Learning with the market: Facilitating market innovation

This paper generates new insights into the market innovation process by merging literatures on higher-level learning and market shaping. The research shows that market learning expands the traditional organizational learning literature in three ways: it extends the unit of analysis from individual and organizational learning to inter-organizational learning; it implies a shift from adaptive to higher-level transformative learning; and it positions learning outcomes as changes in market-level properties rather than the mere cognitive developments of individual actors. A key contribution to the understanding of market learning is the development of a market-learning cycle framework that delineates the market-learning process into distinct phases. The framework structures the field in which focal actors with market driving strategies operate as they proactively engage other market actors during the different phases of the market-learning cycle. The usefulness of the framework is illustrated by a longitudinal case.