## 8 Conclusions and Future Work  
Risks in a CNO can be reduced if there is a good level of alignment among the value systems of the various members of the network. This assumption is motivated by the fact that the behavior of an organization is, to a large extent, driven or influenced by its value system. Therefore, value systems alignment is a relevant criterion to be considered in the process of CNO formation. As such, it is important to integrate a value systems alignment assessment mechanism with a consortia formation environment.  
On the other hand, rapid formation of VOs can better be achieved if done in the context of a long-term strategic alliance, like a VBE, that is established to promote the preparedness of its members to collaborate. As such, if a value systems alignment mechanism is integrated with a \"VBE management system,\" it can support both the process of acquiring a new member to join the VBE and the processes of VO creation and evolution.  
According to these hypotheses, a prototype V-Align system was designed and developed as part of the \"VBE management system\" and \"VO management system\" of the GloNet project. The developed functionalities were validated through interaction with a large group of potential end-users and more specifically in a case study in the solar energy domain. Validation results are quite promising and tend to confirm the importance of value systems alignment in CNO management.  
In spite of validation results are quite promising, during our research work we identify some significant issues that we would like to address in a future work. A subject that should be discussed in more detail is how to guarantee that the meaning of each core value is the same for all the stakeholders, since it is easy to agree on words, however it is difficult to developing a shared meaning for these words. An issue which also deserves additional work is to construct an adequate _core values influence map_. A simple map was proposed in this pilot case study, which was considered as plausible for diverse researchers in the area. However, the findings in the Core Value Systems alignment assessment are dependent on the _core values influence map_ adopted. Therefore, methods to construct and evaluate _core values influence maps_ should be explored and validated. Data mining methods to discover core value influence relations seem to be an adequate approach. In spite of the core values and priorities assessment being out of the scope of this research work, this is an issue that deserves additional attention and where the collaboration of social researches can also be useful. Therefore, it is planned to develop methods and tools to assess the core-values of organizations in a more precise way.  
This work was funded in part by the European Commission through the GloNet project (FP7 program) and in part by the Center of Technology and Systems and FCT-PEST program UID/EEA/00066/2013 (Impactor project).  
[PERSON] and [PERSON] conceived and designed the models and methods presented, [PERSON] developed the software tools and performed the testes presented in the case study; [PERSON] and [PERSON] analyzed the data and wrote the paper.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.