In this episode of Innovators Inside Podcast, Ian Bergman and Layne Fawns sit down with Kevin Maney, co-author of Play Bigger, co-founder of Category Design Advisors, and author of The Category Creation Formula, to explore how founders, operators, and innovation leaders can create new market categories instead of competing inside existing ones.
Kevin has spent decades writing about technology, advising leadership teams, and studying how companies define markets. His core message is simple but powerful: the biggest growth opportunity is not always building a better product. Sometimes, it is creating the category your product belongs in.
Here are the five key takeaways from their conversation:
Kevin breaks down category creation with a practical formula:
Context + Missing + Innovation = New Category
The process starts by understanding what is changing around your target audience. That could include new technology, economic pressure, customer behavior, supply chain disruption, or cultural shifts.
From there, teams need to ask: what is now missing?
A strong category opportunity often appears when a new context creates a problem that did not exist before, or when new technology makes it possible to solve an old problem in a better way. Once that missing piece becomes clear, innovation can be focused around solving it.
For founders and innovation teams, this shifts the conversation away from “How do we beat competitors?” and toward “What does the market now need that does not fully exist yet?”
Kevin challenges the common startup phrase “product-market fit.” In his view, that phrase can lead teams to think backward.
Product-market fit often implies that a company has already built a product and now needs to find the right market for it. Kevin argues that category creators should reverse that logic.
Instead, companies should focus on market-product fit.
That means deeply understanding the market first, identifying what people need, and then building the product to serve that opportunity. When done well, the market pulls the product forward because the demand already exists.
This is especially useful for founders, operators, and corporate innovators who want to avoid building something technically impressive but strategically unfocused.
One of the biggest myths in innovation is that first-mover advantage guarantees success.
Kevin explains that being first does not matter as much as winning the dominant design, which is the version of a category the market ultimately accepts as the standard.
In many emerging categories, multiple companies enter early with different approaches. This competition can actually validate the category. But over time, the market tends to choose one way the product or service should work. The companies that align with, shape, or define that dominant design capture the most value.
This is why category leaders do more than launch early. They educate the market, shape customer expectations, and build trust that their way is the right way forward.
Kevin uses Netflix as an example of how great category creators manage timing.
Netflix did not begin with streaming because the technology, infrastructure, and licensing environment were not ready. Instead, the company started with DVDs by mail while building a brand and customer relationship that pointed toward the future of internet-based entertainment.
This is what Kevin describes as the adjacent possible: an innovation that feels new and exciting, but is still close enough to what customers can understand and adopt today.
For innovation leaders, this is a critical lesson. Launching too far ahead of the market can fail because customers are not ready. Launching too late can trap the company in a commodity market. The opportunity is to land where the market can move now while showing customers where the future is going.
Kevin emphasizes that category creation is not just a marketing exercise. It is a strategic alignment tool.
Companies need a clear point of view about the context, the problem, the solution, and why they are the right team to bring that future to life. Kevin describes this as a kind of manifesto or “Declaration of Independence” that leadership teams can align around.
This matters because category creation affects more than positioning. It shapes product strategy, marketing, sales, customer education, and long-term company direction.
Inside large companies, Kevin notes that category creation often requires CEO-level support. Enterprise innovation is difficult because new categories can challenge existing profit centers, business models, and internal incentives. Without leadership backing, even strong ideas can get stuck.
This episode is a practical guide for anyone trying to build something bigger than a product feature or incremental improvement.
Kevin Maney’s category creation framework helps founders and innovation leaders ask better strategic questions:
What is changing in the market?
What is missing because of that change?
What innovation can solve it?
How do we become the company people associate with that future?
For teams that want to lead instead of follow, category creation offers a path to build demand, shape perception, and define the market on their own terms.
Have a question for a future guest? Email us at innovators@alchemistaccelerator.com to get in touch!
Timestamps
🎙️ Introduction to Kevin Maney and Category Creation 00:00
🤖 AI, Creativity, and the Human-Machine Partnership 02:11
🎨 Authenticity, AI, and the Future of Creative Work 08:24
📘 Kevin’s Journey from Tech Journalism to Category Design 15:48
🚀 What Category Design Means and Why It Matters 20:33
📐 The Category Creation Formula 21:02
🧠 What a New Category Really Is 23:15
🏆 Why Competitors Can Validate a Category 26:01
🥇 Dominant Design vs. First-Mover Advantage 28:03
🚗 The Zamboni Story and Hidden Category Creation 31:31
🔁 Market-Product Fit vs. Product-Market Fit 35:42
🧭 How to Understand What Customers Really Need 38:41
🏷️ Category vs. Brand 41:20
📣 How to Know a Category Is Catching On 43:38
🎬 Netflix, Timing, and the Adjacent Possible 46:11
⏱️ How to Know When the Market Is Ready 54:31
🏢 Category Creation Inside Large Companies 56:19
💡 Final Takeaway for Founders and Innovation Leaders 01:00:38
00:00:50:28 - 00:01:17:18
Layne Fawns
What if your biggest growth lever isn't your product, but the space it lives in? Today's guest, Kevin Meaney, is the co author of playmaker and co-founder of Category Design Advisors, where he helps founders and CEOs design and lead entirely new markets with decades of reporting on technology and advising leadership teams. Kevin has helped more than 50 companies define and dominate new categories.
00:01:17:21 - 00:01:31:27
Layne Fawns
His upcoming book, The Category Creation Formula, turns those lessons into a repeatable playbook for ambitious teams ready to lead, not follow. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us here on Innovators Inside Today.
00:01:32:00 - 00:01:35:25
Kevin Maney
Yeah. Well thanks, Layne, Ian for having me on. I appreciate it.
00:01:35:28 - 00:01:38:08
Ian Bergman
Yeah. We're looking forward to this.
00:01:38:11 - 00:01:57:19
Layne Fawns
Absolutely. So there's a bunch of questions that we want to ask you. And and I want to know why you're sitting here with us today and, and your thoughts on a lot of different things. But I've got a couple of questions. That I want to pose to the both of you. Before we get started here today.
00:01:57:21 - 00:02:11:24
Layne Fawns
So I think Kevin will start with you. What's one innovation that you hope to see become mainstream in your lifetime? And that's hard because I feel like everything already exists.
00:02:11:25 - 00:02:37:10
Kevin Maney
So, Yeah. No, that's a good one. Well, I, I, one of the things that I like to do with my life when I'm not, writing books or working with companies is I'm a musician and, and write songs, record reviews. I play on stage and, Look, I'm, I'm used to, going into a studio with, very complicated Pro Tools.
00:02:37:10 - 00:03:02:10
Kevin Maney
That's for this, you know? Yeah. Takes a wizard to try to figure out and, and, as I'm seeing what I is increasingly able to do, I'm looking for the day when there's an AI studio in my pocket, essentially, that I can just say, like, look, I want to. I want to drum track. That sounds like Don Henley playing for the Eagles and, you know, for for time and, piano.
00:03:02:10 - 00:03:16:11
Kevin Maney
That sounds like, you know, Benmont Tench from, Tom petty and the Heartbreakers. Just describe what I'm looking for as a backing track and have it happen. So I have a feeling that's actually not too far away. I would love to see that.
00:03:16:14 - 00:03:33:24
Layne Fawns
As someone that recently downloaded, Pro Tools on their computer. I, I completely agree. I was thinking about that as I was trying to, like, program a click track, and I was like, I hate this so much. It's, you know, it's like.
00:03:33:27 - 00:03:55:19
Ian Bergman
We live in a world that is like, completely shifting the paradigm of what it means to take advantage of expertise, to do really special things like music. Right? Like, I'm not a musician, but I all of a sudden find myself on a podcast with two musicians, which is going to be super exciting for me. But like, I don't know, if either of you played with snow or the or the, the AI creation tools like it.
00:03:55:19 - 00:04:15:14
Ian Bergman
Like, you know, I haven't played with their studio environment, although they're standing it up, but it seems inevitable. It seems inevitable that you will be able to, you know, as an expert in the space, be able to interact and set up these audio environments and backing tracks and whatever in a in a different way.
00:04:15:17 - 00:04:39:03
Kevin Maney
Like soon. Yeah. And you know, so I, I just take this one step further. You know, I, I am very fascinated and I'm working actually on another book right now. It has to do with, sort of the, the human machine partnership. Right. And and when I think about that. So I work with this wonderful producer named Tony Calabro here in, New York.
00:04:39:05 - 00:04:59:20
Kevin Maney
And he plays every instrument I can't play. He's got fantastic taste and style. But when we're in the studio, you know, we're spending at least half the time just messing with the software, right? And tweaking things. Yep. And and so this is like, actually what gets to, like, what is I really going to do for us?
00:04:59:20 - 00:05:22:18
Kevin Maney
Because if this if this were to exist, what I just described now, now Tony could totally focus on the musicianship. Right? This is what we're going to spend our time on, on playing the tracks and on, you know, having judgment about what works and what doesn't. And then all of that meddling around with, you know, the software and the tweaking, thus tweaking that would just be verbal instructions.
00:05:22:18 - 00:05:37:14
Kevin Maney
I had like that, that, that to be louder here and take that part out there and it just does it. Right. So that would just, you know, that's what the beauty of AI is going to be all about is allowing the humans to do it. They can do the best, and yet let the AI get all the other stuff out of the way.
00:05:37:14 - 00:05:39:12
Kevin Maney
And that's what I'm looking forward to.
00:05:39:15 - 00:05:44:25
Layne Fawns
That's. Yeah, that I was going to say. That's interesting. And my next question was.
00:05:44:25 - 00:06:02:24
Ian Bergman
Well, actually, even even before we get into that, I hate to do this, but I'm going to I want to dig in because this is so cool. And like, so friend of the podcast, Vivian Ming, on a previous episode and also talks a lot about the, the, the human and kind of like AI or human technology partnership.
00:06:02:27 - 00:06:27:02
Ian Bergman
And I think it's really interesting because, you know, for all of the, all of the, concern, the worry, the, the stuff that's out there about how technology takes work, changes work devalues humanity. There's all kinds of things that we can be concerned about, but there's a counter force where it all gives us more ability to be productive in the space that we love.
00:06:27:07 - 00:06:50:20
Ian Bergman
And all I can think of when, I hear things like AI assistance for sort of creative endeavors and expert is, actually the way that game design happened in Westworld. Like, do you ever see the the late season Westworld? I think the very last season it's no, no, no comment on whether or not the show was able to maintain its quality.
00:06:50:21 - 00:07:18:19
Ian Bergman
It wasn't, although I still love it. But they do. They show an environment, Kevin, like you described. Where, you know, a woman is a game designer, basically for a very complex computer game, but the entire interaction modality is a conversation with an AI assistant going back and forth, and they are pairing to generate this, you know, incredible environment and gameplay.
00:07:18:21 - 00:07:24:07
Ian Bergman
And I saw that. And I was like, actually that that does feel like a world we could easily end up in.
00:07:24:09 - 00:07:46:14
Kevin Maney
Yeah. Well, and you know, we're sorry we're getting too off track here, but the, I've been writing about technology for 40 years. I, have written extensively about the history of technology. I kind of know how things have played out, and the entire history of computing has made us understand the computers, because the computers were too dumb to understand us.
00:07:46:14 - 00:08:09:25
Kevin Maney
Right? So we had to learn programing languages and we had to learn, you know, how to like, operate a piece of software. And ProTools is a perfect example. We had to learn how to do it because it it couldn't. Now this is that's what's all turning around. Right. So the the machine can understand us. And instead of having to learn all that stuff which was not natural, which was not a human right.
00:08:09:27 - 00:08:24:04
Kevin Maney
Now, now you can sit with the machine and say, like you would to another human being. This is what I want. Make it happen. And then get all of that out of the way so we could do our human stuff better. And that's that's, I think, what this is all about.
00:08:24:07 - 00:08:59:14
Layne Fawns
You know, to play devil's advocate, though, there's a lot of creatives, artists, musicians, you know, writers that really give a lot of push back to that relationship between creativity and AI or like using that to be able to create money. In my opinion, I think that there's there's an ethical way that you can still create. And I think that this is what we're talking about is, is not using it to create something, but using it to kind of free up your time to, you know, if you create the click track, I'll make the music kind of the thing.
00:08:59:14 - 00:09:19:19
Layne Fawns
Like what? What? Like what do you say? Or what's your advice to creatives that have that push back to AI? Because I think that to a certain extent you have to embrace it or you're going to end up being left behind. But I don't know if that's the same thing as folks who still take cameras or take photos with film versus using the digital camera.
00:09:19:22 - 00:09:22:06
Layne Fawns
Right. What what are your thoughts on that?
00:09:22:13 - 00:09:48:21
Kevin Maney
So I'm not Pollyanna, and, you know, you probably saw this thing about the, the clip of, Brad Pitt and Tom cruise fighting on a roof that was created by AI. That was so realistic you couldn't tell it wasn't them. And Hollywood freaked out and all that. Look. So that's flat out wrong, right? And we're going there is going to be so many lawsuits that are going to have to settle this issue of who owns what rights and everything else.
00:09:48:21 - 00:10:16:27
Kevin Maney
Right? So, yeah, and but as others have pointed out about that particular incident, for instance, is that if, the laws are sorted out and and, you know, ways matters of licensing are put in place. So for somebody like Brad Pitt and Tom cruise, it could actually be a boon because, they could, you know, they could essentially be making movies long after they're dead.
00:10:17:00 - 00:10:36:11
Kevin Maney
Right. There is these could be, you know, and so there's there's a lot of sides to this coin and that's a lot of laws to get worked out, to make it to protect people from actually, you know, being able to create and then have it not be stolen by, which is kind of what's happening now.
00:10:36:13 - 00:11:01:24
Kevin Maney
But I also think that there's a there's an aspect of it that, the more things get created by AI, the more that there's going to be an awareness of this is AI stuff and this is human stuff. Yeah. And there's going to be an audience to gravitate towards. I want I want authentic human things. Just like there's an audience today that might, gravitate towards, say, handmade furniture versus buying something from Ikea.
00:11:01:26 - 00:11:06:07
Kevin Maney
Right. And there's going to be a lot of interesting things that happen in that space, I think.
00:11:06:13 - 00:11:30:16
Ian Bergman
Well, okay. So I have a question for both of you as artists. You know, one of the things that if, if, if your hoped for your aspired, you know, innovation comes to pass, right, it will remove some friction out of achieving your creative vision. Right? I mean, you know, that much easier to describe the backing track or the doing of that removes friction and lets you focus, but I actually have this question.
00:11:30:16 - 00:11:57:05
Ian Bergman
As creatives, do you worry about technology removing friction too much? Like if you extend if you extend the metaphor to the handmade furniture, right? People value handmade, human made, you know, furniture versus the mass produced stuff, for the labor and the difficulty that goes into it as much as the art. I think.
00:11:57:07 - 00:12:18:29
Kevin Maney
I don't know that maybe that's true. I guess, but, I, but yeah. No, I don't know. I, I mean, we're already seeing that it can remove so much friction that removes the human altogether, right? I mean, then somebody could. That Brad Pitt thing was done with, like, apparently two sentences or prompts and the. I just did the right one.
00:12:18:29 - 00:12:21:07
Ian Bergman
And you don't need a human to make a table either.
00:12:21:09 - 00:12:45:19
Kevin Maney
Yeah. Right. So, you know, I mean, I don't know if look, we'll flip this around one other way and say, yes, I've been writing about technology for almost four decades, and there's never been a time throughout my career when I couldn't look at new innovations or things that were happening, and understand where they were going and what they were going to mean, like 5 or 10 years out.
00:12:45:21 - 00:12:55:21
Kevin Maney
Well, this is the first time in my entire life when I have to say, I don't know. Yeah, I can guess and everybody can guess, but I just don't know.
00:12:55:24 - 00:13:16:16
Layne Fawns
I think as a creative, for me it comes down to value because like you said, like you can buy a table from Ikea for $20 versus, but I looked at handcrafted tables recently in the, in the area where I live, and they were like a thousand plus dollars, right. And they had little etchings of, of epoxy and different colors in them.
00:13:16:16 - 00:13:35:23
Layne Fawns
And it was just very, very cool. But like we get paid, you know, on average, my band anywhere between 500 to $1000 an hour. And a lot of people are like, that's that's so much money. And it's like, well, you have to count for the fact that we all practice, right? We we jam. We practice in her spare time.
00:13:35:23 - 00:14:00:20
Layne Fawns
Part of that, what you pay a musician that large amount of money to come is that that practice time and the time that it takes to set up and soundcheck and do all these things, and the gear that you buy to put into it. And so I think that what I would worry about is that if you used AI to free up that creativity time, right.
00:14:00:27 - 00:14:43:18
Layne Fawns
I think there's two points I immediately thought of when I heard your your question in and, and the first one was, I'm still going to be practicing and creating and thinking and writing and all of those things. But the value of what I'm going to be paid to be a musician might go down. And to a lot of folks complain about overproduction, and that's been a big complaint on TikTok lately, is that people don't like how folks, claim to be singing acapella or claim to be singing live on TikTok, and you can tell that everything has been auto tuned to the max and then uploaded to TikTok, get a.
00:14:43:19 - 00:14:46:16
Ian Bergman
Reversion to a digital mean that is like, yeah.
00:14:46:22 - 00:14:53:24
Layne Fawns
Right. And, and and so I think that you have to be careful because what you don't want to lose is authenticity.
00:14:53:27 - 00:15:11:01
Kevin Maney
Right. And I think, you know, going back to all of these examples, right, people value authenticity. Certain people do. Right. But there's going to be a crowd that wants the cheaper, easier or whatever. But authenticity is probably going to even be more valuable in an age when it's so easy to make inauthentic stuff.
00:15:11:03 - 00:15:17:22
Ian Bergman
Yeah, I suspect we're going to come back to this actually later in the podcast. There's some interesting stuff. We're.
00:15:17:24 - 00:15:18:22
Kevin Maney
Actually taking.
00:15:18:25 - 00:15:25:16
Ian Bergman
You definitely answer. All right, all right. And on your next question, let's do this. That only took us 15 minutes.
00:15:25:18 - 00:15:48:17
Layne Fawns
Yeah. No, actually, that I was my next question was I friend or foe? But I think we I think we answered that with, with the conversation. So then, you know, let's kind of talk about, you know, how this relates to to what you do, Kevin, like, what's led you to be here and, you know, the nature of what you do.
00:15:48:17 - 00:15:50:03
Layne Fawns
Tell us about that.
00:15:50:05 - 00:16:18:09
Kevin Maney
Yeah, sure. Well, some of it we've covered a little bit already because I've been I started out as a journalist from almost day one writing about the tech industry, you know, going back to the 1980s. And, and, you know, I so I've written for like, every major publication and, and, you know, interviewed and, you know, spent time with all the big heroes of the tech industry.
00:16:18:09 - 00:16:41:18
Kevin Maney
So I, you know, I really had a steeping in all of that and, along the way wrote a number of books that have about either big Ideas attack or a big biography of Tom Watson, the guy who built IBM, all these things. And eventually, ended up writing a book with these other three Silicon Valley guys called Play Bigger, which came out in 2016.
00:16:41:21 - 00:17:11:05
Kevin Maney
And that book changed the course of my work because, it, it proposed, and through popular popularized this concept that we called category design, you know, which is was a kind of a methodology. We kind of reversed, engineered, like how did how did the greats like Steve Jobs or Marc Benioff or Salesforce or going back to Lee Iacocca with the minivan, you know, studying these, products, the created entirely new categories.
00:17:11:05 - 00:17:37:13
Kevin Maney
And how did they do that? And how do we reverse engineer that and create a playbook so that, other people can, have some ideas about how to, how to see and create these new market categories. And, and also part of the reason for doing any of that in the first place was this realization that in most product categories, there is one leader who takes away most of the market share.
00:17:37:14 - 00:17:56:28
Kevin Maney
Most of the economics, most of the profits, has the pricing power, sets the agenda for the category. And and so if you're an ambitious company leader, why wouldn't you want to do everything in your power to be that company? There's no guarantee you'll be that company. But why wouldn't you do everything possible right to be that company?
00:17:57:00 - 00:18:28:19
Kevin Maney
Sure. So play big or kind of laid all this out, caught, became part of the conversation of the tech ecosystem. Venture capitalists started handing it out to, you know, their portfolio founders and, and, and that turned into a consulting business for me. I started a firm called Category Design Advisors with a partner of Mike. That first, over the past ten years, we've worked with, as you pointed out earlier in the opening, 50 plus companies and talked to hundreds more and done a lot of more research about how this works.
00:18:28:22 - 00:18:45:09
Kevin Maney
And we basically put together everything that we've learned, these new ideas, new methodologies, new ways of thinking about things in this new book called the category Creation Formula, which, you know, which is just out. So that's kind of a short version of the whole path to this moment.
00:18:45:11 - 00:19:06:22
Ian Bergman
Well, and and it's I love the journey, by the way. And, you know, for most of our audience, listeners on video, or sorry, listeners on audio doesn't see the video, but those who can see me might see the giant bald spot. And, I earned my stripes in the 80s a little bit, too. You know, I grew up with the 280 sixes and three 86in the world.
00:19:06:25 - 00:19:39:03
Ian Bergman
And a lot has changed in the world. But what I think is really interesting is you know, this question of, you know, is there a formula to thinking about the category versus the market or the product or the competitors? And is that novel? So my question for you to start is, you know, is this way of thinking that you wrote about a decade ago that you continue to teach and that you continue to iterate and make more?
00:19:39:03 - 00:19:56:03
Ian Bergman
Well, for lack of a better term, formulaic. It's from your title. Is this novel or has is this something related to the emergence of technology and new capabilities, or is this just something that's been hiding in plain sight for as long as humans have been around?
00:19:56:05 - 00:20:33:19
Kevin Maney
Oh, I'll take the hiding in plain sight version of this. So, for instance, I tell a story in the book, about the Zamboni. The. And you're a janitor. I'm sure your grandfather was that motivated. So take this one step back. So the, let me describe this category. So one of the things that we realized over this past ten years was, that there were we kind of created new tools for helping, companies and leaders think through the opportunity to create a new category.
00:20:33:21 - 00:21:02:03
Kevin Maney
And I'm going to come back to the Zamboni story, but let me set it up with the. Okay, so the book is called the category creation formula because really the most powerful tool that we found that really works was this very simple formula that we could put up on the board and drive a day long discussion. And so the formula is simply context plus missing plus innovation equals a new category, new market category.
00:21:02:05 - 00:21:23:29
Kevin Maney
And so you break those things down and you drive a discussion along those ways. So context is everything that's happening around your target audience. That could be changes in technology. Changes in the economy. You know, geopolitical things happen and supply chains get broken and all of these things.
00:21:24:02 - 00:21:29:14
Ian Bergman
But changes everything that you just said implies a changing state of the context is that is that fair.
00:21:29:17 - 00:21:54:02
Kevin Maney
By the way, we're always in a changing state. But yeah, but what it's for is truly understanding. Here's our here's the people are addressing. Let's really have a conversation about like what's changing around that and what's going to drive, you know, what's driving people crazy. What's it. And if you really have this conversation about the changes in context, you can start to have a conversation about what's missing in this new context.
00:21:54:04 - 00:22:15:18
Kevin Maney
There is this did it create an entirely new problem that never existed before because of all these changes? Or does the technology or something that else is going on create new ways to solve a problem that's been around forever? And if you can see that missing within this changing a new context, it becomes very easy to see.
00:22:15:22 - 00:22:45:11
Kevin Maney
Here's the innovation we can create to solve for this missing in this new context. And if you put all those pieces together, you're pretty much guaranteed to have come up with something that, that doesn't yet really exist or doesn't isn't really perfected, and that the world needs to have, and, and so if you see those things that that's, that becomes a very, you know, powerful way to see these, you know, to see the elements of what goes into a category like that.
00:22:45:13 - 00:23:11:26
Ian Bergman
Well, and I think it would be useful for the audience to sort of define category here because I think, you know, often people I think would substitute after the equal sign, you know, product or solution to the pain. Like they'll substitute a lot of words that get that, get floated around. But category to me implies something slightly more abstract, maybe up a level of abstraction and a little vaguer.
00:23:11:29 - 00:23:15:00
Ian Bergman
I don't think that's how you define it. So. So what does category mean?
00:23:15:08 - 00:23:39:07
Kevin Maney
No, that's that's a that's a great question. Yeah. So so first of all, a new category, new product category is literally just a space in our brains, right? That's all it is because we didn't think about it before. And now you've made us think about it. And, so, like one of the examples, easy examples I use is about electric cars.
00:23:39:09 - 00:24:01:21
Kevin Maney
Yeah. Because, 20 years ago, conversation about buying a car, it's only gas cars, right. There was nothing. There had been some electric cars, but they sucked. And you're not. You know, that wasn't really a consideration. So Tesla comes along and by making really great electric cars, opens a category in our heads and says, oh, an electric car is actually a choice here.
00:24:01:24 - 00:24:23:07
Kevin Maney
It's not a comparison. It's not like it's better or whatever. It's just a different choice when you're buying a car. And that's an important distinction, right? A new category is a new choice. And but what's also important is that to have a category really be strong and really exist in our brains usually requires more than like just one company doing it.
00:24:23:08 - 00:24:52:15
Kevin Maney
We're a little suspicious. Right. That okay if that if there's only one of those, maybe that's not like so important or like that's a little, you know. Right. So if a category opens up the idea that as Tesla brilliantly did, by the way, by giving away patents and, you know, all this, it, it opened up the door for the Fords and Volkswagens and, and, you know, GM's of the world to say we're going to make electric cars, too, which starts to validate that category.
00:24:52:15 - 00:25:15:15
Kevin Maney
It makes us stronger. So now, not now. Tesla doesn't have, a small piece of a tiny pie that it created. It has a big, you know, bigger piece of a giant pie. And so this is what we encourage about companies that say you don't want to just create a product, you want to open up this new space in people's minds and reinforce it.
00:25:15:15 - 00:25:22:13
Kevin Maney
And one of the ways you reinforce it is by, defining this in a way that makes other people say, we want to do it, too.
00:25:22:15 - 00:25:24:23
Ian Bergman
Yeah. And that's a really important point.
00:25:24:29 - 00:25:26:01
Kevin Maney
It is. Yeah.
00:25:26:03 - 00:26:01:01
Layne Fawns
Would you argue then that the so like I think that you alluded to this, but then so the success of Tesla was contingent upon other people wanting to build electric vehicles like it was when that competition stepped in that that's when Tesla became successful. Or for example, like Netflix, I think would have been another company to do this very early on, that their success was actually a lot more contingent upon other streaming services stepping in and and joining that category per se.
00:26:01:04 - 00:26:24:14
Kevin Maney
Is an important validation factor. Right. We go into, in the book, we go into the work of this, economist who then died about 20 years ago and, and Paul Gorecki, who studied market categories. And, and he came up with this very elegant, chart that shows the pattern that most categories follow over time.
00:26:24:17 - 00:26:49:24
Kevin Maney
And, that there's sort of two intersecting lines in this chart, and one is the number of companies in the space. And and so if you look at the way that it goes, is that when if a category that is created, if somebody creates an innovation that never existed before, the thing and that's day one, if others see it and say, okay, that's important, that has to exist in the world, we're going to do that too.
00:26:49:24 - 00:27:07:12
Kevin Maney
We're going to jump in it. Usually with different kinds of designs, different versions of that thing. But it's like, still chasing the same basic idea. So if a category is real, the first thing that's going to happen is you're going to see an escalation in the number of companies saying, we're doing this thing too. And that helps validate the category.
00:27:07:12 - 00:27:37:02
Kevin Maney
And now the interesting part is that, well, that's happening. The other line is the value of the category, which indicates like how many people are buying this thing and what that's staying relatively flat because, generally speaking, the mass market doesn't like experimentation, right? They don't like to see, you know, they may think that category is sort of on track, but if there's like 5 or 6 different companies, all with different designs, you know, we're like, well, how's this really going to work?
00:27:37:02 - 00:28:03:12
Kevin Maney
Is this really, you know, who's going to buy this? Is it going to be, you know, out of business in a year? So the early adopters like test things and stuff, but they kind of just percolate along the bottom. And then there comes this defining moment. And this is really important to the whole category design process because as kid identified, there's this defining moment when what he called is the dominant design just chosen by the market.
00:28:03:14 - 00:28:27:16
Kevin Maney
Because the market wants one way this thing works, right? We don't want, electric cars to work five different ways and five different ways. You plug it in or start or whatever, because then if you, you know, it gets too confusing what we want one way. So eventually the market decides on that dominant design. And when that happens, the number of competitors usually falls away.
00:28:27:18 - 00:29:04:14
Kevin Maney
They either get absorbed into the dominant design or they just disappear. And it. And the other thing that happens is the market takes off. Because now we're comfortable with this thing. Now we believe in those. And what we're going to do. So as that plays out, fewer numbers of companies capture all the value. And and the important thing here is, is if you're a company and you believe you, you know, creating a market category and you want to, you know, drive the state what you the you have to keep the your eye on the ball that your, your most important thing is winning the dominant design.
00:29:04:16 - 00:29:19:18
Kevin Maney
It's not starting. It's not being first to market of this is why, you know, an explanation of why that first mover advantage thing is really kind of bull crap, because it's it doesn't necessarily guarantee you're going to win the dominant design. Winning the dominant design is everything.
00:29:19:21 - 00:29:39:09
Ian Bergman
Well, and it's a really interesting framing. I was going to get to this. I'm glad you mentioned First Mover. I mean, you know, when I when it often surprises people, when I say something along the lines of I actually can't think of very many first movers who ended up as the dominant force in their category. In fact, it's very, very few.
00:29:39:09 - 00:30:08:28
Ian Bergman
And even then, you could almost always argue that they weren't actually the first mover, right? Like you could make an argument actually, that would, that Tesla is not the first mover in the electric car category because they weren't. But you could they certainly redefined the category, maybe in their own in their own vision. And it is really interesting because I think so often we get lost in this question of, how do I establish moats around my product, my IP, my business?
00:30:08:28 - 00:30:37:02
Ian Bergman
How do we, you know, how do we protect the what we have won or what we believe we can win? And, Kevin, what I hear you saying, and I'm playing back in my own words, so you can tell me I'm an idiot. But what I. You know, what I hear you saying is you can kind of ignore all that focus on what is the category that we're trying to define, and what does it take to be the best player in that category?
00:30:37:05 - 00:31:02:20
Kevin Maney
Yes, all of that. But there's one other element that's super important and that is actually continuing to, to create the bias in your audience's heads that you are the category leader, that you know how this thing is going to work, that you're setting the rules. And, and that's a, that's a process you have to do constantly throughout the years, so that you are perceived as a leader.
00:31:02:21 - 00:31:31:12
Kevin Maney
I mean, this all goes back to like, look, we all to for, for decades, we've automatically gone to Google and search because it established that bias in our heads. Even Microsoft comes along and says, you know, well, the search results from Bing are better and we all care because doesn't matter doesn't matter. Right? Right, right. So what I want to go back in because I don't want to lose this thread of you asked me about started this hour by asking me, is this something that's been in the air forever or we didn't just, you know, capture it?
00:31:31:15 - 00:31:57:12
Kevin Maney
And I started to say about the Zamboni machine, right. So here's if you think about the category formula we just talked about. And so there was a guy named Frank Zamboni, and he was in he and in Los Angeles, of all places, right. Where the Zamboni machines part. And you go back to pre 1930s and the Zamboni family, had an ice making company.
00:31:57:12 - 00:32:20:27
Kevin Maney
Right? Right. Box company. Right. They made ice for home ice boxes and before electricity. Right. That was their business in Los Angeles. And it was about every every town had ice companies. Right. That made the ice for for the ice boxes of people's homes. So then electricity comes along and people start buying electric refrigerators, and ice is no longer a great business.
00:32:21:00 - 00:32:41:03
Kevin Maney
But the Zamboni family knows how to make ice. And so there's there's kind of searching around for like, what do we do with our knowledge and capabilities? And figure skating was started to become more popular. But, you know, the Olympics or things like that, people were following it. And so they built an ice rink in LA.
00:32:41:05 - 00:33:10:06
Kevin Maney
Yeah. So now they have an ice rink. And, maintaining the ice rink means, having a bunch of guys with mops and brooms and scrapers go out and take like 45 minutes to clean the ice. So with all this, Frank Zamboni is thinking about this and thinking, okay, there's this new context of like, you know, electricity. We got our ice rink, we've got this problem of, you know, it takes away from our ability to have a good business.
00:33:10:08 - 00:33:25:24
Kevin Maney
And also in his mind is thinking, you talked about technology. This was the this was right around as a, oh, like the beginning of World War two. And then there's things like four wheel drive jeeps that are starting to be made. And it's like he's so he starts putting all these things together. All this is context, right? Yeah.
00:33:25:24 - 00:33:45:16
Kevin Maney
And the missing for him is that there was, you know, it was it was really hurting business to have to take so much of the day out to clean the ice or have bad ice that people didn't like, skate on. So here's the context. He has the and he says, okay, well, I could create an innovation using these new four wheel drive technologies.
00:33:45:18 - 00:33:55:16
Kevin Maney
And, and build this contraption. In fact, the first Zamboni that he built was literally a Jeep chases that. He put this little wooden box on the top of a conveyor belt, and the whole thing.
00:33:55:18 - 00:33:57:17
Ian Bergman
I need to find a photo of this.
00:33:57:19 - 00:34:02:01
Kevin Maney
There is a photo of it you can see. You can find it online. And, that'll.
00:34:02:01 - 00:34:02:27
Layne Fawns
Be one for the show.
00:34:02:27 - 00:34:26:07
Kevin Maney
He creates this thing and, and it works. Right. And, and suddenly talk about creating a category, right. Ice rinks all around the country and all of, you know, in Canada, whatever. Start the, you see this innovation and they want one too. And then others start to make the same product. So this was a, you know, again, like, people have been doing this forever.
00:34:26:10 - 00:34:39:13
Kevin Maney
And, and, and part of what we did when we did our research was to try to understand what were the mechanisms that went into that and then kind of extract from that these ways that playbooks that people can use today.
00:34:39:16 - 00:35:04:27
Ian Bergman
Yeah. So I love that story. And I think it definitely answers the question, but it it exposes for me a question of, how much you can sort of predict and model in advance versus how much you discover along the way. And so, I want I want to come back to this question about the level of abstraction you have to operate at with categories, because I think that's actually really fascinating.
00:35:04:29 - 00:35:27:27
Ian Bergman
But, you know, in the in the Zamboni story, they did not set out to create a Zamboni. They did not set out to make it easier and therefore cheaper and much more productive to create new ice rinks all over the place. Right? They did not set out there. They followed a process of looking at the context, looking at kind of pain points, and it was an iterative process.
00:35:27:27 - 00:35:41:29
Ian Bergman
It sounds like. So how do you get to a place where you can start to actually say, I understand the category that we are playing and, and how what is the process look like to get there?
00:35:42:01 - 00:35:53:14
Kevin Maney
So I believe that most companies look at things backwards, that they look I think the industry has been haunted by this phrase, product market fit for two decades.
00:35:53:16 - 00:35:59:23
Ian Bergman
Oh. You're talking about you're talking to some startup people that are like, yeah, do you have product market fit? So yeah.
00:35:59:25 - 00:36:22:21
Kevin Maney
Well, what what product market fit to me says is we've built a product and now we have to figure out a market for it. I know, figure out where a market where it fits in a market that's literally what it sells. Right. If you turn that around and make the phrase market products it. Yeah. Then it starts to tell you that the first thing you should be looking for is the market that needs what you need something.
00:36:22:21 - 00:36:44:14
Kevin Maney
Right? Yeah. And let's build a product to serve that that particular market. If you if you if you do that, then the market you're addressing is just going to suck the product right out of your company. It's it's going to create the man. And and so most companies in my experience, when they're, they, you know, they sit around creating strategy.
00:36:44:14 - 00:37:11:12
Kevin Maney
It's we've got this product. What's our strategy for beating the competition for marketing, getting it marketed, you know, finding a place where it's going to resonate all of those things. Right. The conversation that we have with the company, if we go in and we say we're going to put your company and your product aside, let's talk about the people you're trying to address and, and really figure out what this market needs that also plays to your strengths as a company, your capabilities as a company.
00:37:11:14 - 00:37:36:28
Kevin Maney
Yeah. You can match those two things. And and and clearly see what that problem is. You're solving what that category is. You're creating. Then all of your strategy can rally around that, right? Your your marketing message is rally around that your, your product, roadmap can now see where this thing has to go and where it should go is as, you know, as the future evolves.
00:37:37:00 - 00:37:53:29
Kevin Maney
And and it does what if you, if you do it that way, it creates a focus that doesn't usually exist. Often doesn't exist inside of, inside of a lot of companies. And I think that's where the, the advantage comes from being, you know, trying to have this mindset.
00:37:54:01 - 00:38:40:10
Ian Bergman
So there's a classic problem that, you know, exists and all that new venture creation, and it exists across kind of, market research and discovery writ large and that is that, typically customers are real crap at telling you what their problems are and what they actually need or want. Right? Because they don't know. How do you, as you know, a company trying to understand the category, you're going to be playing an how do you get the voice of the market, the voice of that category, without somebody having thought about it before and being able to answer you and being like, oh, yes, like, of course I want an EV that can do
00:38:40:10 - 00:38:41:19
Ian Bergman
X, Y and Z.
00:38:41:21 - 00:39:04:04
Kevin Maney
No. And it's a great question. And and you know, you know, there's the apocryphal thing, right, of Henry Ford saying if I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. That your customer, your customers are really only going to know, for the most part, what exists. They're not going to have the imagination to imagine something that doesn't exist.
00:39:04:07 - 00:39:39:02
Kevin Maney
And and so this is where an element of creativity has to come into the process. Right? So when we go working with a company, for instance, for and say, okay, you know, listening to your customers and building what they want is not the answer to creating, something new and interesting and innovative, right? What is the answer is truly understanding your customers and understanding that that market, that sector or whatever, but also being able to abstract from that, this whole idea of like, but what is missing?
00:39:39:04 - 00:40:07:08
Kevin Maney
And, and what can we create that solves problems that people don't even know they have yet or that they never thought they could solve? Yeah. And, and, you know, so we're, we're trying to drive a conversation that goes above and beyond what is just listening to your customers means. Right? It's it's about like, how do we take that and use it to then create something that's brand new.
00:40:07:10 - 00:40:22:09
Ian Bergman
Awesome, and a different way of thinking? I think for, for a lot of people. And so it's nice that you're able to identify and pull out patterns. I love equations, by the way. Absolutely love equations. Because they always make they always make things look easier than they are.
00:40:22:11 - 00:40:24:05
Kevin Maney
Where? Yeah, we could build a nuclear reactor.
00:40:24:09 - 00:40:27:29
Ian Bergman
Exactly.
00:40:28:01 - 00:40:46:09
Layne Fawns
Actually, speaking of formulas, I know that there is no formula for this, but I was kind of thinking about, you know, your story about the Zambonis and not all vehicles that drive along the ice are a Zamboni, but we call them all zamboni's. That's right. Not every cotton swab is a Q-Tip. A true call?
00:40:46:12 - 00:40:50:01
Ian Bergman
Is that true? We just like everything on an ice is a Zamboni.
00:40:50:03 - 00:40:55:03
Kevin Maney
Well, we there are other makers of them, but what I would like to do next.
00:40:55:06 - 00:40:56:02
Ian Bergman
I never even thought about.
00:40:56:03 - 00:41:20:09
Layne Fawns
Like, yeah, oh that's awesome. Or like tissue for example. Right. Like Kleenex and tissue Band-Aids or and I can I can probably go on forever about. So what is your coaching with regard to branding and messaging throughout this that you ensure that you become the Q-Tip of your category, or is that all just kind of coming down to luck and timing?
00:41:20:12 - 00:41:43:10
Kevin Maney
But here's an important point that I would say is that, the category and brand are two different things. Okay? They have to be paramount, right? So, you know, you have, you know, a category is, is, you know, small letters, right? It's it's smartphone, it's microwave oven. It's, you know, when it's cotton swab. Right. That's those are, those are categories.
00:41:43:13 - 00:42:11:04
Kevin Maney
And your, your brand has to sit within that. And, yeah, I mean, I can't say that I have some formula for how do you make your brand be, you know, a synonym for the category with almost the other small letters. Right. But, but but many times, category creators who become true category leaders, that ends up happening, right?
00:42:11:04 - 00:42:22:18
Kevin Maney
I mean, the Zamboni. Google. Don't get me to you become a verb, but to Google this. But I don't think there's a I don't think there's a a proven path for making that happen.
00:42:22:21 - 00:42:45:14
Ian Bergman
So okay, so this this this formula stuff is, is absolutely fascinating because it provides a it provides a playbook. To an extent. Right. And I think that's really important. And it provides a playbook to understand again, your words like the category we're operating in. But I am really stuck on how do you know you've nailed the category.
00:42:45:14 - 00:43:20:22
Ian Bergman
So let's take cotton swabs like I cotton I don't I wouldn't say cotton swab is the category but is it ear cleaning. Is it cotton things you stick in your ear? Is it you know, the category of making you feel like you are maintaining hygiene at home? Whether or not you are like, I feel like there's you can define these things a million ways, and that actually really matters because people are driven by subconscious, latent and emotional motivations to make decisions that might, you know, be something different than a sort of on the box.
00:43:20:22 - 00:43:37:29
Ian Bergman
So, you know, I'm I'm going all over the board, but I'm going to keep coming back to this question of how do you know you've nailed the definition of the category, and you can actually understand, you know, what is driving decision making for your customers?
00:43:38:02 - 00:43:43:18
Kevin Maney
Yeah. You know, well, well, on day one, you can't know, you know, you're putting something out there.
00:43:43:25 - 00:43:46:01
Ian Bergman
That's humbling but important, actually. Right? Right.
00:43:46:03 - 00:44:10:17
Kevin Maney
Yeah. I mean, look, you know, going back to the musician things, right? We can write a song if it isn't going to be a hit record. I mean, you know, you know, I think it's kind of the world, But, you know, that words, but, I mean, there are a couple of indications. So, so the first one goes back to the conversation about the Jurowski curve.
00:44:10:17 - 00:44:38:20
Kevin Maney
Right. If you introduce this thing to into the world and and nobody decides to follow you, you probably created something that isn't really catching on you, doesn't really matter of people. So one of the first signs is other companies coming into the space and saying, I'm going to do that too. And and then you can also you can also tell when it starts to, starts to come back to you, your language starts coming back to you.
00:44:38:20 - 00:45:08:07
Kevin Maney
Look, I, I experienced this myself. We wrote a book, created the category of category design and put it out there. And then when other people started talking about category design, not even knowing that it came from our book, that's when we knew that this we had created an actual category. There are literally thousands of people now that say that their profession is category designer.
00:45:08:10 - 00:45:09:19
Ian Bergman
That's awesome, by the way.
00:45:09:21 - 00:45:31:22
Kevin Maney
It is awesome. It's a I mean, it is truly, actually awesome. And and and people write like blog posts and things about category design and have no reference to they have no idea where it came from, like it's just somewhere in the atmosphere. So when those kinds of things start happening, that's certainly a major indication of, you know, of of having achieved that goal.
00:45:31:24 - 00:46:05:23
Layne Fawns
What about what about Netflix, though? Because I would argue that Netflix blew up way before the validation of other streaming services coming into play. Or were they in a different category? They were like, were they you know, they were in the category of, say, video delivery or video services. And that's why they blew out blockbuster, and then somehow a new category formed out of that, like, I'm, I'm, I'm arguing the point a little bit that I think every once in a while something blows up before that validation.
00:46:05:23 - 00:46:10:28
Layne Fawns
Or is that just kind of the the exception to the rule?
00:46:11:01 - 00:46:39:00
Kevin Maney
Your question leads me to be able to explain a little bit about another concept in the book that Reed Hastings played beautifully. So another piece of conversation that we often have is something that, we call the adjacent possible. And, so we actually, borrow this from a, book by Stephen Johnson called Where Good Ideas Come From and modified it slightly for our purposes.
00:46:39:02 - 00:47:15:09
Kevin Maney
But, if you can imagine a, an x, y, x, y axis. Right. And, vertical axis is technology's capabilities and the horizontal axis is all of us. So our ability to adopt it into our new technologies, those things play off of each other. And and so if you imagine that a, you know, kind of a, a line that goes from, you know, across ways and there's, there's a, an area to the bottom left, which is everything that is possible and exists that we use every day.
00:47:15:09 - 00:47:35:06
Kevin Maney
Right. And all of those and all of those things are technologies that work and that we use in our daily lives. Yeah, those are categories that exist and we understand them and they work. And then if there's a barrier between those things and the outside of that is stuff that doesn't yet exist and that we don't quite know how to use in our lives.
00:47:35:09 - 00:48:04:16
Kevin Maney
So quantum computing might set out there somewhere, right? It's still a lab experiment, and we think it's going to happen someday. But like, you know, we're not. You and I aren't thinking about what are we going to do when we have a quantum computer in our living room? And as Johnson discovered when he did his research about why certain concepts take off, when they do that, there's this stand between those two spaces that he calls the adjacent possible, which is one of the technologies, is just pushed a little farther than it has been before.
00:48:04:16 - 00:48:27:24
Kevin Maney
So it seems new and cool. And, and we're we're able to absorb what that's going to be. But it's still it's new, right? It's it's new and exciting. So it pushes both a little bit and, and so if you introduce a product that's out there in the now yet possible, people aren't going to get it. It's not going to quit, like going to work.
00:48:27:27 - 00:48:44:12
Kevin Maney
You know, if you start a company and you stick with that vision, it's going to take ten years to get there. You're going to run out of money and time before you actually have a profitable company. If you start a, a product, a launch, a product that's in that already possible, you're probably launching into something category that already exists.
00:48:44:12 - 00:49:11:21
Kevin Maney
It's not going to be it's going to be a commodity. It's not going to be that interesting. So you want to out of the Jason, you know, how do I got going to all this about Reed Hastings. So I you know I I've interviewed him going way back and I you know understood like this question and what he was doing, he call it Netflix from the beginning because he knew eventually you were going to be able to offer movies over the internet.
00:49:11:23 - 00:49:12:17
Ian Bergman
Yeah.
00:49:12:19 - 00:49:25:11
Kevin Maney
But when he started Netflix, that wasn't truly possible yet, right? We still had dial up modems and crappy connections and, and the licensing stuff just didn't work or whatever it was just all was not going to happen.
00:49:25:14 - 00:49:26:03
Ian Bergman
Yeah.
00:49:26:05 - 00:49:56:03
Kevin Maney
So he starts the company by having will mail you these DVDs, because at least we know that there is going back to the category formula. You know, you hate having to go late fees at the blockbuster and having to, you know, go to the store, the whole thing. Right. So he introduces this concept and is continually monitoring as the years go on, what's going on with the internet, what you know, is it when is it going to be possible to start offering streaming movies?
00:49:56:05 - 00:50:17:19
Kevin Maney
And and then at some point, I can't remember the year it was, we started to make that transition. And and what was brilliant about that too, was that, he he took us on a journey. He established a brand that we associated with that journey. And we became comfortable with the idea that Netflix knew where this was all going.
00:50:17:21 - 00:50:54:05
Kevin Maney
And I and I believe that is one of the reasons that it won customers early and they stuck with Netflix as that transition happened because he, he, he painted this picture of, you know, not only were landing in the Jason possible today, but I understand where this is going and I'm going to take you there. And that's an important thing that we try to tell companies to do is when you're when you're dreaming up this new product or service landed in the adjacent possible today, but have an understanding of where it's going and and make sure your customers know that you're going to take them on that journey.
00:50:54:08 - 00:50:55:28
Layne Fawns
Oh, I love that.
00:50:56:01 - 00:51:32:11
Ian Bergman
Yeah. I mean, this is really interesting, but we need to dig in in a second on enterprise centric innovation. But just on this Netflix question, I'm still struggling with how we're thinking about the category that Netflix knew that they were playing in. Right. And I realize, like so many, so much ink has been spilled, obviously, on the case study on the topic of Netflix, but it strikes me that you can look at this as we are in the category of movie watching or video rentals or TV based entertainment.
00:51:32:13 - 00:52:01:24
Ian Bergman
You could define it as we are in the category of frictionless access to video entertainment, right? Which differentiates versus kind of the incumbents and guides their strategy toward toward reducing the friction over time to streaming. You can also say actually like the adjacent possible is the idea that all forms of entertainment everywhere should be able to be delivered to you instantly.
00:52:01:24 - 00:52:30:23
Ian Bergman
And so actually, we're competing in a category of attention or the amount of attention that is allocated to entertainment at any given moment. And it strikes me that each of those could lead a management team and a product team in very different directions. Is there something that we can learn there about not just, you know, the definition of the category, but focus on it over time so that you don't get distracted by, you know, maybe something that's a couple degrees of adjacency out there, etc..
00:52:30:26 - 00:52:56:03
Kevin Maney
Let me say a couple things about that. So and again, going back to the idea that we like study people who created categories in the past, none of them ever talked about that that way. Right? I mean, so we introduced a lexicon that describe something that that really brilliant innovators did naturally and and probably never described it that way.
00:52:56:05 - 00:53:21:02
Kevin Maney
So now the reason that it's useful is it becomes it just becomes a mechanism for having this conversation, about what are we doing? What why does the market need us? You know, how can we, you know, how can we not only introduce something new, but actually bring others along and, and and yet when that dominant design over time, it's a mechanism for having these conversations.
00:53:21:04 - 00:53:41:24
Kevin Maney
But, but by having these conversations and, and defining and, you know, and so and also the product of what, you know, we do and what we tell companies to do is to write this essentially this Declaration of Independence, this manifesto, this thing, this document that puts into words.
00:53:41:27 - 00:53:43:25
Ian Bergman
A cool tool.
00:53:43:27 - 00:54:19:09
Kevin Maney
What the context is, what the problem to be solved is, why what the solution to that problem looks like, where it's going, why you're the ones that are going to bring this to the world. Write it down. Make it into something. Your whole leadership team would sign their names to the bottom up, because what it produces is not necessarily always the exact right answer, but it, it, it produces alignment around a mission that you're going to pursue, and you can adjust from there if you have to, but at least you have focus and mission and alignment.
00:54:19:12 - 00:54:19:16
Kevin Maney
Yeah.
00:54:19:17 - 00:54:21:00
Ian Bergman
You're all marching in the same direction.
00:54:21:03 - 00:54:31:05
Kevin Maney
Around an idea that you believe this, right? Yeah. And that's and that's that in itself can be the most important thing a company has going for it.
00:54:31:07 - 00:54:52:27
Layne Fawns
So what about timing? Like being too ahead of the curve or too late? Like, you can't like we talked about Netflix and how he saw he was like, the timing's not right. But what about things that are just a little bit, you know, like, I feel like we move rapidly with AI and yet at the same time, you can still be too ahead of the curve.
00:54:52:27 - 00:54:56:23
Layne Fawns
How do you know when it's the right time to launch something?
00:54:56:24 - 00:55:13:27
Kevin Maney
Some of it is, you know, we're relying on the instincts of the people that we're talking to. So literally we'll put this adjacent possible thing up on there and have a discussion around it. Where, where are the this, this thing that you're describing that you want, you're going to build? Where, where would you put it on that chart.
00:55:14:00 - 00:55:39:17
Kevin Maney
Yeah. And, and if, if you would put it somewhere that says like, look, this isn't really going to work for, you know, three years, part of the conversation becomes like, okay, if that's true, how do we like dial that back and offer something? Now that lands in that adjacent possible space and know that you're going to move towards this thing in three years?
00:55:39:19 - 00:55:59:24
Kevin Maney
Or, you know, like the other thing is like, look at that and say, look, you're describing something that, 50 other companies are doing. And it's in that, you know, already possible space. And, look, I mean, there's thousands of companies that build perfectly good businesses taking 5% market share from somebody else's category. If that's what you want to do.
00:55:59:24 - 00:56:19:09
Kevin Maney
That's great. I mean, that's that's viable. But if you're one of those ambitious founders or company leaders or department leaders inside a big company, and and you want to do something that's above and beyond that, then then creating this new seeing and creating this new category is is a path towards that.
00:56:19:12 - 00:56:54:28
Ian Bergman
Okay. So you gave me the opening. I got to dive into the hard thing. We are we are recording this, I think literally on the eve of the release of the book, and, you know, so the world is going to change tomorrow in ways minor and major, and I'm super excited about that. But every example that we've talked about so far, most of the examples have either been at a small organization or a startup, a new organization or something that was able to pivot and change.
00:56:55:00 - 00:57:23:19
Ian Bergman
Does this concept does the category creation formula change some of that? Just the, you know, immovable forces that make change and innovation. So hard in an enterprise, right. Does this actually change something for the GM's, the business line managers that are trying to adapt to a context that is changing around them? Or are we all still sort of stuck in the innovator's dilemma?
00:57:23:21 - 00:57:34:04
Ian Bergman
Like what? What what do you what do you tell people who are worried about the historical success rate or lack thereof, of innovation and change inside large companies?
00:57:34:06 - 00:57:56:00
Kevin Maney
So, yeah, I mean, it is a great question. And and yes, I mean, many large companies get stuck in the problem of, you know, am I going to create something that cannibalizes something that I already have? It's a, you know, a profit center or, and, you know, all those problems come to bear. And so a startup has a lot more leeway to just dive into something.
00:57:56:00 - 00:58:17:27
Kevin Maney
Right? Brand new. But I mean, the history of corporate, you know, America or corporations around the world, I mean, there are been many, many groundbreaking innovations that have come out of them. You know, one of the ones we we write about all the time is to go back to Chrysler in the 1980s in creating the minivan. Yeah.
00:58:18:00 - 00:58:40:15
Kevin Maney
And, you know, here's a company been around for God knows how many decades at that point in time and had a whole product line. Now, one of the things that ends up being key to that was that it's back. It was against the wall, right? It was going bankrupt. It needed to do something radical. But if you kind of look at the way they sussed this out, they realized that there was a changing context.
00:58:40:18 - 00:58:58:19
Kevin Maney
Baby boomers moving out to the suburbs, having multiple kids, having, you know, soccer practices, baseball practices, and, you know, all the stuff and that, and that there were, frustrations with the kinds of cars you could get. You get a station wagon, you know, and have your kids roll around in the back and fly out. If you had an accident.
00:58:58:22 - 00:58:59:08
Ian Bergman
I miss those.
00:58:59:08 - 00:59:22:24
Kevin Maney
Days. It was those. But there were no seatbelts. And, you know, or a big old van that drove, like, a truck, you know, just didn't. So, they came up with this concept of a van that would fit in your garage and hold a family of five and a dog and drove like a car so that, you know, the the, you know, the moms of the world would feel comfortable in this thing.
00:59:22:26 - 00:59:55:20
Kevin Maney
And, and they marketed as, as a solution to this problem, by the way, they created a category called they called minivan, but a brand that was separate Dodge Caravan, Plymouth Voyager. And they did this all inside of a, you know, but here's also another important point about that was that, category creation, especially inside of a large enterprise, has to be a CEO blaster driven thing.
00:59:55:21 - 01:00:11:07
Kevin Maney
Lee Iacocca was totally behind this, right. And those back in those days. And, and I don't think these kinds of innovations happen with without, top level, support and, and maybe putting in place mechanisms so it's able to happen.
01:00:11:12 - 01:00:38:07
Ian Bergman
Well, this is really, really fascinating. And Kevin, I actually really appreciate you coming on innovators inside. I think everyone in our audience needs to go out and either read or listen to the category creation formula. I know that I'm excited for it to come out tomorrow. If you had to leave the audience with one important but non-intuitive thought, what would that be?
01:00:38:07 - 01:00:55:21
Ian Bergman
What's the nugget that you want to live like a brain worm, rent free in their head for the next six weeks, will they get more and more frustrated thinking about how to solve it? And then, they shoot you an email and say, I got it.
01:00:55:24 - 01:01:23:14
Kevin Maney
I don't know if this is how non-intuitive it is, but I mean, look, the the the basic message that we have is that if you are a, you're an ambitious founder innovator inside a company, inntrepreneur or whatever, and you want to change the way we live and work, and, and do something that's, you know, that's memorable and also profitable.
01:01:23:16 - 01:01:48:24
Kevin Maney
A path to doing that is to create these new market categories, these new spaces in our brains, that are both something the world needs to have existing. And there's something that you can do. And, and if you put all those pieces together, it does make magic. And, it's not for everybody. But if it's for you, that's a, that's a it's a path to doing that.
01:01:48:27 - 01:02:11:29
Ian Bergman
Yeah. Awesome. Well Kevin thank you. You've brought field tested insight, something that is very practical, and insightful to the audience. Really appreciate you coming and joining us, today on Innovators Inside, I just want to say congratulations on the impending launch of the book. We're all really excited to get our hands on it. And thanks again.
01:02:11:29 - 01:02:13:17
Ian Bergman
It was an absolute pleasure.
01:02:13:19 - 01:02:16:06
Kevin Maney
Yeah, thanks. I really enjoyed it. Thanks, both of you.
01:02:16:08 - 01:02:17:03
Layne Fawns
All right. Thanks again.