  We introduce the notion of a task-oriented maximally entangled state (TMES).
This notion depends on the tasks for which a quantum state is used as the
resource. This concept may be more fruitful than that of a general maximally
entangled state in the case of a multipartite system. We illustrate this idea
by giving an operational definition of maximally entangled states on the basis
of communication tasks of teleportation and superdense coding. We also give
examples and a procedure to obtain such TMESs for {\em n}-qubit systems.
