The paper analyses the co-ordinating role that markets and organisations are called on to play in determining productivity gains. In fact, the viability of innovation processes cannot be dissociated from the way market structures emerge and evolve. The success (or not) of the introduction of new technologies and the emergence and evolution of given market structures does not depend on the properties of technology, but on the capacity to coordinate the activity of the different firms participating in the restructuring process, which results in a certain degree of stability of the market structure.