A value model gives an indication on the profitability of an inter-organizational business cooperation. It describes the value viewpoint of the cooperation by estimating the number of objects with economic value exchanged between the business partners. In this paper we discuss why and how triggers would be an important extension to move value models from a static picture of a business coalition situation to a valuable and effective tool for evaluating the profitability of a coalition in time. Moreover we describe the main features of an "active" value model and discuss some application scenarios.