The founders of a respected Silicon Valley advisory firm study legendary category-creating companies and reveal a groundbreaking discipline called category design.Winning today isn’t about beating the competition at the old game. It’s about inventing a whole new game—defining a new market category, developing it, and dominating it over time. You can’t build a legendary company without building a legendary category. If you think that having the best product is all it takes to win, y...

To read this "mini-book," as well as our entire archive of writing on Category Design, subscribe to Category Pirates here: categorypirates.substack.comAs a category designer, you must develop a sense of radical resilience in order to bring about a different future.Hold fast. It means holding tight to the rigging to ride out a storm. You don't let go or give up. You bear down. You stay the course. As a result, you not only survive the storm-you come out of it stronger. We're...

To read this "mini-book," as well as our entire archive of writing on Category Design, subscribe to Category Pirates here:categorypirates.substack.comThe entire field of "analysis" (of any kind: habitual, financial, data usage, etc.) is backward-looking. You are analyzing data from the past.The thing is, no one really wants to challenge the past. Not even the smartest people in the most technical of fields where you would think subjectivity didn't h...

To read this "mini-book," as well as our entire archive of writing on Category Design, subscribe to Category Pirates here:categorypirates.substack.comThere isn't a tech executive on planet earth who hasn't seen the chart from the book Crossing The Chasm that separates early adopters from later-stage customer segments.Author Geoffrey A. Moore describes (languages) the "chasm" innovative startups must cross to move their prod...

To read this "mini-book," as well as our entire archive of writing on Category Design, subscribe to Category Pirates here:categorypirates.substack.comHow are you investing your life?Some of the most-asked questions in business are career-related:"How do I decide when to leave my current company?""How do I pick which company I should join?""How do I get a bigger job?"Where you choose to work and how you invest your lif...

To read this "mini-book," as well as our entire archive of writing on Category Design, subscribe to Category Pirates here:categorypirates.substack.comHuman beings are not brands.Listen closely...Oprah Winfrey is not a brand. Oprah is a Black woman who was born into poverty in Mississippi to a single teenage mother who used her challenging and troubling childhood to inspire her to create a new category of television talk show that evangelized...

To read this "mini-book," as well as our entire archive of writing on Category Design, subscribe to Category Pirates here:categorypirates.substack.comCategory Design is about educating the world on something that doesn't exist or isn't commonly understood.This means educating people on something they don't know anything about-yet. But in order to properly teach people, you have to ask the right questions.In 2022, category designers like you sent our team at ...

To read this "mini-book," as well as our entire archive of writing on Category Design, subscribe to Category Pirates here:categorypirates.substack.comYou are an Intellectual Capitalist-and you might not even realize it.Anytime you create a process for yourself, you are an Intellectual Capitalist.Anytime you execute your own problem-solving framework, you are an Intellectual Capitalist.Anytime you create an asset (even an Excel spreadsheet) ...

To read this "mini-book," as well as our entire archive of writing on Category Design, subscribe to Category Pirates here:categorypirates.substack.comCategory design is the strategy for dealing with the "winner take all" reality that has taken hold in business.Only 19 percent of Fortune's 100 fast-growing companies are category designers. And yet, they captured 51 percent (of the prior three years cumulative) of the revenue growth, and 80 percent (of the prior three...

In 1973, Martin Cooper invented the cell phone.How?He started with a problem (the Chicago police needed an alternative to bulky 2-way radios)He synchronized the Magic Triangle (product, company, & category design)He executed a Lightning Strike (a publicized call to his competitor)And he won the category.In this "mini-book" you will learn:How Martin Cooper led the creation of the world's first cell phone at Mot...

To read this "mini-book," as well as our entire archive of writing on Category Design, subscribe to Category Pirates here:categorypirates.substack.comActual "thinking" is not reflexive. It's reflective.Almost all thinking is reflexive (having an unconscious "reflex" in response) versus "reflective" (taking a moment to consciously reflect on how the past may have created a preexisting mental model keeping you from considering a new and different futu...

To read this "mini-book," as well as our entire archive of writing on Category Design, subscribe to Category Pirates here:categorypirates.substack.comSilicon Valley says, "The best product always wins." But does it?The goal of every entrepreneur, then, is to build the best product. How? Put the incumbent of the industry you want to "disrupt" in your sights, funnel tens (or hundreds) of millions of dollars into your scope, and build a "monster" produ...