The promise and the perils of market creation in ‘smart’ categories: Examinations of smart manufacturing and smart cities

The categorisation of new markets enables firms to survive and gain competitive advantage, yet the promises of new market creation can also be fleeting and politically perilous. This dissertation addresses the strategy and the politics of categorising new markets in an era of digitalisation through two studies set in the domains of smart manufacturing and smart cities.

The first study examines the strategic dimensions of market categorisation through an investigation of the role of cultural and firm-specific resources in processes of strategic categorisation. To develop a better understanding of what resources a firm requires to create and shape new market domains, an inductive single case study traces the efforts of a global provider of cellular networks to construct a new market in the domain of smart manufacturing. Findings of this research inform the development of a theoretical model of strategic category shaping, which theorises the need for three distinct configurations firm-specific and cultural resources (knowledge-led, culture-led, hybrid) necessary to demarcate symbolic boundaries, structure the value space and materialise defining category features and its fit within an ecosystem.

The second study challenges dominant conceptualisation of market categorisation and develops an alternative view of market categorisation as a deliberative political process. Using the case of a proposed smart city neighbourhood involving a public-private partnership between a local development agency and an Alphabet subsidiary, this study examines the politics of categorising new markets on the boundaries of the public and private. This study develops a theoretical model of categorisation abandonment showing when public and private actors are confronted with contestation, they pursue diverging political strategies of procedural reconfiguring and performative framing, which fail to resolve underlying tensions and ambiguities. This study further highlights how visuals are strategically used in performative framing as a strategy of depoliticisation.