StrategyMarketing
Play Bigger
Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead & Kevin Maney
2016
Summary
Play Bigger introduces category design: the discipline of creating and dominating a new market category rather than competing in an existing one. The authors studied hundreds of technology companies and found that category kings capture roughly 76% of the market cap in their category. Salesforce did not compete against Siebel — it created cloud CRM. Uber did not compete against taxis — it created on-demand transportation. The book gives a framework for designing a category, defining a problem the world does not yet know it has, and conditioning the market to see you as the only solution.
Key Takeaways
- 1Category kings capture the vast majority of value in their market — define your category or someone else will
- 2Category design starts with a Point of View (POV): define the problem, the old solution, and why it fails
- 3The Lightning Strike: a bold, coordinated moment that forces the world to see the category you've created
- 4Different beats better: competing on features is a race to the bottom; owning a category is a moat
- 5Design the category and the company simultaneously — they must tell the same story
- 6The best time to design your category is at founding; the second-best time is now