This paper addresses a study conducted by an international research team in the context of Socrates/Minerva project UNIVe. The UNIVe project aims at developing a model for consortium-type virtual university and pilot-testing this model in the context of Estonian e-University (EeU). Estonian e-University was established in 2003 by the Ministry of Education and Research, Estonian Information Technology Foundation, four largest Estonian public universities and two private higher education institutions. The goal of this consortium was the advancment of e- learning in Estonian higher education through enhancing the cooperation between highly competitive higher education institutions. In 2003, EeU initiated a Minerva project UNIVe: "Creating network-based e-university model for the small countries in the context of e-learning in Europe". The main goal of UNIVe is to collect and share the knowledge and experiences of developing a consortium-type e-university. In order to provide an e-university model that would be relevant for different European countries, UNIVe project is going to integrate available e-learning know-how of the previous successful international projects and analyse and integrate existing consortium-type e- university models from Finland (Finnish Virtual University), Sweden (Net University), Scotland (Interactive University), and Estonia (Estonian e-University). This paper focuses on one strand of research activities within UNIVe project: the study of thematic networks as a catalyst for educational innovation in the context of consortium- based e-university. Our approach was based on the idea of the social networks in the context of educational innovation that can be interpreted as the communities of practice, described in the literature by Lave and Wenger (1991), Seely Brown and Duguid (2000), van Winkelen and Sliwka (2003). Following the common methodological guidelines, four UNIVe partner institutions conducted case studies of the existing thematic networks: - Ingonline (www.ingonline.nu) - a Swedish engineering program offered in collaboration between eight Swedish higher education institutions - KASVI (kasvi.joensuu.fi/kasvi) - a thematic network of educational scientists within the Finnish Virtual University- @duline (www.tkk.utu.fi/aduline) - two high-quality, innovative online courses (Designing Online Learning and Tutoring Adults Online) that were developed and pilot-tested jointly by an international network of experts from six different European countries (within a Grundtvig project).- TNTEE (tntee.umu.se) - Thematic Network for Teacher Education in Europe, an innovative Erasmus project from 1996-1999. We focused on one sub- network of TNTEE that was afterwards resulting at two large-scale Erasmus projects: EDIL (European Doctorate in Interactive Learning) and EUDORA (European Doctorate in Teaching and Teacher Education). In this paper, we are going to introduce and generalize the results of these case studies and draw the characteristics of a successful thematic network that is supporting educational innovation in the context of e-learning in higher education. ReferenceLave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning - Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press.Seely Brown, J. & Duguid, P. (2000) The Social Life of Information. Harvard Business School Press.Sliwka, A.: 2003, Networking for Educational Innovation, A Comparative Analysis, In Schooling of Tomorrow, Networks of Innovation: Towards New Models for Managing Schools and Systems. OECD, Paris.Van Winkelen, C. (2003) Inter-Organizational Communities of Practice. http://www.elearningeuropa.info (visited 05-01-05)