A new category, not a perfect product

Thinking about a perfect product implies a comparison with other products, some of them imperfect. Therefore, when considering products that are defining a new category, it’s a good idea to stop thinking about the traditional view of working for a perfect product.

For a new category, the consumer dynamic is different. The product quality is mostly determined by what it enables. And what does it enable? Well, again, it enables a new experience which is different of traditional solutions.

With that, a new category is not a straightforward solution to a known situation. It solves at the same time that reveals. A new category is a solution that comes with a point of view.

A solution AND a point of view

Since customers won’t compare using existing metrics about existing products, they will consider how the new experience compares to other situations or tasks done at other places with other products or tools. That happens because the new category is different, because it creates something new and it destroys something else; because one or more activities become unnecessary while some new activities are then performed in new ways. In that sense, the point of view is vital.

While the point of view is necessary, it does imply that it should be presented as a guiding system, such as a tutorial. Think of a new category-product as a solution articulating a problem, where the degree of success is highly dependent on how the offering communicates itself: how it propagates in the network.

The company follows the category

When a new category meet customers, the category creator company can be perceived a catalyst. But once the category exists, and exactly because of the fact it establishes a point of view, the category is self-energized by the market.

For the category-creator company, it means either becoming a king, if it responds accordingly, or fading away when it fails to respond.

In addition to customers, the category reinforces itself with the help of many competitors that always certainly join the party. When a category-creator company maintains its position, it moves towards defining itself as a category king, responding to the network interactions, customer demands, and opportunities. When they die, they miss the category evolution and other players will reign.

That is to say that the category never dies. Once the category is perceived by the market, it sticks and defines a phenomena.

And just like the perfect product was not the goal at the initial stage, the company focus should be given to ensuring that the company responds accordingly to how the category phenomena is being shaped and how the market evolves. Companies should then seek the company-category fit.

The company-category fit

The category fit relates to the way that the company works. A category winning team will be alive when it has a culture that produces the outcomes that are aligned with how the category expands as it expands towards larger markets.

As much as a new category is perceived by its delivered experiences, its products or service, keep in mind the whole system that needs to be in place:

• the vision — a point of view for customers, the understanding of the phenomena and how it can be nurtured, with the team, partners, and customers. The vision sees the phenomena at the early stage and at later stages. The company should act on it.
• the company — the special way of doing it, or the culture. The internal culture should reach productivity that propels the external network, and the external network should give new light, motivation and energy back to the culture;
• the outer product — for a new category, the product is the effect of being delivered in the network. The product articulates the consumer’s view as it enables constituents to not only enjoy but to share the experience.

Keep in mind that a new category is not always a profitable business. History is full of inventions that launched ideas that generated value but failed to capture value.

Therefore, a successful business, that maintains a new category, is one that needs to make sure it captures value that energizes the network, sustains the business, and grows to expand towards larger market opportunities and how the category unfolds itself.

The motivation to this essay was based in the book Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create; by Al Ramadan, Christopher Lochhead, Dave Peterson, and Kevin Maney.