Transitions are hardly conceivable without understanding how new markets are formed. However, there is still an incipient conceptualization of market formation in the context of transformation and transformative policy. Drawing on existing perspectives of market formation in economics of innovation, sociology of markets and marketing studies literature, this paper develops a framework for characterizing, differentiating and analyzing new market formation processes. We use three case studies to demonstrate how the framework is able to capture the dynamic and interconnected nature of market formation. The market formation framework serves to diagnose potential misalignments, bottlenecks and failures, to identify entry points for policy to intervene in market formation and support transformative innovation.