Business model elaboration and territorial development

The paper aims to investigate if the competitiveness of a certain territory may be developed and maintained in the context of a global economy through the exploitation of its intrinsic value. It contributes to managerial literature by embracing a systemic perspective employing business models and adapting the original Osterwalder and Pigneur’s (2010) framework (canvas) to the specific context of territorial development. We propose a conceptual framework placing the territory and its actors in a dominant position. This choice allows us to look at business models as instruments of success of an entire territory – a cooperating system. To do so, we build on “triple” and “quadruple helix”, which may be useful for guiding the specialization of a specific territory and supporting its economic sustainability. The paper contends that a business model might be the instrument to orchestrate actors’ (helices) cooperation by combining the focus on territories with a systemic perspective. It extends the literature on business models conceptually linking its roots to the existing managerial literature on territory governance and networks. It offers a dual range of outcomes: first, it provides public policy makers with useful guidelines with regard to political, institutional, educational, and entrepreneurial choices to be implemented for the development of a given geographical area; second, it examines the relational network linking the various actors of a territory, which are key to its growth and success. To our knowledge, business models have never been employed at territorial level, but only at firm level; and here we propose a new way for recovering/sustaining economically depressed areas. We believe that, through this new view of business models, policy makers can help each territory to express its intrinsic and peculiar value. By combining business models with the concepts of triple and quadruple helix we offer a new way to look at how governments, educational institutions and firms can cooperate to help a territory in finding and improving its intrinsic specialization.