How do I do competitive research for a brand-new category where there are no direct competitors yet?
The short answer
No direct competitors almost never means no competition, it means you're competing against how people solve the problem today, however clumsily. Map the workarounds, the adjacent tools people stretch to fit, and the budget line the money currently comes out of, because that's who you're really taking share from. Be honest with yourself: a genuinely empty category can mean you're early, or it can mean nobody wants this, and only customer conversations tell you which.
Go deeper, your way
3 hand-picked resources, 3 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
▶️ Video
✓ Link checkedFreeBeginner
Why we picked it
This is the canonical newcomer walkthrough: Christensen shows a team improving a milkshake on every obvious dimension and moving nothing, because they had the job wrong. It makes the good-versus-bad framing concrete in a few minutes, which is exactly the trap founders fall into when they optimize a feature instead of the job. Start here if the concept still feels abstract.
Why we picked it
When you are defining a category instead of entering one, the usual competitor grid does not exist yet, so this book reframes the job as designing the category itself. It is the clearest, most-cited playbook for thinking about positioning, demand, and who the real competition actually is (the old way of doing things) when there are no direct rivals. Read it as a starting point for how to frame the space, not as a promise that the category king seat is yours.
Why we picked it
An empty competitor field feels like a moat, but this piece is honest that it often means the market has not proven it will pay yet. It pushes you past the comforting story (we have no competitors) toward the harder work of confirming that real demand exists. Treat it as a gut check before you fall in love with an empty category, not the final verdict on your specific idea.
