The Business Model Relations Axiom

The notion of business models (BMs) has been used by strategy scholars to refer to 'the logic of the business, the way it operates and howit creates value to its stakeholders' (Casadesus-Masanell and Ricart 2009). On the surface, this notion appears to be similar to that of a business model strategy. We present a conceptual framework to separate relations within any BMs and between any BMs in the business. BMs, we argue, are a reflection of business models' realized and unrealized relations. We find that in simple competitive situations there is a one-to-many tangible and intangible mapping between relations and the businessBMs, whichmakes it difficult to separate the two notions. We show that the concepts of relations and BMs differ when there are important contingencies upon which a well-designed business model strategy must be based. Our framework delivers a clear separation between different relation viewpoints and BMs. This distinction is possible because we have verified through our research that relations are one of the seven dimensions of anyBMand can be mapped internally to any BMand also externally ' between any BMs internal and external to the business.