Nurgül Özbek

My research primarily focuses on organizing and change of markets and market systems. I am interested in research questions such as how different actors partake in shaping market practices; whose value judgements come to count when valuing a new product/service; how several accounts of value are coordinated through dominant valuation practices, and how various frameworks motivate and justify the resources mobilized toward change.

I am a researcher at the Division of Industrial Engineering and Management. I work as part of the Leapfrog research team. Leapfrog is an umbrella research initiative with projects on innovation for societal transition towards sustainability in a variety of sectors including health care.

I am also affiliated researcher at the Center for Market Studies (CMS), Stockholm School of Economics.

My current approach to markets and economic issues is embedded in interdisciplinary research field of market studies, a line of literature inspired by an emerging research tradition in economic sociology and in the science and technology studies (STS), which define economic markets as outcomes from the construction, transformation, and reconstruction of arrangements of various elements such as rules and regulations, technical and calculative devices, discourses and material infrastructures. When studying sectoral or societal change in this perspective, value generation and fundamental inceptions of new values are not predetermined by innovation/new technology per se but actuated through complex processes of valuation and value systems in markets and society.

The main empirical areas of my inquiries are markets for medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and other health related products such as those for prevention of diseases. This extends my empirical interest even to markets of wellness and food with health claims.

My background is in Business and Economics. I studied Business Administration at Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. After ten years of experience as an industry practitioner, I continued my academic education with a Master’s degree in Environmental Economics and Management at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and a Doctoral Degree in Business Administration, specialisation in markets and marketing, at Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden.

I defended my PhD project entitled Entering a global play: Insights into Swedish small life science firms’ legitimation in international networks in 2016 at Stockholm School of Economics. The project dealt with biotechnology start-ups’ efforts to gain legitimacy for their emerging technologies to operate in what is framed as a global medical market.

The on-going projects in the Leapfrog group can be found on the group's webpage: Leapfrog - Innovation management for societal transformation.

My current projects at Center for Market Studies (CMS), Stockholm School of Economics are:

• Valuing for innovation? The consequences of value-based assessments of medical devices (funded by Handelsbankens Forskningsstiftelser): The project deals with with how valuation practices affect innovation processes. More particularly, the project will investigate how increasingly formalized methods of valuation within healthcare (e.g., health economic assessments and value-based assessments in reimbursement decisions and prioritization between products and treatment options) shape the possibilities for new medical devices to enter the market. For more information, follow the link.
• “It’s a retail revolution” Digitalization’s international challenges (funded by Torsten Söderbergs Foundation): It deals with mapping different market factors (such as institutions, competition, and resources) and how these shape the international expansion of retail businesses.