and Innovation Knowledge Reposi- tory (PIKR), to support open innovation in virtual enterprises. The PIKR pro- vides a set of reference ontologies to semantically describe enterprise knowl- edge resources, and semantics-based services for accessing and reasoning over such descriptions. We also give an overview of the implementation of the PIKR that is being carried on in the BIVEE European project. Keywords: business innovation, ontologies, semantic services, virtual enter- prises. 1 Introduction In the era of the globalised market which has deeply transformed the world economy, and increased the international competition, SMEs are more and more pushed to form business alliances and work in virtual enterprises (VEs). Enterprise networks can be a means to reach the critical mass required by the expanding markets. However, hetero- geneities of the network’s members can generate interoperability problems, with the consequence of reducing the expected benefits. Here we focus on interoperability at knowledge and information level that impacts on the possibility of exchanging and accessing common knowledge resources within a VE, and in particular within and across the production space (where all the activities related to the core business take place), and the innovation space (mainly characterised by creative units and coopera- tive interactions) of the VE itself. In a context of networked enterprises, this aspect is very crucial because it allows relevant resources to be shared, in order to assess how production activities are actu- ally performed, and how performing they are, what kinds of resources (in terms of skills and expertise) the virtual enterprise can count on, what documental resources (e.g., market analyses, technical reports) have been produced or acquired by the VE. It is also very important to know how innovation-related initiatives are carried on, e.g., the degree of participation of people to brainstorming activities, the number of