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Networked business models are becoming an indisputable reality in today’s economy. They allow companies to offer innovative products and services (eg through the bundling of physical products and electronic services from different partners) and to conduct business in a more effective way (eg by redistributing tasks between organizations). Given the increasing need for external collaboration, firms realize that it is time-consuming and expensive to individually negotiate and set up electronic relationships with a larger number of organizations, in particular with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). At the same time, they are experiencing that the manual exchange of information and the lacking electronic interoperability generates significant costs. For the sole area of concurrent product design and engineering Brunnermeier and Martin (2002) estimate that ‘imperfect interoperability costs the US automotive …