Managing to make markets:Marketization and the conceptualization work of strategic nets in the life science sector

Abstract This paper presents one of the first studies to identify and explain the marketization work of a strategic net. Through a study of the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst – a strategic net formed to support the marketization of Life Science Discoveries - we generate insights into the everyday work that makes marketization happen. Marketization is understood as the process that enables the conceptualisation, production and exchange of goods. Our findings focus on one specific form of marketization work found to be core to the strategic net: conceptualisation work. Three forms of conceptualisation work are identified: conceptualising actors' roles, conceptualising markets and conceptualising goods. These manifest as routinized, recursive practices. Our analysis reveals how these practices gather together multiple forms of scientific, technical and market knowledge to generate new market devices that transform market rules and conventions, and introduce new methods and instruments of valuation that change the market. In contrast to extant studies that claim a strategic net's activities influence markets; our findings position the conceptualisation work of the strategic net as constitutive of markets and the broader system of provision for ‘healthcare’ and ‘health futures’.

[1]  L. Karpik Le Guide rouge Michelin , 2000 .

[2]  Louise Young,et al.  Introduction to Special Issue on innovations and networks : innovation of, within, through and by networks , 2014 .

[3]  Louise Knight,et al.  Supply market uncertainty: Exploring consequences and responses within sustainability transitions , 2015 .

[4]  Alexandra Waluszewski,et al.  Managing Technological Development , 2002 .

[5]  Ron Adner,et al.  Value Creation in Innovation Ecosystems: How the Structure of Technological Interdependence Affects Firm Performance in New Technology Generations , 2009 .

[6]  Enrico Baraldi,et al.  Controlling and combining resources in networks — from Uppsala to Stanford, and back again: The case of a biotech innovation , 2009 .

[7]  Franck Cochoy,et al.  The sociology of market work , 2013 .

[8]  A. Salter,et al.  Academic Engagement and Commercialisation: A Review of the Literature on University-Industry Relations , 2012 .

[9]  M. Callon,et al.  Economization, part 1: shifting attention from the economy towards processes of economization , 2009 .

[10]  S. Nambisan,et al.  Entrepreneurship and strategic thinking in business ecosystems , 2012 .

[11]  Sarah L. Jack The Role, Use and Activation of Strong and Weak Network Ties: A Qualitative Analysis , 2005 .

[12]  Franck Cochoy Myriam’s ‘adverteasing’: on the performative power of marketing promises , 2015 .

[13]  K. Möller,et al.  Role of Knowledge in Value Creation in Business Nets , 2006 .

[14]  Birgitta Sandberg,et al.  Networks for the commercialization of innovations: A review of how divergent network actors contribute , 2014 .

[15]  C. Geertz The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays , 1975 .

[16]  Hans Kjellberg,et al.  Segmenting a market in the making: Industrial market segmentation as construction , 2010 .

[17]  N. Denzin,et al.  Introduction: The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research. , 2005 .

[18]  Virginia Acha,et al.  Making and exchanging a second-hand oil field, considered in an industrial marketing setting , 2008 .

[19]  A. V. D. Ven,et al.  Process studies of change in organization and management : unveiling temporality, activity, and flow , 2013 .

[20]  Elsebeth Holmen,et al.  How companies strategise deliberately in networks using strategic initiatives , 2010 .

[21]  A. Bruni,et al.  Reassembling the Social—An Introduction to Actor Network Theory , 2007 .

[22]  T. Järvensivu,et al.  Case study research with moderate constructionism: Conceptualization and practical illustration , 2010 .

[23]  K. Möller,et al.  Business Relationships and Networks: Managerial Challenge of Network Era , 1999 .

[24]  P. Karnøe,et al.  Building markets for clean technologies: Controversies, environmental concerns and economic worth , 2015 .

[25]  Luis Araujo,et al.  Markets, market-making and marketing , 2007 .

[26]  T. Zuiderent-Jerak Competition in the Wild , 2009 .

[27]  Claes-Fredrik Helgesson,et al.  Multiple versions of markets: Multiplicity and performativity in market practice , 2006 .

[28]  Loet Leydesdorff,et al.  Triple Helix indicators of knowledge-based innovation systems, Research Policy (forthcoming) , 2006, 0911.3407.

[29]  Christina Öberg,et al.  Exploring the roles of university spin-offs in business networks , 2016 .

[30]  Andrea L. Larson Network Dyads in Entrepreneurial Settings: A Study of the Governance of Exchange Relationships , 1992 .

[31]  Michel Callon,et al.  Economic markets and the rise of interactive agencements: from prosthetic agencies to "habilitated" agencies" , 2008 .

[32]  B. Fine The World of Consumption: The Material and Cultural Revisited , 1993 .

[33]  Vittorio Chiesa,et al.  Commercializing Technological Innovation: Learning from Failures in High-Tech Markets* , 2011 .

[34]  D. MacKenzie Is Economics Performative? Option Theory and the Construction of Derivatives Markets , 2006, Journal of the History of Economic Thought.

[35]  William B. Locander Market-Driving Organizations: A Framework , 2004 .

[36]  Kristian Möller,et al.  How to influence the birth of new business fields – network perspective , 2010 .

[37]  Dennis E. Garrett,et al.  Marketing Theory: Evolution and Evaluation , 1986 .

[38]  Ji Li,et al.  EAST MEETS EAST AND EAST MEETS WEST: THE CASE OF SINO‐JAPANESE AND SINO‐WEST JOINT VENTURES IN CHINA , 2002 .

[39]  L. Magner,et al.  A History of the Life Sciences, Revised and Expanded , 2002 .

[40]  M. Callon,et al.  Economization, part 2: a research programme for the study of markets , 2010 .

[41]  P. Parvinen,et al.  Strategic marketing and business performance: A study in three European ‘engineering countries’ , 2010 .

[42]  H. Chesbrough Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape , 2006 .

[43]  Arto Rajala,et al.  Strategic business nets - their type and management , 2005 .

[44]  Bruno Latour,et al.  The Powers of Association , 1984 .

[45]  Katy Mason,et al.  The utilisation of network pictures to examine a company's employees' perceptions of a supplier relationship , 2010 .

[46]  M. Callon Introduction: The Embeddedness of Economic Markets in Economics , 1998 .

[47]  Bernard J. Jaworski,et al.  Market-driven versus driving markets , 2000 .

[48]  G. Morgan,et al.  Beyond Method: Strategies for Social Research. , 1984 .

[49]  Kristian Möller,et al.  Metatheory of network management: A contingency perspective , 2009 .

[50]  Katy Mason,et al.  Communication practices in a business relationship: Creating, relating and adapting communication artifacts through time , 2012 .

[51]  Susi Geiger,et al.  Industrial sales people as market actors , 2009 .

[52]  M. Callon,et al.  An Introduction to Market Devices , 2007 .

[53]  James M. Sinkula,et al.  Market Orientation, Learning Orientation and Product Innovation: Delving into the Organization's Black Box , 2002 .

[54]  E. Pennings,et al.  Biotechnology Commercialization Strategies: Risk and Return in Interfirm Cooperation , 2015 .

[55]  Lars-Erik Gadde,et al.  Systematic combining: an abductive approach to case research , 2002 .

[56]  B. Loasby Knowledge, institutions, and evolution in economics , 1999 .

[57]  Sriram Khé The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger , 2008 .

[58]  Neil Pollock,et al.  Give me a two-by-two matrix and I will create the market: Rankings, graphic visualisations and sociomateriality , 2012 .

[59]  Michael McGuire,et al.  Big Questions in Public Network Management Research , 2001 .

[60]  L. Zucker,et al.  Star scientists and institutional transformation: patterns of invention and innovation in the formation of the biotechnology industry. , 1996, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[61]  M. Callon Revisiting marketization: from interface-markets to market-agencements , 2016 .

[62]  L. Araujo,et al.  Marketization and its limits , 2015 .

[63]  A. Langley Strategies for Theorizing from Process Data , 1999 .

[64]  James R. Zetka,et al.  Beyond Method: Strategies for Social Research. , 1985 .

[65]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation , 1991 .

[66]  Viliam Lendel,et al.  THE VALUE NET , 2007 .

[67]  K. Möller Role of competences in creating customer value: A value-creation logic approach , 2006 .

[68]  S. Hart,et al.  Relational resources and competences for radical product innovation , 2009 .

[69]  K. Möller,et al.  Rise of strategic nets — New modes of value creation , 2007 .

[70]  Jonathon E. Mote,et al.  The laws of the markets , 2000 .

[71]  Jinxi Wu,et al.  Nurturing business ecosystems for growth in a foreign market: Incubating, identifying and integrating stakeholders , 2015 .

[72]  K. Möller,et al.  Managing Strategic Nets , 2003 .

[73]  Claes-Fredrik Helgesson,et al.  The mode of exchange and shaping of markets: Distributor influence in the Swedish post-war food industry , 2007 .

[74]  Maurizio Zollo,et al.  Deliberate Learning and the Evolution of Dynamic Capabilities , 2002 .

[75]  Annmarie Ryan,et al.  Agencing markets:actualizing ongoing market innovation , 2015 .

[76]  Hans Kjellberg,et al.  Market innovation processes: Balancing stability and change , 2015 .

[77]  K. Möller,et al.  How to build a strategic network: a practitioner-oriented process model for the ICT sector , 2012 .

[78]  M. Callon,et al.  Peripheral Vision , 2005 .

[79]  J. Mouritsen,et al.  Making Things Valuable , 2015 .

[80]  M. Callon Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay , 1984 .

[81]  Kristian Möller,et al.  How to influence the birth of new business fields — Network perspective , 2009 .

[82]  Rahul Kapoor,et al.  Value Creation in Innovation Ecosystems: How the Structure of Technological Interdependence Affects Firm Performance in New Technology Generations , 2009 .

[83]  Rauno Rusko,et al.  Mapping the perspectives of coopetition and technology-based strategic networks: A case of smartphones , 2014 .

[84]  J. Finch,et al.  The performativity of sustainability: making a conduit a marketing device , 2015, Marketing Performativity.

[85]  K. Eisenhardt,et al.  Origin of Alliance Portfolios: Entrepreneurs, Network Strategies, and Firm Performance , 2009 .

[86]  K. Mason,et al.  Exploring the performativity of marketing: theories, practices and devices , 2015 .

[87]  Franck Cochoy Driving a Shopping Cart from STS to Business, and the Other Way Round: On the Introduction of Shopping Carts in American Grocery Stores (1936—1959) , 2009 .

[88]  M. Callon What Does It Mean to Say That Economics Is Performative? , 2006, Do Economists Make Markets?.

[89]  M. Alvesson,et al.  Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research , 2000, QMiP Bulletin.

[90]  Birgitta Sandberg,et al.  From new-product development to commercialization through networks , 2012 .

[91]  Peter Naudé,et al.  Network pictures: concepts and representations , 2006 .

[92]  R. D. Buzzell,et al.  Market Functions and Market Evolution , 1999 .

[93]  T. Notteboom,et al.  Containerisation, Box Logistics and Global Supply Chains: The Integration of Ports and Liner Shipping Networks , 2008 .

[94]  K. Möller,et al.  Crossing East-West boundaries: Knowledge sharing in intercultural business networks , 2004 .

[95]  Andreas Reckwitz Toward a Theory of Social Practices , 2002 .

[96]  Kevin G. Corley,et al.  Seeking Qualitative Rigor in Inductive Research , 2013 .

[97]  Nicolaj Siggelkow Persuasion with case studies , 2007 .

[98]  K. Möller Sense-making and agenda construction in emerging business networks — How to direct radical innovation , 2010 .

[99]  Simone Guercini,et al.  Business networks and retail internationalization: A case analysis in the fashion industry , 2010 .

[100]  Katy Mason,et al.  Learning to Build a Supply Network: An Exploration of Dynamic Business Models , 2008 .