Talk:Category design

Created this page after reading about it on Forbes, Harvard politics and books. I think this is something that should be here. Please help, suggest and improve the article. Thank you Prof.Marlin (talk) 12:07, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

I believe this page violates wikipedia's policies, in that it promotes a particular commercial piece of work - the Play Bigger work and the associated "category pirates" series of books.

Also, it's not true - "Category design was first proposed in the book Play Bigger.[10] The book lays out a justification for why category creation is an important strategy,[11] and includes a step-by-step guide to applying design thinking to category creation:[12]".

Category design / category innovation has been around since the 1970s. Play Bigger was a good book in my personal opinion, but it was hardly the first kid off the block or the innovator in this space. For example, Al Reis and Jack Trout were talking about categories and category design since the early 1970s, and their book 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing is almost exclusively about category design and category management.

This page either needs a massive overhaul or to be deleted.

Lauchlanmack (talk) 23:43, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Originality claims and biased claims

Let me start by supporting what Launchlanmack said 3 years ago. I just read something unrelated that referenced Category Design, which is how I found my way here. My impression - since obviously I have not read the book yet- is that this is very much like “Blue Ocean Strategy”, by a couple of Harvard professors and which came out some time ago, certainly before 2016. That I have read. The title comes from a fighting ship analogy, moving away from contested seas filled with blood, and instead sailing out into a blue ocean where there are no competitors. I am reminded of the criticism that many tech startups are not deserving of the origination stories they often tell about themselves.

But there’s another problem here. The article says: “The book argues that companies dominating a category between six and ten years after its creation, such as through an initial public offering (IPO), tend to capture the majority of market value, based on data from venture capital funded tech firms.”

There are so many problems packed into those few words that it’s hard to know where to begin, but I will start with the overarching one. The source of this claim is from venture capital itself. So of course they toot their own horns about everything they do. What does “dominating” mean? A monopoly? A 60% market share? The largest share of any competitors, even if it is less than 20% overall? Maybe it just means thought leadership, claiming that everyone in their industry reads and follows their writing? What is magical about the period from 6 to 10 years? My understanding is that the vast majority of businesses never reach a tenth anniversary, so any industry player still standing after that time has an excellent shot at market “dominance” - regardless of how it was funded. And finally, it is insane to believe that the mere existence of an IPO, in and of itself, leads to market dominance and capturing the majority of market value. Have IPOs never failed? Have the companies benefiting from IPOs never failed? What about the goods and services that are produced? Those are of no value? The marketing that was done to create this market share? The price and packaging inflexibility of prior incumbents? The changes in society that made the business more viable now than it would have been under other social conditions? No. Only an IPO brought about by venture capitalism can bring about industry dominating businesses - which of course is the only possible reason anyone would want to have a business, right? Since these people have so much money they can buy ad space somewhere else and leave Wikipedia alone. Natcolley (talk) 21:43, 27 October 2025 (UTC)