Create A New Market Category By Playing Bigger

Are you ready to take the market by storm? Do you have a revolutionary idea like iPad or Uber, or something to solve the problems that people never admitted to exist?

Such ideas are your one-way ticket to being a Category King. We will learn about playing bigger by creating a new market category and dominating it at the same time.

Category Kings find and develop the solutions to problems that no one else has noticed before.

If you had asked people how you could improve their personal transportation during the beginning of the twentieth century, they might have told you to get a faster horse.

This is what Henry Ford imagined with the Ford Model T which was the first affordable and mass-produced automobile.

Such revolutionary innovations are called a new category.

New categories offer consumers a new opportunity to live and solve the problems that have not been considered earlier by the vast majority of them.

Back in time when you needed a taxi, for example, you had to struggle to get one from the street and searched up and down for a taxi stand. Then we had Uber come on the market and say, "Why cannot one order a taxi right to their door never mind the location or the time of the day?"

A person who creates such game-changing solutions is called a category king.

A company can also be a category king. After all, the company develops the product or the service that become essential in people's lives. An old way of doing things quickly becomes obsolete, and a new innovative one slowly takes over. In the end, we doubt our ability to survive without the invention of that new category.

It is only when a category king offers a seamless solution do we realize that we had a problem addressed in the first place. To be a category king, you not only need to show people the solution, but also the problem itself.

The perfect example of a category king is Uber. Their innovative taxi service seemed quite appealing to its consumers because it clearly displayed the negative side of traditional taxi companies.

Using the traditional service meant tracking down the cab by yourself, guessing the estimate cost, and scrambling between bills and coins to pay. Nowadays with Uber, a customer can easily use his Smartphone to order a cab, get an automatic price estimate, choose between paying cash or credit card and even track the cab progress online.

It can take a long time for people to change their minds. Category Kings need to have the feeling of time.

When the first automobile was invented, its buyers had some doubts in the benefits on offer. Many people were quite skeptical about the safety of the car, and it took a while for them to realize all the advantages of automobiles.

This is also true for any new category on the market. When a company develops a new revolutionary idea, it often needs to wait for public opinion to take place first.

It is easy enough for a company to identify and develop a new category, but it gets more complicated on the stage of making the potential consumer aware of the problem that needs to be solved.

Take for example an experienced IT manager that works in the corporate industry and knows all about the ups and downs of the field. When a new innovative software like Salesforce.com comes on the market as a service that helps clients to connect to their customers effectively it might take him years to accept the new technology.

This is not a surprise. According to the Neuroscience Research, it can take up to six or ten years for an existing idea to be replaced by a newer and better one. This usually happens when the idea is firmly ingrained into a person's mind.

People need time to be able to change their minds. Furthermore, it is important for a company to clearly understand the problems and needs of the potential consumers to help this process work.

In 2002, Bill Gates developed the Tablet PC at Microsoft to address what he thought was a technological problem. Back then cell phone screens were too tiny for comfortable use during a reasonable length of time, and laptops were not portable enough to carry around. So, Gates thought that he finally created a revolutionary solution with the Tablet PC.

Yet, the Tablet PC was a complete failure.

However, a few years later, Steve Jobs faced the same problem at Apple which led to the invention of iPad, the Tablet PC as well.

So, what was the difference between these two innovative solutions? The difference was in the purpose of their use. Many people did not want a personal computer in the form of a tablet but still needed an Internet surfing device which could ease the delivery of presentations.

This means that Jobs identified the consumers needs correctly and met them with the lightweight innovative iPad.

You can discover opportunities for new categories using market and technology insights.

So, what would be your opinion on what is missing in today's world and how to find a market for innovative solutions?

In most cases, you will end up bumping into the market opportunity by chance. Nevertheless, you will need a market insight anyway to bring your idea to life.

Market insight means that you are supposed to be familiar with how the market on which you plan to operate works. Only then can you use the market knowledge to make your idea real.

Did you know how the electric guitar was invented?

It all started with Les Paul, who would play his guitar and harmonica together on a parking lot. One day there was a stranger to walk by and give him a relevant comment on the inability to hear the sound of the guitar over the harmonica.

This was the bombshell that made Paul admit his need for a louder guitar. Even though it was just a remark from a stranger, it helped Paul to discover the idea itself. His knowledge of the market, however, gave him the confidence to guess that other guitarists could probably share the same problem. That is why it was worth looking for a solution.

Another way of discovering a gap on the market is through the technological insight.

Usually, those are scientists and engineers who have this technological insight. They often invent new products or processes without the knowledge of the market needs. So, the practical application is to be found later on.

Take the owners of VMware for an example. They created a virtual computers which could run the virtual software, but they had no idea on what kind of problem they were going to solve.

Only after a successful market research did the owner of VMware learn that their solution was useful for software companies which wanted to test their software safely.

Just like that, a new category was born!

Stories can help customers understand your business better and help motivate your employees.

The need for storytelling does not go anywhere once we are adults and thought to have outgrown bedtime stories.

A good story still has the influence on how we feel and think.

According to 2010 research by Professor Paul Zak at the Claremont Graduate University, stories have always had the potential to affect people more than any fact alone. A story leads to a better understanding, cooperation, and motivation as listening to a story raises the Oxytocin level in our brain cells. Oxytocin is a chemical that makes us feel empathy.

How to use the power of storytelling?

Well, you can use a story to present your product and the problem it is going to solve. Doing this will allow you to convey your point of view (POV) effectively on how to describe your company's position in the world and how you found the solutions to the problems.

Your story could be anything such as a company's mission, how your company is connected to its customers and how the new category is going to solve the customers' needs.

Coverity, for instance, is a software company specializing in finding bugs in aircrafts computer codes. Their story is that there are millions of lines of software codes inside of a jet airliner, and that they need careful testing to keep the code running properly.

This made Coverity work look essential like a matter of life and death for this type of situation.

It is important for everyone inside of the organization to have a clear understanding of the company's point of view, starting with CEO and managers, and getting down to every employee.

Once have your POV created, the entire company has to learn it and work towards its effectiveness in your organization. A simple training course for your employees can help your story become a guiding principle at all the companys levels.

The introduction of a new category on a market must be as dazzling as a strike of lightning.

When lightning flashes across the sky, it lights up the night with its brightness.

You should design a lightning strike for your products in the same way to gain the needed level of attention on the market.

You can plan your strike in the form of an event that could blow everyone's mind, including potential investors, stakeholders, analytics on the media and potential consumers.

An unexpected event could be the starting point in surprising your potential competitors.

This type of idea was used in 2003 at the Lightfair International by Sensity, a tech company working in the LED lighting industry. The annual convention was attended by various lighting manufacturers and customer, and Sensity used this opportunity to unveil a groundbreaking discovery that light fixture can be digitized with LED lights.

This innovative idea allowed the lights to collect information on motion, air quality, sound and even on weather data. Sensity named its system as the Light Sensory Network. During the preparation stage, the company leaked out some information about their newly-found category to one reporter from the Wall Street Journal. This was made on purpose a few days before the event to build attendees anticipation for what was viewed as a successful event.

You then need to direct your lightning strike to your target market to make it effective.

Sensity was clever enough in choosing the market for the product. They could have made a pitch to the sensor industry, but it meant a minimal impact in this case. Instead, they chose the lighting industry, and the company was able to show how normal conventional lightning was not keeping up with technological innovation.

Just like Sensity, you should choose a single target market, as the worldwide market approach will not work.

A skillfully planned strategy to penetrate a single market will make a way for your company to be crowned as a Category King!

Final summary

The key message of this article is next:

You need to develop a new market category to become a big player on the market. You need to cultivate your customers with a story to do this successfully. This is supposed to be the story on how your product will solve their needs that they never admitted to exist before.

Simple advice:

Always select a team or an outsider to bring your project into reality.

Once you have your new category, assemble a dedicated team to execute the project. Even though the company's owners are committed enough, often it is the team who is responsible for the day-to-day project operations and who will have the final say by naming the new category and defining the company's POV. If you wish to get a fresh and new perspective and an alternative approach, you may consider hiring an external consultant to lead your project to success.