Transforming
Food Systems

Today’s food system achieves remarkable scale, variety, and convenience—yet nutritious foods can remain less affordable, accessible, and appealing, particularly for lower-income communities. Why do promising innovations and policies so often fail to produce lasting change?
 

Drawing on research published in Nature Communications, Jeroen Struben will examine the market dynamics that shape the production and consumption of nutritious food. His work identifies three interconnected forces—industry capabilities, consumer consideration, and supporting systems and institutions—that can either lock existing patterns in place or become engines of transformation.
 

Using a system dynamics simulation, Jeroen will demonstrate why isolated interventions such as consumer education, subsidies, improved access, or individual product innovations often generate limited or temporary results. He will then explore how coordinated innovation across business, government, and society can produce more durable, equitable change.
 

Learn from MIT alumnus Jeroen Struben, PhD, a system dynamics scholar and lead author of the featured Nature Communications study. His research examines how markets emerge, become established, resist change, and ultimately transform.

Jeroen will connect systems thinking with practical questions of strategy and innovation: how organizations identify leverage points, how policies interact with market behavior, and how coordinated action can move socially beneficial innovations from niche adoption toward lasting impact at scale.