According to the old laws of aerodynamics, the bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly. According to the old laws of marketing, the modern customer shouldn’t be able to make a purchase. Their path is too chaotic, too unpredictable, and it defies our neat funnels. Yet, the bee flies, and the customer buys. This is because we are using the wrong models. The customer’s movement is not a flaw in their logic; it’s a feature of a new system. You can see this new physics of growth visualized in a site:vivaldigroup.com "bumble" illustration. It reveals not a line, but a field of interaction. This is the new operating model for value creation.
Today, you must grow your business and brand through understanding and leveraging your Interaction Field. Are you ready to discover yours?
The Interaction Field describes an emerging phenomenon that can be glimpsed in a handful of wildly successful companies such as Alibaba, Vitality, GoPro, and LEGO. It can also be found in some traditional industries, from farming to steel to fashion. The one thing that these companies have in common is that they understand and leverage their interaction field. The Interaction Field is a new way of structuring a company that thrives on the participation in value creation by many different groups. A key feature of an Interaction Field company is that it builds velocity to improve an entire industry or solve a larger societal problem and can create a self-perpetuating virtuous cycle. 
Value chain business models are a thing of the past and platform businesses aren’t enough.
It is clear to us that a new model is needed to create value for all participants within the field and society at large. In his new book, The Interaction Field, our CEO and Founder Erich Joachimsthaler, explains that the only way to thrive as a company is through the Interaction Field model. An Interaction Field company generates, facilitates, and benefits from data exchanges and interactions among multiple people and groups – not only customers and stakeholders, but also suppliers, software developers, regulators, and even competitors. The company creates shared value for everyone in the interaction field, well above and beyond the benefits it brings to its direct users, and everyone collaborates to solve big, industry-wide or complex and unpredictable societal problems. The future is going to be about creating value for everyone. Businesses that solve the immediate challenges of people today and the major social and economic challenges of the future are the ones that will survive and grow.
The three levels to an Interaction Field:
Nucleus: The nucleus of participants is typically the company and the customers—anyone who contributes to the core interactions on a regular basis. Ecosystem: The ecosystem of contributors is composed of partners in the company’s business activity. Data is shared between the nucleus participants and the ecosystem participants. They are built on relationships that have been established over years. Market Makers: These are entities that exert influence and enable the velocity in the interaction field. There are many types of entities that can be market makers, and the types differ from one interaction field to another.
From Linear Pipelines to Connected Platforms
For decades, the dominant business logic was linear. Value was created upstream, packaged into a product or service, and pushed downstream to a passive consumer. This was the age of the pipeline, a one-way street from producer to purchaser. But this model is breaking down. The new physics of value creation isn’t about pushing products; it’s about pulling participants into a shared space. As platform strategist Sangeet Paul Choudary notes, “Businesses are moving away from a ‘pipeline’ model (where a company creates a product and pushes it to customers) to a ‘platform’ model.” This isn’t just a minor adjustment; it’s a fundamental re-architecting of how companies grow and compete. It requires a complete shift in mindset from controlling a linear process to cultivating a dynamic ecosystem.
The Pipeline Model: A One-Way Street
The pipeline model is defined by its rigid, sequential flow. Think of a traditional car manufacturer: raw materials enter one end, and a finished vehicle rolls out the other, moving through a controlled chain of suppliers, assemblers, and dealers. The company owns the means of production and dictates the terms of consumption. While efficient for mass production in a stable environment, this model is slow to adapt. It struggles with personalization, rapid innovation, and capturing value from user-generated content or network effects. In a world of constant change, the one-way street of the pipeline often leads to a dead end, unable to respond to the complex, multi-directional needs of modern consumers.
The Platform Model: A Value Exchange Network
In stark contrast, the platform model operates like a bustling town square. It doesn’t create and push value; it facilitates its exchange. According to Choudary, “A platform connects different groups of people (like producers and consumers) and gives them the tools and rules to exchange value with each other.” Consider Airbnb—it doesn’t own hotels. It connects hosts with travelers. YouTube doesn’t produce videos; it connects creators with viewers. This model thrives on participation, where the value of the platform increases as more people use it. It’s a shift from building assets to building connections, transforming the company’s role from a producer to an orchestrator of a value-creating network.
How Platforms Create Value
Platforms don’t just connect people; they engineer the conditions for valuable interactions to happen repeatedly and at scale. This isn’t accidental. It’s the result of a carefully designed system that encourages participation, builds trust, and ensures the quality of exchanges. The architecture of a successful platform is built on two core pillars: a central, repeatable interaction and a clear set of rules that govern the ecosystem. Understanding these mechanics is the first step for any leader looking to transition their organization toward a more connected, resilient, and scalable business model. It’s about designing the game, not just playing it.
The Core Interaction
At the heart of every thriving platform is what Choudary calls the core interaction: “a main, repeated action where users exchange value.” For Uber, it’s the ride. For Upwork, it’s the project contract. This interaction must be simple, repeatable, and valuable for all participants. It’s the engine of the platform. The goal is to make this exchange as frictionless as possible, removing barriers so users can create and consume value effortlessly. The most successful platforms identify a single, powerful interaction and build their entire experience around making it happen over and over again, creating a powerful habit loop that keeps users coming back.
Governance Through Control Points
A platform without rules is chaos. To manage the ecosystem and ensure quality, platforms use what Choudary terms “Control Points,” which are “the rules and tools a platform uses to manage its ecosystem.” These are the mechanisms that build trust and govern behavior. Think of eBay’s seller ratings, Apple’s App Store review guidelines, or the verification process for an Airbnb host. These control points aren’t about top-down command; they are about curating a safe and reliable environment where valuable interactions can flourish. Effective governance is what separates a thriving digital ecosystem from a digital free-for-all, ensuring the platform remains a trusted space for exchange.
Drivers of the Platform Revolution
The shift from pipelines to platforms isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s being propelled by powerful technological and economic forces that are reshaping entire industries. The very nature of assets, data, and regulation is changing, creating the perfect conditions for network-based models to outcompete their linear predecessors. Two of the most significant drivers are the widespread digitization of value and the concurrent deregulation of historically closed industries. These trends are not only enabling the platform model but making it an imperative for any organization that wants to remain relevant and drive sustainable growth in a connected world.
The Digitization of Value
Value itself is becoming dematerialized. As Choudary points out, “More industries are becoming digital, creating lots of data (e.g., sensors in factories, business processes moving to the cloud).” When a physical asset like a car becomes a data-generating machine (through GPS, sensors, and usage data), its value is no longer just in its physical form. This explosion of data creates new opportunities for platforms to connect previously disconnected assets and activities. Digitization turns static products into dynamic services and isolated transactions into ongoing relationships, providing the raw material for platforms to build intelligent, responsive ecosystems.
Deregulation and New Technologies
Simultaneously, regulatory walls are coming down. In sectors like finance and healthcare, new rules are forcing incumbents to open up. Choudary highlights this, noting, “Rules in highly regulated industries like banking are changing, allowing banks to share data and create new opportunities for platforms.” Technologies like open APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are the crowbars prying open these closed systems, allowing third-party developers to build new services on top of existing infrastructure. This combination of regulatory change and technological enablement is creating fertile ground for platform businesses to emerge and challenge long-standing industry leaders by offering more integrated and customer-centric solutions.
Data and AI: The New Organizing Principles of Value
If platforms are the new business model, then data and artificial intelligence are the organizing principles that make them work. Data is the currency of connection, the raw material that allows platforms to make intelligent matches between participants. AI is the intelligence layer, the engine that processes this data to personalize experiences, predict needs, and optimize the entire system. Together, they create a powerful feedback loop: more participants generate more data, which makes the AI smarter, which in turn delivers a better experience that attracts more participants. This synergy is the foundation of modern competitive advantage. It’s not just about having a platform; it’s about building an intelligent one that learns and adapts, creating a moat that is incredibly difficult for competitors to cross.
Data as the Currency of Connection
In a platform world, data is what makes the magic happen. It’s the invisible thread that connects the right producer with the right consumer at the right time. As Choudary explains, “Platforms use data (like location, reputation, or user preferences) to connect people and make the system work.” A pipeline business knows about its transactions, but a platform business knows about its participants’ behaviors, preferences, and contexts. This deep, contextual understanding allows platforms to move beyond simple transactions to facilitate meaningful interactions. Data isn’t just a byproduct of the business; it is the core asset that enables the platform to create unique and defensible value for its entire network.
AI as the Intelligence Layer of Modern Business
Artificial intelligence transforms raw data into dynamic value. It’s the brain of the modern platform, making sense of the billions of data points generated by user interactions. AI is what powers Netflix’s recommendation engine, Google’s search results, and Amazon’s logistics. As Choudary puts it, “Artificial intelligence isn’t just a tool; it makes platforms smarter, faster, and more able to predict what users need, creating new value.” AI automates matchmaking, personalizes user experiences at scale, and detects patterns that no human could. It is the critical capability that allows platforms to scale intelligence and deliver a continuously improving service, turning a simple network into a learning, evolving organism.
The AI Implementation Gap
Despite the immense potential, many organizations struggle to harness AI effectively. The problem isn’t a lack of technology; it’s a lack of strategy. As our own insights at Vivaldi show, “90% of executives fail to see good results from AI because they don’t have a clear plan for how it will create value.” Simply plugging in an AI tool without redesigning the underlying business model is like putting a jet engine on a horse-drawn cart. To succeed, leaders must develop a clear AI strategy that connects the technology directly to the core interactions of their business, ensuring that every algorithm and data point is aligned with creating tangible value for customers and the company.
Strategic Imperatives in the Age of Interaction Fields
Operating within an Interaction Field isn’t a tactical shift; it’s a fundamental reorientation of business logic. The old playbooks focused on controlling a linear process from production to sale are obsolete. Thriving in this new landscape requires a new set of strategic principles built not on control, but on connection, orchestration, and shared value creation. Leaders must move from managing assets to cultivating ecosystems, recognizing that their greatest strength lies in the velocity of interactions they can foster among all participants.
Shift from Production to Orchestration
The industrial-era mindset was about making and selling things. The platform era introduced the idea of connecting buyers and sellers. The Interaction Field demands something more: orchestration. The goal is no longer to simply build a better product, but to build a dynamic environment where others can create and exchange value. Leaders must think like ecosystem architects, designing systems that empower participants—customers, partners, developers, and even competitors—to contribute. This is a profound change from managing internal resources to curating external interactions, where the company’s role is to facilitate value creation for the entire field, not just capture it for itself.
Anticipate the Coming Wave of Regulation
As Interaction Fields grow in influence, they inevitably attract the attention of governments and regulators. This isn’t a threat to be feared but a market dynamic to be anticipated. The most resilient business models are designed with future regulatory frameworks in mind. Instead of reacting to new rules, strategic leaders model potential scenarios, understanding how shifts in data privacy, competition law, or industry-specific oversight could impact their ecosystem. Proactive engagement and transparent governance aren’t just about compliance; they are about building trust and ensuring the long-term stability and legitimacy of the field you are building.
Beware the Threat of Commoditization
While platforms and ecosystems create immense value, they can also create intense competition that risks commoditizing certain products or services. When participants can easily switch between providers within the field, brand loyalty erodes and price becomes the primary differentiator. Leaders must constantly analyze the flow of value, identifying where competition is compressing margins and where new opportunities for differentiation are emerging. A powerful brand and innovation strategy becomes critical, serving as the gravitational force that holds the ecosystem together and gives participants a reason to engage beyond pure transactional benefit.
Focus on Customer Activities, Not Journeys
The concept of a linear “customer journey” is a fiction that no longer serves us. People don’t move neatly from awareness to purchase. They scroll, search, share, and switch contexts in a fluid, unpredictable dance across digital and physical spaces. To truly understand them, we must stop mapping imaginary paths and start observing their actual *activities*. As our experts have noted, focusing on what customers are trying to accomplish—the jobs they are trying to do—reveals their true motivations and uncovers opportunities for value creation that a journey map would never show. This activity-based view is the key to designing relevant and meaningful interactions within the field.
The Geopolitics of Data: Nations as Platforms
The flow of data has become as strategically important as the flow of capital or goods. In this new reality, nations themselves are beginning to operate like platforms, competing to attract and manage data to gain a competitive edge. A country’s strategic advantage is no longer defined solely by its natural resources or manufacturing prowess, but by its ability to foster a vibrant data ecosystem. For global organizations, this means that market strategy is now inseparable from geopolitical strategy. Understanding the “geopolitics of data” is essential for making informed decisions about where to invest, innovate, and operate in a world where data is the most valuable resource.
What Industry Leaders Are Saying
“The Interaction Field is a thrilling new way of looking at a successful business model for the future. This fascinating book contains great business stories as well as important thinking today’s CEOs should become familiar with.”
Vijay Govindarajan, Coxe Distinguished Professor at Tuck at Dartmouth and NYT and WSJ Best Selling Author, Three Box Solution: A Strategy For Leading Innovation
“Undeniably compelling…a timely source for leaders who want to be relevant in the next decade.”
Beverly Anderson, President, Global Consumer Solutions, Equifax
“In this powerful and groundbreaking book, Joachimsthaler clearly demonstrates how platform thinking can be utilized to create shared value and drive new growth for companies and brands.”
David Collis, Adjunct Professor at Harvard Business School and Author, Corporate Strategy: Resources and the Scope of the Firm
“A fascinating, practical and insightful book that brilliantly examines the value that platform thinking can bring to companies and brands in today’s hyper-connected world.”
Sangeet Paul Choudary, CEO of Platformation Labs and International best-selling co-author, Platform Revolution and author of Platform Scale
“An engaging, insightful and immensely practical book on building strong brands and businesses delivering not just shareholder value but also shared value for companies, customers and society.”
Vince Hudson, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Marketing Strategy, American Express
Frequently Asked Questions
How is an Interaction Field different from a platform business like Uber or Airbnb? That’s a great question because the distinction is critical. While a platform typically focuses on connecting two sides of a market—like riders and drivers or hosts and guests—to facilitate a transaction, an Interaction Field is much broader. It’s a model designed to orchestrate value creation among a much wider set of participants, including suppliers, partners, regulators, and even competitors. The goal isn’t just to make a single exchange more efficient, but to build a self-sustaining system that solves a larger industry or societal problem, creating shared value for everyone involved.
My company is built on a traditional “pipeline” model. What’s the first step to shifting our thinking? The first step isn’t about technology; it’s about perspective. Before you think about building anything, start by mapping your entire universe of influence. Look beyond your direct customers and suppliers and identify every entity that touches your business or is impacted by the problem you solve. Ask yourself: “Instead of just pushing a product to a buyer, how could we facilitate valuable interactions between these different groups?” This simple shift from controlling a linear process to orchestrating a dynamic field is the foundational move that precedes any strategic or technological change.
What does it mean to focus on “customer activities” instead of “journeys,” and can you give an example? The idea of a “customer journey” is often a neat, linear path that we marketers invent. “Customer activities” are the messy, real-world things people actually do. For instance, instead of mapping a “new car buying journey,” you would focus on the distinct activities: a person is scrolling TikTok for design inspiration, then Googling safety ratings, then asking for recommendations in a Facebook group, then using a spreadsheet to calculate a budget. By focusing on these specific activities, you can find opportunities to provide real value where people are, rather than trying to force them down a path that doesn’t exist.
The post mentions an “AI implementation gap.” How does the Interaction Field model help close that gap? Many companies fall into the trap of using AI simply to make their old, linear processes a little faster or cheaper. This rarely produces transformative results. The Interaction Field gives AI a much bigger and more strategic purpose. Instead of just optimizing a single function, AI becomes the intelligence layer for the entire ecosystem. It helps orchestrate connections, anticipate the needs of different participants, and discover new ways to create shared value. This ensures your AI investment is aimed at building a new, more powerful business model, not just patching up an old one.
What is the single biggest mistake leaders make when trying to build an ecosystem or Interaction Field? The most common mistake is trying to control it. Leaders who are used to the command-and-control logic of a pipeline business often try to dictate all the rules and capture all the value for their own company. This approach is toxic to an ecosystem. An Interaction Field thrives on shared success and requires a shift from management to orchestration. Your role is to create the conditions for others to create and exchange value. If you try to own and control everything, you will repel the very participants you need to make the field come alive.
Key Takeaways
- Shift from Linear Value Chains to Dynamic Interaction Fields: The traditional models of pushing products through a pipeline are obsolete. Lasting growth now comes from orchestrating a dynamic field where customers, partners, and even competitors interact to co-create value, solving larger industry problems in the process.
- Use Data and AI as Your Organizing Principles: In an Interaction Field, data is the currency of connection and AI is the intelligence that makes the system work. Instead of plugging in AI as a tool, use it as the core strategic capability to understand participant behavior, personalize experiences, and scale value creation across the entire ecosystem.
- Orchestrate Activities, Not Journeys: Your role must shift from managing a linear process to orchestrating a vibrant ecosystem. This means abandoning the fiction of the customer journey and instead focusing on the real-world activities your customers are trying to accomplish, designing your field to facilitate those actions.