Professor Katy Mason, Pro-Vice Chancellor & Dean of Salford Business School, and Professor Martin Spring, Professor Emeritus of Operations Management at Lancaster University Management School (LUMS) will be discussing market studies approaches to innovation: insights on concerned markets and innovation support organisations.
Abstract
Innovation studies inevitably has to engage with the notion of markets. At the risk of over-simplifying, a common conceptualisation of markets might be as a collection of customers or would-be customers for a new product, service or technology, an understanding implicit in terms such as “target market” or “market segment”. Based on this understanding, innovation is about developing technologies, products and services that can be sold to these implicitly pre-existing “markets”.
Market studies takes a different perspective, seeing markets as the ongoing sociotechnical accomplishments across multiple actors that, as Callon and Muniesa put it , “allow compromises to be reached, not only on the nature of goods to produce and distribute but also on the value given to them” (Callon and Muniesa, 2005, p.1229). Markets are thus combinations of norms and rules, institutional arrangements, infrastructure, technical and epistemic devices, and representations of knowledge, routines and practices that allow comparison and exchange to take place.
This seminar examines the implications of a market studies approach to innovation, through two examples. First, we explore how markets can be constructed to reflect and perpetuate the concerns of those who work to construct them. We show how the collective concerns of others, are mobilised to generate new kinds of markets for innovations as diverse as cancer treatments and Christmas experiences. Second, we report on a recent study of Innovation Support Organisations (ISOs) such as accelerators, incubators, catalysts and Catapults to explore how such organisations support – or could support - innovation in markets as well as in technologies, which is the more typical focus. We argue that these insights raise important questions for how we might innovate differently, to construct more inclusive, moral markets.
About Katy Mason and Martin Spring:
Professor Katy Mason is Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Salford Business School at the University of Salford, and President of the British Academy of Management. Her research focuses on innovation, market making, and sustainable business, with particular expertise in how organisations collaborate across sectors to create social, environmental and economic value. She has worked with organisations including Rolls-Royce, Microsoft and the Cabinet Office, and her work on "moral markets" explores how markets can be designed to better support people and the planet. Her research has been published in leading journals including Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies and Industrial Marketing Management.
Professor Martin Spring is Professor of Operations Management at Lancaster University Management School. His research explores innovation, digital technologies, business models and the changing nature of products and services. Drawing on perspectives from operations and organisation studies, he examines how emerging technologies reshape industries, organisations and patterns of value creation. His work has been published in leading journals across management and innovation studies and has informed debates on digital transformation, sustainability and industrial change.
Seminar Details:
The Manchester Institute of Innovation Research runs a series of regular seminars given by visiting speakers to Manchester. These seminars are open to anybody who is interested in science, technology and innovation policy and management.
Refreshments will be available for networking from 3:15 pm, before the seminar.
We encourage AMBS and UoM staff and students to join us in person. An online option will be available via Microsoft Teams Online.
