The Concept of Primordial Markets

The majority of governmental agencies, NASA, and Department of Defense acquisition programs are technologically advanced complex systems that are unique, costly, and have a long development and design lifecycle. The supply and demand for such unique, complex engineered systems and the stakeholder interactions often do not fit the traditional consumer market concepts, where millions of technological artifacts are developed and sold as a result of a single development cycle. There is a need to define and characterize these unique markets that govern large-scale governmental engineered systems. In this paper, the authors describe these markets as "Primordial Markets" in which government stakeholders and major defense/aerospace companies interact through acquisition processes to create one-of-a-kind engineered systems. Primordial Markets are differentiated from consumer markets by six attributes: 1) only a small number of institutions such as government agencies (including but not limited to various divisions of the U.S. government, Department of Defense and NASA) and aerospace/technological companies are the stakeholders; 2) the development lifecycle duration of Primordial Market projects majorly exceed those of consumer products; 3) only one or a few of complex engineered system are produced as a result of each development; 4) the monetary value resulting of such unique complex systems is often difficult to quantify (e.g., defense projects, scientific projects); 5) the resulting complex systems and their uniquely acquired technologies have at least one degree of separation and removal from consumer markets, (e.g. no easy and direct technology transfer occurs between Primordial Market and mainstream market); 6) the knowledge and science on novel technologies and systems developed within the Primordial Markets are often protected with limited public access due to various security levels. In this paper, the authors define and discuss the unique characteristics and dynamics of Primordial Markets and its differentiating dimensions from the consumer market. The paper continues with discussions on illustrative examples, including dissemination of GPS and the Lunar economy to explain the differentiating aspects of Primordial Markets and their perceivable effects and impacts. The paper concludes with suggestions for directions for research for further study of these markets.