Market innovation processes: balancing stability and change

This introductory article on market innovation processes seeks to conceptualize market innovations and elaborate on the processes through which such innovations are achieved. Recent attention to the active production of markets suggests markets are ongoing processes rather than stable entities. This implies a broader definition of market innovation than the opening up of new markets, including changing existing market structure, introducing new market devices, altering market behavior, and reconstituting market agents. In general, market innovation means altering the way in which business is done. Conceiving of markets as on-going processes further suggests that stabilizing efforts (preventing and/or directing market change) are central to market innovation. Such stabilizing efforts include establishing and maintaining a bounded network of buyers, sellers, goods, etc. and configuring this network so as to channel interactions between entities. Drawing on the individual contributions to the special issue we identify and exemplify four interrelated ways of stabilizing markets: institutionalizing norms and rules; building devices and technical infrastructures; generating and disseminating images, models, and representations; and enacting practices, routines and habits. We conclude by bringing attention to the central challenge of balancing efforts to stabilize and change markets.