What is a market? A Wittgensteinian exercise

Abstract What is a market? The question is both practical (for firms elaborating their strategy) and theoretical, and various answers have been given by different disciplines, especially economics and sociology. In this paper, we will address the question from a Wittgensteinian perspective: — making use of an extreme case, to unfamiliarize the familiar, or what we think we know on markets; — considering how different language‐games are played, and how they give different meanings to the notion of market; and — using the notion of ‘family resemblance’ to highlight the fact there is no such thing as ‘the’ market, but families of markets, with resemblances and dissimilarities. The extreme case we have selected is that of the American defense industry. We study three language‐games that constitute this industry as a market: the regulation, the financial investment and the strategic games. We suggest that although there is no single concept of the market, there can be families of markets that can be identified through sets of resemblances and dissimilarities. Finally, we show how the language‐game perspective contributes to understand innovation.