Category design is the strategic process of creating and defining a new market category, rather than simply competing within an existing one. Christopher Lochhead, who is widely credited for evangelizing this discipline, argues that entrepreneurs should focus on building products and services that are radically different—not just better. Through his bestselling books, including Niche Down and Play Bigger, and top-ranked podcasts, Lochhead champions the idea of “category design” as “a secret art built on the thinking of legends.” Practitioners intentionally use 📝Narrative Development and 📝Ecosystem Building to shape perceptions and buying criteria, aiming to become the “designer, the creator, and therefore the de facto standard” in their field. According to Lochhead, category “queens” can capture up to 75% of the total market cap in their space, making category design a path to enduring value and market leadership.
Category design has always fascinated me as both an intellectual framework and a creative challenge. It’s more than clever positioning; it’s about naming the very context in which your work will be understood. Learning about category design through 📝Tim Ferriss in 📝The 4-Hour Workweek and it's what helped me see the 📝Blue Ocean of the "📝Reddit Marketing Expert" category, which emerged on the far side of my 📝Facebook Ads Prank.
I’ve noticed that the most successful ventures don’t just solve problems—they reframe what the problem even is, often pulling the entire field into a new orbit around their vision. The risk, of course, is that category design is rarely linear or predictable; it requires ongoing storytelling and the courage to champion an idea that doesn’t yet have a clear audience. Still, when done well, it's an act of myth-making—turning a new possibility into the obvious next step for everyone else.
Examples
- 📝Commsor created the category of "📝Community-Led"
- 📝Clay created the category of "📝Go-To-Market (GTM) Engineering"