Sustainability transitions require not only the creation of new markets, but also the dismantling of existing, unsustainable markets. This thesis examines how organisations can contribute to market system change on both sides of sustainability transitions, and how progress in this regard can be measured.
A review of the literature on market innovation shows that researchers increasingly view markets not as a given, but as something that emerges from many small interactions, without central control, within a dynamic system. The thesis therefore introduces ‘systemic performance’: a formal conceptualisation of the impact of sustainable innovations on a market system, which reveals how attitudes, intentions, behaviour and institutions shift, even when sales figures show little change.
The literature review also shows that little attention has been paid to how companies can actively contribute to the dismantling of unsustainable markets. An in-depth case study in the Dutch lighting industry demonstrates that market disruption by companies occurs through triads of disruptive design, framing and mobilisation. The objects designed by sustainability pioneers play a key role in this, as they make the abstract problems of existing markets tangible, thereby providing stakeholders with a focal point around which to organise themselves. Taken together, the studies show that both creation and disruption can be strategic pathways to sustainability impact.
Niels Sprong (’s-Hertogenbosch, 1984) obtained a BA in Liberal Arts and Sciences from University College Maastricht, an MA in Science and Technology Studies from Maastricht University, and an MSc in Environment and Resource Management from VU University Amsterdam. In 2015, he began his PhD research at the Nijmegen School of Management at Radboud University, as part of the ‘Sustainable Innovations and their Societal Impact’ project within the NWO programme ‘Sustainable Business Models’, under the supervision of Prof. Dr Bas Hillebrand, Dr Paul Driessen and Prof. Dr Gert van Dijk. Part of this work was published in the *Journal of Business Research*. Since 2019, he has been teaching sustainable innovation at Avans University of Applied Sciences in ’s-Hertogenbosch, where, as a senior lecturer in Business Innovation, he is affiliated with Avans Creative Innovation and is a researcher at the ‘Collaboration for Regenerative Value Systems’ research group within the Centre of Expertise for Broad Prosperity and New Entrepreneurship.