The Category Creation Formula: Discover, Design, and Win New Market Categories

Innovative concepts, tools and playbooks for discovering, defining and taking charge of new market categories, by two of the leaders of the category design movement.

The most exciting—and often most valuable—companies create, develop and win new categories of products or services. Examples range from the Zamboni company a century ago to OpenAI today. Such companies can be giants like Amazon, creator of the online everything store category—or a niche player like Bob Chandler, creator of the monster truck category.

Category creation and development should be the goal of any company that wants to make a difference. And the way to achieve that is through the discipline of strategic category design.

Kevin Maney helped introduce category design in his bestseller Play Bigger. Now, he and Mike Damphousse—an experienced CEO, investor and marketing executive—share the secrets that they’ve learned over the past decade. Their advisory firm has worked on strategic category design projects with more than fifty companies and guided workshops for hundreds more at incubators and VC portfolio gatherings. The Category Creation Formula reveals the processes they rely on and the truths about categories that they’ve uncovered, clearly laid out so any entrepreneur or leadership team can benefit from them, too.

The Category Creation Formula expands on ideas introduced in Play Bigger and enhances the discipline’s hands-on practices, including how to write a powerful category point of view and how to set the rules for a category so your company always maintains an advantage. From forming an initial category-winning strategy to relentlessly executing on that strategy, The Category Creation Formula is the crucial resource for anyone who has the ambition to change the way we live and work.

© 2026 HarperAudio (Audiobook): 9780063483798

Release date

Audiobook: 24 February 2026