Shaping Market Systems

Recognizing that markets and market systems are social and cultural constructions, we ask:

• How does one go about changing the practices of market systems?
• What are the strategies that over time create sustainable change?
• What leadership styles, organizational models and skills development support the long term engagement in systems change?
• How do we engage with and through power dynamics that keep the existing rules in place?
• How do we measure impact, both in terms of intermediate shifts in systems and long term affect on social and environmental conditions?

The Initiative

Criterion Institute launched the Leaders Shaping Markets initiative in 2012. This initiative is building and supporting a community of people who work on changing how the systems that undergird our economic markets work. While much attention has been paid to social impact efforts at the level of the enterprise, far less has been focused on systems change – the work of durably reshaping how large scale systems operate. Changing how entire systems function is also an important social change lever.

The Leaders Shaping Markets initiative enables the people who have demonstrated a commitment to the work of systems-level change to come together and collaborate. To date, such efforts have been fragmented, the work has been marginalized or not well-understood and resources have missed a number of opportunities for large-scale social change. We have created a community of practice comprised of the leaders in this space. Together, we are working to better understand systems change so that it can be done more effectively – identifying commonalities across different efforts, creating tools that can support this work and driving towards more coordination of efforts and resources.

This community comes together through a series of dialogues around the world. The first was held in Berkeley in May of 2012, and the next two will be held in London in February 2013 and New York in July 2013. These convenings are coordinated by Criterion but co-created by members of the community. They are done in a ‘potluck’ style, with each member contributing the resources that make them happen.

If you are interested in learning more about Criterion’s perspectives on shaping market systems, we invite you to explore the document below. Additional perspectives can be found in our Resources section.

Perspectives on Shaping Markets

To find out more about this initiative, contact leadersshapingmarkets@criterioninsitute.org