Introduction
Markets are often treated as neutral mechanisms that aggregate supply and demand. In reality, markets are designed systems: shaped by rules, incentives, information structures, and power relations. Strategic outcomes—growth, innovation, resilience, or stagnation—emerge not from markets alone, but from the way these underlying structures are configured.
Within Sustainable Insights, markets and strategy are approached as co-evolving system layers. Strategy is not reduced to competitive positioning between individual actors, but understood as the capacity to navigate, influence, and adapt within complex market environments.
Contributions within this theme focus on opportunity through structure:
- How do market designs enable or constrain strategic behaviour?
- Under what conditions do markets reward long-term value creation rather than short-term extraction?
- How can strategic coordination emerge without undermining competition?
Markets are treated here not as abstract equilibria, but as institutional architectures that shape incentives, behaviour, and outcomes over time.
Why this matters
Poorly designed markets tend to amplify volatility, discourage investment, and reward arbitrage over innovation. The result is often declining productivity, fragile business models, and reduced international competitiveness. These outcomes are not accidental—they are systemic consequences of structural choices.
Well-designed market frameworks, by contrast, can unlock strategic opportunity. They lower uncertainty, align incentives across actors, and create space for experimentation and long-term investment. In this sense, market design becomes a powerful lever for economic growth, innovation capacity, and strategic autonomy.
This theme therefore looks beyond individual strategies to examine how market structures themselves shape what strategic options become viable.
Scope and boundaries
Included in this theme
- Market design and incentive structures
- Strategic behaviour in complex systems
- Competition, coordination, and concentration
- Value creation versus value extraction
- Industrial strategy and market frameworks
- Interaction between regulation and markets
Explicitly excluded
- Firm-level strategy playbooks
- Generic management advice
- Short-term market forecasting
- Tactical investment commentary
The focus is structural and strategic, not managerial.
Future insights will explore
Within Markets & Strategy, future publications will explore topics such as:
- Market design as a strategic policy instrument
- Competition and coordination in system markets
- Strategic dependence and market power
- Productivity, innovation, and incentive alignment
- Industrial strategy beyond protectionism
- Markets as governance mechanisms
Publications
Insights will appear here as they are published.
New analyses are added selectively and remain available as part of a growing, curated body of work.
Context and relations (prepared for future use)
- Related themes: Energy Systems; Digital Infrastructure; Governance, Organization & Power
- Future dossiers: Market Design & System Outcomes; Strategy in Complex Markets; Power, Competition & Coordination