The 2025 Young Competition Scholars Conference will explore how competition law can adapt to innovation-driven markets, focusing on capabilities, ecosystems, artificial intelligence, and mergers & acquisitions.
Innovation is widely recognised as a central driver of economic welfare, making its protection and promotion a critical objective for public policy. Mario Draghi’s recent report emphasises the need to 'revamp' competition policy with a stronger focus on innovation, prompting renewed debate on how legal frameworks can adapt to the evolving economy.
The 2025 Young Competition Scholars Conference takes this challenge seriously, inviting participants to reimagine competition law through the lens of innovation. The conference will center on four themes: capabilities, ecosystems, mergers and acquisitions, and artificial intelligence. Capabilities, a concept rooted in management science, highlight firms’ ability to adapt, reposition, and seize opportunities, but they remain underexplored in competition law. Ecosystems, increasingly present in merger decisions such as Booking/eTraveli, demand deeper engagement as modern markets are shaped by networks of collaborating firms. Artificial intelligence presents further complexities, requiring vast resources, data, and interdependent value chains, raising questions of governance, integration, and market concentration. Finally, mergers and acquisitions remain at the heart of innovation policy, with fresh challenges including acqui-hires, evolving thresholds, and the potential for an 'innovation defence'.
Key questions for discussion include how competition law can integrate capability analyses, define capability or ecosystem markets, address AI-driven dynamics, and reconcile innovation goals with the consumer welfare standard. Contributions from early career scholars and professionals will shape this emerging dialogue.