Category Kings in a Blue Ocean

Who are you competing against?

Often when conducting competitive analysis, we compare ourselves to companies in the same industry. We engage in feature wars to establish dominance, and then despair when that competitor one-ups us on something we had on our roadmap..

But what if there were a way to eliminate that race to the bottom? To stand apart from a well-established competitor set?

Turns out there is a way. A few ways, actually.

1. Jobs to be Done

I know, I write about JTBD a lot. Jobs to be Done is the theory that customers don’t care about your products. They care about making progress in their lives, and will hire whatever product they believe will help them get the Job done, given the circumstances.

When you think about your customer in this way, you open your eyes to an entirely different landscape of competition (including inaction), and different objections to overcome to get your product hired.

A common quote used when discussing JTBD is the quote attributed to Henry Ford: “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they’d have said faster horses”. By focusing on the progress customers are trying to make rather than incrementally improving their current options, you can stand apart and design products that customers will be thrilled to buy.

2. Blue Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy is about identifying the factors of competition currently rampant in your industry, and deciding how to differentiate rather than conform to industry expectations. By first identifying current expectations in the industry and then explicitly deciding to how to Eliminate, Reduce, Raise or Create new factors of competition, Blue Ocean Strategy promises to allow innovators to “break free of the value-cost tradeoffs” to deliver new value to customers.

3. Category Design

You may not be familiar with category design; I just finished reading a book about it today (although I saw author Chris Lochhead speak about it at the Front End of Innovation conference in May). In Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets, the authors introduce the discipline of category design, which is essentially a) identifying a problem in a market b) making the market aware of the problem c) naming the category and positioning yourself as the obvious solution to the problem (thereby becoming ‘the category king’). The book includes several case studies, including that of Salesforce.com, which first conditioned the market to make it aware of the problems with installed software before positioning itself as THE solution.

More than just a thought experiment, the authors advise readers that to be a category creator, a company must engage in product design, company design and category design in tandem, and be aggressive in its “lightening strikes” to condition the market for this new category.

These are just three ways for an organization to break out of a pattern of ‘follow the leader’. Each of these approaches will require strategic direction, tactical execution, and internal organizational support to be successful.

But as your company starts to feel itself sinking and less able to compete in its market, it may just be time to tie yourself to one of these boats and try to make waves.

Andrea Hill is the principal consultant at Frameplay. Frameplay is an innovation consultancy that helps companies become more customer-focused and thrive in a rapidly changing world. We do this by providing best practices, actionable insights and training without the price tag of those bigger ‘digital transformation’ consulting firms. Learn more at frameplay.co