Abstract
When the COVID-19 pandemic hits Portugal in early March 2020, medical doctors, engineers and researchers, with the encouragement of the Northern Region Health Administration, teamed up to develop and build, locally and in a short time, a ventilator that might eventually be used in extreme emergency situations in the hospitals of northern Portugal. This letter tells you the story of Pneuma, a low-cost emergency ventilator designed and built under harsh isolation constraints, that gave birth to derivative designs in Brazil and Morocco, has been industrialized with 200 units being produced, and is now looking forward to the certification as a medical device that will possibly support a go-tomarket launch. Open intellectual property (IP), multi disciplinarity teamwork, fast prototyping and product engineering have shortened to a few months an otherwise quite longer idea-to-product route, clearly demonstrating that when scientific and engineering knowledge hold hands great challenges can be successfully faced.

Abstract
This paper discusses some of the challenges presently found both in supply chain and in extended enterprise management. It also presents details of a Distributed Business Process Coordination Infrastructure that was used as a platform in the development of a software-based management system for a global supply chain in the garment sector. The pilot implementation that was undertaken allowed not only the validation of the proposed concepts but the testing of the integrated technological platform as well.

Abstract
This paper is meant to share some views on the relevance of science and R&D to business development and to sustainable economic growth. While attempting to do this, it is also meant to present some insight to an encompassing and complex reality with a multitude of interacting actors with different values, motivations, time-frames, cultures and even language: scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs, brokers, investors, politicians, etc. In this paper, knowledge is first discussed as the competitive advantage of our time. Then, the "knowledge-to-competitiveness" value chain is presented and discussed. Being innovation a key concept, the various types of innovation are discussed and the use of some major innovation management tools is briefly introduced. The business perspective is then put forward, discussing the complex mechanics of knowledge management scoring, due-diligence and rationale supporting investment decisions in novel science-based companies.

Abstract
In the global market, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) face increasing competition from large corporations for the control of the more profitable business areas. These corporations compensate for their lower agility and flexibility with easier access to information, resources and economies of scale. The virtual enterprise model of a business organization is thus often seen as one of the best strategic moves for SMEs to achieve a global reach without compromising their independence. This emerging business paradigm certainly brings new challenges to many areas of the enterprise, one of which is the quality assurance of external processes and contracted products and services. This paper introduces and discusses the issue of quality assurance within the scope of virtual and networked enterprises, and presents a novel methodology for the integration of quality management into enterprise modelling and for quality certification of the virtual enterprise. This is especially important because quality certification is becoming mandatory in nearly all markets and the well-established certification methods do not cover all the aspects of the virtual enterprise. ISO 9001:2000, the most widely used quality management system standard in the world, is presented as an interesting starting point for virtual enterprise quality management system implementation and certification. Further requirements include broadening the scope of the quality management system to include the whole enterprise life cycle, i.e. from its creation to decommission. Current auditing procedures will have to be adapted to this new business environment and, to meet such a requirement, a continuous real-time third-party auditing mechanism-fully integrated into the virtual enterprise--model is proposed. A pilot/simulator, implemented in a small virtual enterprise, in the occupational safety and health-care business, is used to illustrate the new environment as well as the novel requirements that quality systems will have to meet in the future.

Abstract
Within the scope of virtual and networked enterprises, this paper introduces a novel methodology for the integration of quality management into enterprise modeling and allowing for quality certification of the whole enterprise. The ISO 9001:2000 standard is presented as an interesting starting point for the virtual enterprise quality management system implimentation. Quality management systems certification within the scope of ISO 10011 (or even ISO FDIS 19011) is however quite a difficult task. An alternative scenario for certification is therefore proposed.