  Very massive stars preferentially reside in the cores of their parent
clusters and form binary or multiple systems. We study the role of tight very
massive binaries in the origin of the field population of very massive stars.
We performed numerical simulations of dynamical encounters between single
(massive) stars and a very massive binary with parameters similar to those of
the most massive known Galactic binaries, WR 20a and NGC 3603-A1. We found that
these three-body encounters could be responsible for the origin of high
peculiar velocities ($\geq$ 70 km/s) observed for some very massive ($\geq$
60-70 Msun) runaway stars in the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud
(e.g., $\lambda$ Cep, BD+43 3654, Sk-67 22, BI 237, 30 Dor 016), which can
hardly be explained within the framework of the binary-supernova scenario. The
production of high-velocity massive stars via three-body encounters is
accompanied by the recoil of the binary in the opposite direction to the
ejected star. We show that the relative position of the very massive binary
R145 and the runaway early B-type star Sk-69 206 on the sky is consistent with
the possibility that both objects were ejected from the central cluster, R136,
of the star-forming region 30 Doradus via the same dynamical event -- a
three-body encounter.
