It is right when your buyer feels a real pain that no existing category addresses, and when the existing frame is actively making senior people ignore you. It is an excuse when you are inventing a word to escape a comparison you keep losing, which is a fear decision dressed up as strategy. The honest test is whether buyers already describe the problem in their own words without your vocabulary, because you can name an existing feeling but you cannot manufacture one. If you go ahead, budget years and a sustained point of view, not a launch.
4 resources, 4 link-checked.
Rare conversation that ties category creation directly to pricing power and to reading real product market fit signals in enterprise deals. Useful when you are deciding whether to spend on a category play at all.
On a16z by Martin Casado, Michel Feaster, Sonal Chokshi 37 min
Open a16z.com →Two marketers who actually built categories (revenue intelligence and customer success) compare notes on the iterations that came before the name that stuck. Full transcript on the page if you would rather skim.
On [Un]Churned, Gainsight by Josh Schachter with Udi Ledergor and Lauren Olerich 49 min
Open gainsight.com →The clearest short explanation of why market category is one of five interdependent positioning pieces, with a real repositioning story attached. It is also where Dunford makes the case that most companies should not invent a category.
From aprildunford.com by April Dunford 12 min read
The book that gave the discipline its vocabulary (category king, lightning strike, point of view). Read it as the ambitious end of the spectrum, not as a default plan.
From HarperBusiness by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, Kevin Maney 272 pages
Open amazon.com →How category design reads from a different seat.
The same ground, over in Brand, web & content, our Starting Up track.
The same ground, over in Find your idea & build the brand, our D2C track.
