/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// DESIGNING INTERACTIONS BY DESIGNING BUSINESS MODELS Cabirio Cautela, Francesca Rizzo Politecnico of Milano, Department of industrial Design, Arts, Communication and Fashion cabirio.cautela@polimi.it, francesca.rizzo@polimi.it ABSTRACT The global economic crisis is pushing forwards thoughts and conjectures about productive models, their logics and features. In particular business model generation is emerging as a strategic issue to be addressed as many contributions from managerial and business sciences are pointing out (Amit, Zott, 2001; Teece, 2010). Also design research, especially, the integrated design thinking framework (Brown, 2008; Martin, 2009) the area that relies on designers “ tool box” are progressively addressing their contribution towards the generation of “ value innovation” and its related business models (Kim, Mauborgne, 2005; Ostervalder, Pigneur, 2008). In the current hybrid and networked economy a multiplicity of business models is prevailing that is making available different values that rely on diverse models of interactions between producers and consumers. By exploiting a case based qualitative analysis the paper investigates the relations between models of interactions designed to support the producers-users communication, and the underlined business models. Keywords: business models design, models of interaction INTRODUCTION 1 During last years the attention on business models, and their innovation, raised up. A growing number of academic contributions, as well as series of practitioners-based articles discuss business models as one of the top-of-mind concerns "                " #" $  !      ## %  & of executives and managers as also recently underlined by The Economist (The Economist Intelligent Unit – Business 2010 – Embracing the challenge of change). Different driving factors can be individualized at the basis of this growing relevance. Among them the knowledge economy, the growth of Internet and e- commerce, the outsourcing and offshoring of many business activities, and the restructuring of financial services industry pushed companies to rethink and, in some cases, re-design their architecture values and primarily their business models (Johnson, Christensen, Kagermann, 2008; Teece, 2009). There are different research streams and also different ways to assume and make operable business models. Some contributions, describing common features among different business models, suggest taxonomies and “ archetypes” (Timmers, 1998; Rappa, 2001; Weil, Vitale, 2001), others try to identify business models “ building blocks” and their relationship in order to provide operative templates to analyze and identify innovative business models (Baden Fuller, Morgan, 2010; Ostervalder, 2005, 2010; Johnson, Christensen, Kagermann, 2008), thirdly other scholars analyze the technological innovations, their failures and successes in relation to the adopted business models (Chesbrough, Rosenbloom, 2002; Teece, 2009; Tripsas, Gavetti, 2000). Nevertheless, often the concept of business model remains ambiguous and “ arcane” (Magretta, 2002). Further more most contributions assume an afterword and isolating perspective that lacks to identify the generative logics under the business model concept and the correspondent operative levers with which they are closely tied. The paper, rooting business models according to one literature widespread framework, aims to clarify the !"#$%&"'( *+, -+"'(. !"#$%%&'()* #, -./0123445 67% 867 9#":& ;#(,%"%($% #( 0%*')( 1%*%<"$75 =4 >$6#?%" @ 8 A#B%C?%"5 0%:,65 67% A%67%":<(&*D E&'6%& ?F ADGDHD 1##I%(?J")5 KDKD ;7%( L !DMD /6<NN%"*D