Foundational Learning Component
The foundational learning component for the SEE-ME program is the “Markets and Service Ecosystems” course led by Professor Irene Ng with the University of Warwick team
10 Hours | Five Sessions of Two Hours Each
The foundational learning component of SEE-ME is delivered as a 10-hour intensive, structured into five two-hour sessions. Its purpose is to establish a shared conceptual foundation and design language across the cohort, enabling participants from different disciplines to engage productively in ecosystem and market design work.
Rather than focusing on tools or techniques, the sessions build progressively from first principles—how value is created and exchanged—toward an integrated understanding of how modern economies are organized and coordinated. Each session introduces core concepts that are revisited and applied during the subsequent studio-based design phase.
Session 1: Transactions, Value, and Exchange
Session 1 introduces the foundations of markets through capability, value, and exchange. Participants distinguish between value—created in context and realised in use—and worth, the monetary assessment settled in transactions. The session reframes products as boundary objects that shape transaction conditions and examines product–market fit as alignment between product affordances, market structure, and viable exchange. Through historical and technological shifts, participants see how markets evolve when transaction boundaries change and when value creation and worth capture decouple.
Session 2: Organizing Exchange — Firms and Platforms
Building on the foundations of transactions and value, the second session examines how exchange is organized through firms and platforms, and how the boundaries of the firm are being reconfigured in the digital economy. It explores why firms exist as containers for capital, risk, and technology, how they stabilise transactions and retain surplus, and how platforms function as shared coordination infrastructure that lowers transaction costs and reshapes productive scale.
Participants analyse the shifting boundary between market and hierarchy, the distinction between wage labour and capital participation, and the structural conditions enabling the rise of micro-firms. The session highlights how organisational form determines who accumulates capital, who captures surplus, and who can participate meaningfully in economic activity—laying the groundwork for ecosystem design beyond individual organisations.
Session 3: Coordination — Markets and Regulation
The third session shifts focus from organizations to coordination at the system level. It examines how markets coordinate decentralized activity, how prices and incentives function as signals, and how regulation and institutions shape market behavior.
Participants explore the role of rules, standards, and governance in enabling or constraining participation, especially in cross-sector and public–private contexts. The session emphasizes that markets are not neutral or natural, but designed systems influenced by policy, regulation, and institutional choices. This understanding is critical for designing markets that align private incentives with public outcomes.
Session 4: Digital and Data Markets
The fourth session introduces digitalization and data as transformative forces in how markets operate. It examines how digital technologies change the cost and nature of transactions, enable new forms of coordination, and create new markets around data, identity, and trust.
Participants explore how data becomes an economic asset, how digital identity affects participation, and how data sharing and governance influence market structure. The session also addresses the challenges of data asymmetry, concentration, and exclusion, particularly at the “messy bottom” of the economy where data and identity are weakest. This session directly informs how digital and data considerations are embedded into ecosystem design work.
Session 5: The Modern Economy
The final session integrates the previous four into a coherent picture of the modern economy. It examines how transactions, organizations, markets, regulation, and digital systems interact in a post-digital, cross-sector world.
Participants explore how sector boundaries are dissolving, how ecosystems increasingly replace linear value chains, and how public and private roles are being reshaped. The session emphasizes the implications for sustainability, inclusion, and economic empowerment, and frames ecosystem and market design as a critical capability for navigating this complexity.