Market power is usually taught as a win: scale up, negotiate harder, set the terms. But in the real world, influence comes with a second balance sheet. The bigger you get, the more your pricing, policies, rankings, and defaults stop looking like ordinary choices and start looking like decisions made on behalf of the market. The Market Power Manual shows how companies can build strength without triggering the trust collapse that turns advantage into backlash.
Arlen Dervos offers a clear, practical guide to market power strategy that treats trust as an operating requirement, not a brand campaign. You will learn how pricing influence can be read as gouging or predation depending on timing and dependency; how data advantage creates leverage while raising expectations about permission and restraint; and how access control and platform governance decisions either stabilise ecosystems or quietly create captivity. Along the way, the book helps you spot regulatory risk before it arrives as a headline, and design partnership strategy that extends reach without importing conflicts of interest.
This is for founders, executives, product and commercial leaders, and board members navigating growth in visible, contested markets. If you want to build competitive influence that can endure scrutiny, the book provides a framework to map where your power comes from, test where it becomes overreach, and build governance routines that keep legitimacy intact. You will finish with sharper judgement, better decision discipline, and a more durable way to lead when your company becomes too important to be ignored.