Managing to make markets: Marketization and the conceptualization work of strategic nets in the life science sector

This paper presents one of the first studies to identify and explain the marketization work of a strategic net. Through a study of the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst - a strategic net formed to support the marketization of Life Science Discoveries - we generate insights into the everyday work that makes marketization happen. Marketization is understood as the process that enables the conceptualisation, production and exchange of goods. Our findings focus on one specific form of marketization work found to be core to the strategic net: conceptualisation work. Three forms of conceptualisation work are identified: conceptualising actors' roles, conceptualising markets and conceptualising goods. These manifest as routinized, recursive practices. Our analysis reveals how these practices gather together multiple forms of scientific, technical and market knowledge to generate new market devices that transform market rules and conventions, and introduce new methods and instruments of valuation that change the market. In contrast to extant studies that claim a strategic net's activities influence markets; our findings position the conceptualisation work of the strategic net as constitutive of markets and the broader system of provision for 'healthcare' and 'health futures'.