Recognizing What’s Around the Corner: Merger Control, Capabilities, and the New Nature of Potential Competition

Professor David Teece and Dr. Magdalena Kuyterink examine how traditional antitrust tools fall short in markets characterized by rapid technological change and propose a forward‑looking approach to merger control.

Professor Teece and Dr. Kuyterink find that the most significant threats in dynamic sectors frequently emerge from de novo entrants or adjacent firms developing complementary technologies, rather than from current market participants. Yet conventional merger assessments focused on static market shares and existing product overlaps often miss these latent challengers and fail to capture how innovation trajectories shape future rivalry. Drawing on economic theory, executive perspectives, and case studies, the authors explore how competitive uncertainty disciplines incumbents and how mergers can amplify or suppress that dynamic.

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