Market Categories are bullshit.

We can’t see the world as static.

Conceptual boxes can be helpful as long as we realize we have invented them ourselves to help us understand things.

The thing is — we can reinvent them. The moment we forget that, we’re stuck.

There is a tendency to view market categories as a given. We think we’re in the “server hardware” category. Or the fitness club category. Or the E-commerce category. Or the meal kit category.

Like Apple was in the personal computer category. Or, maybe, more like Blockbuster was in the retail video-rental category. Oops.

If categories tell us which competitors to ignore and which competitors to track, then category thinking is dangerous. You won’t see them coming!

If category thinking limits your imagination about how to expand and grow your brand and business, then category thinking can be deadly.

David Gardner of the The Motley Fool talks about “top dogs” and “first movers.” A first mover is a company with a new technology or system that completely changes an industry, disrupts the existing categories and creates a new one. Ebay in digital auctions. Amazon in online retailing. NetFlix in digital streaming of movies and TV shows. Uber in ride sharing. AirBNB in couch sharing. Casper in mattresses to your door. Better to be one of these, or follow one of these, then be the one who is disrupted.

When I was growing up, my Dad was an electrical engineer, working on his PhD and developing silicon chip technology. I fondly remember his slide rules and his easy comfort with calculating based on these pre-digital computers. The slide rule category was once a thriving global category and the 1960’s represented this two hundred year old industry’s peek. Curiously, even as digital computing was coming up, slide rule makers were enjoying a robust market. But all of that ended abruptly in 1974 when HP introduced the first inexpensive scientific calculator. Today, only one Japanese company continues to manufacture slide rules.

What could the slide rule companies have done to survive and thrive? The first step would have to have been in seeing themselves not as slide-rule companies but as something else entirely. Finding the idea so big that the company must expand and grow to fill it. Are we Tools for Engineering? Are we In the Hands of the People Who Solve the World’s Problems? Are we Manufacturers of Precision Instruments?

The idea drives the category, as it drives change and growth.

So, next time you hear someone say your company is in a particular market category, that’s your cue to think again.