In today’s buying landscape, there’s no room for second-tier companies: The top dog of every market usually reaps all the rewards, leaving other companies competing for scraps. This means every company should strive to become a top dog.
Al Ramadan, Christopher Lochhead, and Dave Peterson of the advisory firm Play Bigger, with the help of business writer Kevin Maney, believe the way to do this is not to create a product that’s merely superior to other products in an existing market, but rather to create a brand-new market for your product. You’ll design this market to specifically highlight your product’s unique assets, thereby making yourself the best and only option in that market—the market winner.
The most recognized and successful companies today created their own markets, revealing to customers a problem they didn’t know they had and then positioning themselves as the only solution. In this guide, we’ll explain the authors’ vision of market design and market winners and why they think becoming a market winner is the only option for modern businesses. We’ll then outline their step-by-step process for designing a market and becoming its winner—and remaining a long-term market winner.
Let’s first define the authors’ concept of market design and the market winner. It’s worth noting that the authors’ work experiences come primarily from the tech industry. However, they stress that you can apply these lessons to any business.
(Shortform note: The authors are likely correct in asserting that lessons from the tech industry can apply to more traditional companies, simply because the distinction between tech and non-tech businesses is becoming increasingly fuzzy. Most modern companies—like Goldman Sachs, GE, and Exxon—classify themselves as “tech companies,” at least to a certain degree.)
Market design is the act of creating an entirely new market for your product, claim the authors. You do this by devising a novel solution—not a solution that’s just better than other solutions—to an existing or not-yet-existing problem, often completely altering peoples’ lives and lifestyles and rendering old markets obsolete.
(Shortform note: In Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne agree with the authors that companies must create new markets to succeed. They add that most people incorrectly believe that markets are fixed in size and structure and that companies can only succeed by ousting competitors and taking their market share. They call this a structuralist view and contrast it with a reconstructionist view, which asserts that markets are fluid and can shift to accommodate new businesses and customer needs.)
The authors cite Uber as a company that created an entirely new market and solution—ride-hailing services—to solve a problem consumers didn’t know they had: the challenge of finding a taxi when you need one. In Uber’s case, it made traditional taxis (the old market) much less appealing and completely changed how people get around.
(Shortform note: Play Bigger was published in 2016, before Uber became notorious for having used potentially unethical business practices to aggressively expand its operations. What’s more, some believe Uber now operates in a market in which there’s too much competition—in other words, the market it designed is no longer working in Uber’s favor. These developments call into question Uber’s place as a paragon of great market design.)
When you engage in market design, you craft the market to specifically highlight your product’s unique advantages and the problem it solves, contend the authors. No other company that enters the market will succeed as well as you because the market isn’t designed to accentuate its advantages—it’s designed to accentuate yours. This is in many ways easier than competing in a market that’s saturated with recognized brands and that’s not set up to highlight your product’s assets or the problem it solves.
(Shortform note: In Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore argues the opposite point. While the Play Bigger authors contend that you should create a new market, Moore believes you shouldn’t try to position yourself in a not-yet-existent market because mainstream users will have a hard time understanding the market and won’t want to buy your product. He claims you must identify some competition to your product to give customers the context they need to understand and want to buy it. In this way, Moore views competing brands and existing markets as aides to consumer comprehension rather than as obstacles to your success, as the authors see them.)
Furthermore, when you establish a new market based on a new or existing problem, you won’t need to work hard to convince consumers to buy from you, claim the authors. Once they recognize the problem your market will solve, consumers will clamor for a solution—it’s human nature to want to solve a problem, even if it’s one they only just now realized they had. And since your company will be the only one offering any solution in that market (because you’ve only just established it), they’ll turn to you exclusively.
(Shortform note: Not only do people feel compelled to solve problems once they recognize them, but they also tend to create problems when they don’t exist. This tendency is called concept creep: the redefining of what a “problem” is to include smaller and smaller issues when larger issues are solved. This tendency is good news for companies: Once consumers’ larger problems are solved, they’re naturally inclined to look for smaller problems to solve, meaning companies can create and sell products that solve increasingly minor issues.)
We’ll use one example throughout this guide to illustrate these concepts: You’ve built a handheld device that makes calls, sends emails, and lets you take notes. This sounds similar to a smartphone, but if you were to sell your product in the existing smartphone market, you wouldn’t stand a chance because there are so many better-recognized smartphones out there.
However, if you create a new market for your device, you can succeed in it because you can design the market to highlight your product’s unique features—its relatively low tech capacity. You might thus create a “low-tech devices” market: a market for products that have more limited capabilities than standard smartphones, to solve the problem of tech overwhelm. And once consumers recognize that they, too, have tech overwhelm, they’ll buy only from your company, because you’re the only company around that can solve that problem for them.
Designing a new market for your product gives you the greatest chance of becoming a market winner: the most recognized and trusted brand in a market, write the authors. Market winners often become synonymous with their entire markets and usually consume 70 to 80% of the market’s profits and value. Because customers recognize these companies so well and identify them so closely with their market, it’s nearly impossible to compete with them. You want to become a market winner because you’ll be an indomitable force.
(Shortform note: In Zero to One, Peter Thiel provides another reason you should aim to become a market winner, beyond the self-serving ones the authors mention: Market winners, who essentially establish a monopoly on their market, are beneficial to society. This is because a monopoly makes enough money to have the freedom to consider bigger-picture social issues, like paying fair wages and investing in more sustainable—and more expensive—production methods. As a market winner, you’ll thus have the opportunity to positively impact the world around you.)
As great as its benefits are, market design is also difficult for three reasons:
According to the authors, to design a new market and become its winner, you must build your company, market, and product simultaneously so they support and reinforce each other—a colossal challenge for any company. When you can do this, a flywheel effect occurs, wherein one part of the company boosts the next part, which boosts the third part, which boosts the first part, and so on. When this flywheel composed of company, market, and product spins fast enough, the company builds so much momentum that it becomes the unbeatable market winner.
(Shortform note: The authors correctly contend that simultaneously designing a market, company, and product to create a flywheel effect is difficult. In Good to Great, Jim Collins provides some additional reasons why this is the case: Starting the flywheel spinning requires continuous, steady effort and discipline. Many leaders incorrectly believe (sometimes thanks to media reports that focus only on the positive outcome achieved thanks to the flywheel effect and not the effort that went into setting the flywheel into motion) they should be able to achieve success overnight and therefore make poor, short-sighted decisions. Achieving a flywheel effect therefore requires leaders to focus doggedly on the long-term.)
For instance, you might build your low-tech devices company, market, and product simultaneously by encouraging developers to think in a minimalistic way and to make only limited use of tech in their work because this approach is aligned with the product you’re selling. You might also choose to employ more marketers than developers because your company’s challenge won’t be the development of the product—in your case, relatively easy—but rather the marketing of a product that’s intentionally less advanced than others on offer. These choices about the company in turn improve the product and market design, which loop back and further improve the company—thereby starting a flywheel.
Additionally, there’s a strong pull to create a product that’s better—not different—in an existing market simply because doing so is easier than creating a different product in a new market, write the authors.
This is because, at some point in the inception of a new business, the daily demands of running it begin to take priority over the bigger-picture concerns of market design and aligning company, market, and product in service of building a new market. What’s more, businesses experience financial pressure to make a profit now by catering to existing customer needs and problems instead of bringing in greater profit later by creating a whole new market. All this leads to the tendency to simply build a good-enough product that can compete in an existing market but won’t ever make you a market winner.
(Shortform note: In Zero to One, Peter Thiel argues that not only is it more profitable for a company to fight the tendency toward creating better, not different, but it’s also necessary for global progress and the survival of humanity. He contends that when companies around the world replicate the products and processes that have made western countries affluent—rather than building novel products and processes—they also replicate the harmful environmental impact of those products and processes and perpetuate unfair business practices that concentrate wealth.)
For instance, when setting up your low-tech device company, investors may pressure you to add high-tech features to your product so it can compete with other smartphones, and customers might also clamor for such features because they want a product that’s akin to other products they’re familiar with and don’t realize they have a problem of tech overwhelm. Heeding these voices, however, would prevent you from establishing a new market for low-tech devices and making yourself its winner.
The final reason designing and winning a market is hard is because it’s difficult to get consumers to embrace a new solution or market, write the authors. Humans have a natural tendency to want to maintain the status quo, and it takes significant effort to shift consumers’ thinking from acceptance of the way things are now to an understanding of how things could be improved.
(Shortform note: A reason why people might prefer to stick with existing solutions rather than embracing new ones is the cognitive bias called loss aversion. Loss aversion is our tendency to have a stronger negative reaction to losing something than a positive reaction to gaining the same thing. In other words, we’re strongly upset when we lose $5, but only moderately happy when we gain $5. Consumers might thus fear that by embracing a new product, they’ll lose the functionalities and tools they currently enjoy.)
When you design your market, as we’ll discuss in the next part, you’re responsible for shifting consumers’ mindsets from the status quo to embracing the new possibilities your market and product provide. At your low-tech company, you’ll need to show consumers how the status quo—constant smartphone use—is a problem and how life could be better if they weren’t so engrossed in their phones.
(Shortform note: Getting consumers to open their minds to a new product and market is indeed challenging—similarly challenging to persuading someone to accept an argument that runs counter to what they currently believe. In both cases, appealing to the other person’s values can help get them on your side. To convince your consumers to embrace your low-tech device, you might therefore appeal to their values of living in the moment, being independent, and having time for friends and family.)
Now that you know what market design is, why to do it, and what its challenges are, let’s discuss the authors’ three steps of designing your new market and becoming its winner.
The authors write that the first step of designing your market and becoming its winner is to identify your market by pinpointing an unmet need in peoples’ lives or a new way for your existing technology to fill an unmet need. At your low-tech company, you might identify the unmet need for less intrusive technology. Your market, then, becomes the market for low-tech devices.
(Shortform note: An additional way you might identify an unmet need in peoples’ lives is by thinking about what prevents consumers from purchasing products in your industry. Is there something consumers aren’t yet getting from existing offerings and which you might turn into a market? However, if employing this strategy, be sure you take the extra step to devise a new market. Otherwise, you might simply create a better product that fulfills that unmet need without positioning it in its own market.)
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t first create the product and then decide what its market will be, note the authors. Instead, as we’ve discussed, you must build your product, market, and company at the same time for them so they support each other and create the flywheel effect you need to become the market winner.
(Shortform note: While the authors stress that you must create all three elements of your business—market, product, and company—simultaneously, it’s important not to over-plan your business. If you do, you might spend years tweaking your plan to be just right, thereby missing out on potential business or not getting your company off the ground at all.)
The authors suggest identifying an unmet need in five parts:
Part 1: Decide who will identify the unmet need. The CEO must support this effort, but someone with an outsider’s perspective—a firm or someone hired for this purpose—must spearhead it because identifying an unmet need requires a fresh outlook on the company and product. Plus, this person must be able to dedicate themselves exclusively to this work.
(Shortform note: If your company doesn’t currently have the resources to hire an outside firm or new employee, consider recruiting trusted friends or business associates into a casual business support group. You can meet regularly and offer each other fresh perspectives on your respective business questions.)
Part 2: Conduct research on the unmet need. The person leading the work must then gather information about the company, what it does, and the market it currently occupies. They can do this by speaking to company leaders, board members, and advisors, and by researching your industry. However, this person shouldn’t ask customers for their opinions. This is because the market you’re creating will be totally new, so customers won’t yet understand the need you’re fulfilling and will give you unhelpful feedback.
(Shortform note: In Raving Fans, Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles argue that there’s one realm of your business in which you should ask for customer feedback: customer service. The Play Bigger authors might agree that obtaining feedback on customer service is useful because you’re not inventing customer service from scratch in the same way you’re inventing a new market (unless you are inventing a novel form of customer service no one’s seen before). What’s more, Blanchard and Bowles agree with the Play Bigger authors on the need to gather information internally but add that you should also obtain information from partners like suppliers and manufacturers.)
Part 3: Hold ideation meetings with leaders. Next, the leader of this work must have a (preferably day-long) meeting with company leaders to teach them about the importance of creating a new market and brainstorm how to establish the right new market. These are the topics you should brainstorm and discuss: 1) customers you want to target, 2) the problem your product solves in the new market and its solution, 3) how you can express this problem in a way that will resonate with the customer, 4) the mindset shift your customer must make to embrace your new market and product, 5) what your new product is.
(Shortform note: The authors’ advice on how to lead an ideation meeting may seem vague. While ideation or brainstorming sessions do require creativity and fluidity, it’s equally important to bring structure to such meetings to prompt and corral the best ideas and allow everyone present to have their voice heard. To this end, consider asking participants to prepare beforehand by researching or reading documents you provide. Additionally ensure everyone attending understands the purpose of the meeting, and encourage them to ask questions if they’re confused. During the meeting, pay attention to who’s contributing a lot and call on quieter participants to add their thoughts.)
Part 4: Pick a name for the new market. During these meetings, you’ll start to identify a name for your market. Settling on a good final name may take a while, and if that final name is somewhat technical, you may need to do extra work to help customers understand it. The name should be two to three words long (for example, “low-tech tech” for your low-tech device market).
(Shortform note: Taking a note from Dale Carnegie in How to Win Friends and Influence People, you might also encourage employees to use the market name as often as possible. This is because frequent use embeds the name more firmly in employees’ and customers’ minds and also positions the market as something important and worth paying attention to—in the same way we pay more attention to what’s being said when the speaker uses our name.)
Part 5: Create a document of your work. This should include: 1) a description of the new market, 2) the market ecosystem (the third-party developers, consultants, stores, analysts, and partners with whom you’ll work in tandem), 3) the mindset shift your customer must make to embrace your new market and product, 4) the final market name, 5) the reason for the new market.
In the case of your low-tech device company, these points might be: 1) A market for people who want less invasive technology, 2) Retailers, developers, and analysts, 3) Your customers must go from thinking that more technology is better for their lives to thinking that less technology is better for their lives, 4) “Low-tech tech,” 5) Technology has negatively affected people’s mental health, and we should be using less, not more, of it.
(Shortform note: The authors recommend documenting your work during these ideation sessions, and there are powerful reasons for doing so, aside from simply being able to share that document with others. One reason is that when you don’t have to hold all your ideas and findings in your mind, you have the mental space to think more deeply and critically about them.)
The authors write that once you’ve identified and defined your new market, it’s time to craft your company’s take: an identity, guiding principles, outlook, and story about how your company solves a problem differently than other companies.
(Shortform note: When thinking about codifying your take, it’s also worth considering how outsiders would describe your current take. According to Al Ries and Jack Trout in Positioning, people outside your company usually see you differently than you see yourself. If you perceive a discrepancy between insider and outsider takes, it’s probably worth asking yourself why that’s the case and bringing these into alignment.)
A take is what consumers connect to—they can identify emotionally with your principles, story, and outlook. This is especially important when establishing a new market: You must give consumers a story and identity to hold on to; otherwise, you won’t establish your company as important and different in consumers’ minds. Importantly, this take must help change consumers’ mindsets so they embrace your new solution to the old or new problem—as we discussed earlier in this guide.
(Shortform note: You must establish an emotional connection with consumers, but there are other consumer behaviors you should also grasp to craft and express a better take. For one thing, in All Marketers Are Liars, Seth Godin writes that consumers take note of change. This means that when you show you’re different from other companies and products, consumers will pay attention to you (though they might not necessarily buy into that change). Further, consumers make assumptions about why you’re different, which means your story about how you solve a problem differently must be strong—otherwise, consumers will fill in gaps with their own assumptions.)
A strong take separates exceptional companies from merely good ones, add the authors. You can tell when a company has a strong take because you know what the company’s about, what it stands for, and how it’s different. The authors mention Whole Foods as a company that has a strong take. Whole Foods believes in providing high-quality, environmentally minded, natural, and organic products. It solves the problem of obtaining such specialty foods in a new way: by creating an inviting, fun shopping environment in which to buy them all at once.
(Shortform note: While Whole Foods may arguably still have a take, that hasn’t been enough to keep the competition at bay and maintain Whole Foods’ position as the winner of the health foods market. As early as the 1990s, other grocery store chains began entering that market by offering more natural and organic foods at more affordable prices. The result was 1) that Whole Foods began struggling financially and 2) that Whole Foods’ take (the belief in natural, sustainable products) stopped being much of a take and simply became the mainstream standard. When Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017, it was considered a lifeline for Whole Foods.)
Here are the sub-steps the authors recommend to create your take (the same person or firm that spearheaded the market identification process should also do this):
These questions are: 1) How are your company and your product different from other markets and products? 2) How will you create the product? What’s your plan of action, and how will you achieve success? 3) How will you impact consumers and the world? What is your vision of the future? 4) What sort of identity do you want for your company? What’s your ideal culture? Who are your ideal employees?
(Shortform note: Answering the above questions requires you to have at least some components of your business already set up—for instance, you must have a company and product to be able to say how they differ from others. This is in accordance with the authors’ recommendation to build your company, market, and product at the same time and around each other: Your product informs your take, while in turn informs your market, and so on. This will also likely mean you’ll need to revise your take over time as you adjust the three components of your business to each other. Thus, while flexibility is almost always an advantage in the workplace, it’s a necessity in the authors’ approach to building a company and market.)
You’ll likely need to write multiple drafts of the take for internal review. Be brief and straightforward, and write in easily accessible language. Connect to an emotional need in the consumer—consider what future you can offer customers that they’ll want to be a part of. Think of your take as a movie trailer for your company: It must be short, informative, and generate excitement in the listener. Again, include the following elements in your take: your company identity, guiding principles, outlook, and story about how your company solves a problem differently than other companies. Once done, you should be able to present your take in 10 minutes or less in a brief document or across several slides.
Crafting a Take Using the StoryBrand Method
While the authors provide some pointers on how to write up your take, they don’t provide detailed guidance—perhaps because writing the take falls more under the umbrella of creative writing than business management.
However, there are methodologies for crafting a strong story about your company, many elements of which overlap with creating a take and can thus be used for that purpose. One methodology is marketing expert Donald Miller’s storyline, which he describes in Building a StoryBrand. In a storyline, you create a story about the customer, who has a problem, and show how your company helps them solve that problem and change for the better.
You first describe the problem your customer has—a key element of the take. You then introduce your company as the customer’s guide to creating a better life—thus capturing your outlook, guiding principles, and company identity. Finally, you describe the transformation the customer undergoes after using your product—this is akin to the mindset shift your customer will experience.
If you’re struggling to write the take, you might use the storyline as a template and then tweak it to become a true take in the way the authors describe.
Your take for your low-tech devices company might sound like this: “Our world is oversaturated with technology. It’s making us miserable, stressed, and sick (problem). We believe technology should be used to make people happier, not less happy (guiding principles) and that more of everything—apps, data, functionality—isn’t always better (outlook). We’re all about simplicity—it infuses everything we do within the company and with our products (identity). Our low-tech device is a manifestation of our beliefs: It lets you take care of critical tasks easily and on the go without making you addicted to your screen (how your company solves the problem differently).”
Now that you’ve identified a market and take, reveal them to the world. The best way to do this is through what the authors call a “lightning strike” and what we’ll call a Big Event.
A Big Event is an explosive occasion that introduces your company, market, and product to the world, assert the authors. This is the first step toward getting people to embrace your different (not better) approach to solving a problem. Ensure your Big Event is attention-grabbing and makes a mark in the customer’s mind—you must make a big impression to begin getting people to embrace a new market.
(Shortform note: In the book, the authors feel that only an in-person Big Event will suffice to spark enough consumer interest in your product. But could there be a way to generate massive interest in your company online? You might do so by executing a social media takeover, in which you give a social media influencer access to all your social accounts during a specific timeframe. However, to make this takeover explosive, you’ll likely need to enlist the help of an extremely popular influencer—otherwise, your message may not be heard above all the other influencer voices.)
You must communicate two main ideas in your Big Event, write the authors: first, that you understand the customer’s problem better than any other company and that you have the solution to that problem. Second, the idea that your business is the market winner—the only viable option in this market. However, as we said earlier, you won’t need to work too hard to convince customers that you’re the market winner because once they realize they have a problem, they’ll yearn for a solution—and you’re the only solution on the market.
(Shortform note: The authors recommend communicating two main ideas—that you understand the customer and that you’re the best and only option on the market—but don’t provide specific directions on how to do this. You might improve your communication of these ideas by taking some of Zig Ziglar’s suggestions in Secrets of Closing the Sale. He contends that every salesperson (and if you lead a company, you’re arguably a salesperson for it) must want to help others lead successful lives—this authenticity comes across to the customer and makes your company and product more appealing. You must also have a firm belief in your product and yourself. This confidence will transfer to the customer, who’ll feel more inclined to buy.)
A Big Event can be a take-over of an existing event (for instance, your company could set up a booth and offer test runs of your product at a baseball game) or an entirely new event (you might start a “low-tech day,” encouraging people to spend a day without technology by instead using your product).
(Shortform note: In Contagious, Jonah Berger provides reasoning for why Big Events are best executed in person: They allow for information about your product to travel through word of mouth, which is the main factor in generating popularity. You can generate word of mouth at Big Events because they’re publicly visible, allowing people to see other people using your product, and they engage your audience emotionally, which will make them want to talk about it to others.)
The entire company will need to rally behind the Big Event and operate in tandem to pull it off. Here are the tasks the authors recommend to make the Big Event a success:
Plan when you’ll hold the Big Event. After agreeing on your take, pick a date three to six months out for the Big Event. Decide whom your Big Event will target: attendees of an existing event, people who work in the business district of your city, companies in a certain industry, and so on. Once you’ve settled on a date, work backward to create a plan of action leading up to the event.
Mobilize your company. Delegate all Big Event planning to your departments, and ensure each employee knows their role in launching the Big Event.
(Shortform note: If the prospect of planning a Big Event in as few as three months seems daunting, you might follow some of David Allen’s advice in Getting Things Done on how to effectively plan a big event. First, define your purpose and the parameters of the event (to communicate that you understand the customer’s problem and that you’re the best solution). Then, decide what you want the event to look and feel like. Next, brainstorm how you can accomplish that look and feel. Only now should you organize and delegate the specific components and responsibilities to launch the event, as the authors suggest.)
Track your progress. Check if your Big Event plan is either too big or too small for the company to accomplish. Adjust your planning as necessary.
(Shortform note: What’s the best way to track progress on a project? You might ask employees to always update tasks (in a project management system), so everyone sees everyone else’s progress and can adjust their work accordingly.)
Look out for ill omens. Be wary of internal sabotagers who haven’t bought into the new market and Big Event, products that don’t deliver, and other signs of trouble. Take steps to avoid such obstacles by, for instance, firing naysayers and improving the product.
(Shortform note: Others add that beyond identifying problems, you must also act on those problems immediately. If you let them fester, they’ll only compound and become worse and harder to deal with.)
Make sure the elements of the Big Event are cohesive. Ensure everything about the event—the venue, the bar, the speakers—reflects your new market and company take.
(Shortform note: To complete this step, you might want to enlist the help of an event planner. This is because an event planner can ensure cohesiveness in look and messaging at your event—a step that otherwise might take up time better spent on bigger-picture issues.)
Once you’ve had your Big Event, follow it up with continued messaging about your market, product, and take in the form of smaller events and campaigns, advise the authors. You thereby fortify and defend your position as the market winner. The authors recommend another three to six events within six months of the last event to firmly establish your new market.
(Shortform note: In The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Al Ries and Jack Trout agree with the authors on the importance of following up the Big Event with continued smaller events and campaigns, specifically because they believe resting on its laurels can sink a company. They stress that success—for instance, after a Big Event—can cause leaders to orient their focus away from marketing efforts. This, then, can lead your brand to lose the popularity and momentum you gained as a result of the Big Event.)
These events and campaigns should contain clever and aggressive messaging that draws attention to your company and continues to show how you’re different from existing competitors and markets, claim the authors. Don’t be polite or hold back when doing this: Be bold and show how you’re new and different. Think and behave like a maverick.
For instance, after your Big Event, you might host a monthly phone-free happy hour and later partner with a researcher to write an article about how harmful technology can be to mental health.
(Shortform note: What are some specific ways to market your brand cleverly and aggressively? One good way is to stress that your company doesn’t just exist to make a profit, like most other companies: You also have humanitarian values, which might include fair treatment of employees, environmental concerns, and so on (of course, only use this tactic if you genuinely have such values).)
Now that you’ve solidified your market in customers’ minds and made yourself that market’s winner, the authors explain how to remain the long-term market winner in two steps: 1) by expanding your market or creating another new market and 2) by establishing a flywheel effect in that market.
The authors claim that you must complete the first step because every company eventually reaches most customers in its market and must either create a new market or expand its current market to continue growing. Companies must do this over and over to remain market winners. For instance, you’ll eventually reach all customers who want to minimize their tech use in your low-tech devices market and might therefore expand that market to include customers who not only want to be on their phones less, but also want to use more analog products, by selling paper agendas, notepads, and so on.
Expand Your Market Quickly by Blitzscaling
In Blitzscaling, Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh agree with the authors on the need to expand your market (or scale up) to remain a long-term winner but add that you must do so as quickly as possible, referring to this as blitzscaling. They contend that because startups grow and fade away at a rapid pace, it’s better to scale quickly with an imperfect understanding of the market than to scale slowly with sound information because being late pushes you out of the competition entirely.
Hoffman and Yeh warn that blitzscaling is dangerous because if you scale too quickly, your company might not be able to keep up with demand and could fall apart. However, if you’ve followed the Play Bigger authors’ advice to build your company, market, and product simultaneously so they support each other, you likely won’t have to worry as much about your company not being able to keep pace with demand: It will be inherently designed to grow sustainably.
Then, create a flywheel in that new market because, as we’ve discussed, a flywheel composed of aligned company, market, and product makes you the market winner. Beyond aligning company, market, and product, the authors recommend pushing the flywheel forward by strengthening your company take, holding continued events and campaigns, collecting data that lets you build better products, and hiring the right talent. Your company might thus refine its take as it grows, elaborating on the problem it helps solve. You might also ask job applicants specific questions that help determine if they’re a good cultural fit.
(Shortform note: Jim Collins, who writes about flywheels in Good to Great, adds acquisitions of other companies to the list of steps you can take to push your flywheel forward. However, he contends that you should only acquire other companies once your flywheel is already spinning. If that’s the case, then we might also consider that you should only take the steps the authors list to bolster your flywheel—continued events and campaigns, collecting data, hiring the right talent, and so on—once your flywheel is already spinning. In other words, focus on the core elements of your business before turning to ancillary elements to give yourself an added boost.)
Define your personal take to practice expressing your company’s take.
Write down three qualities or traits that are an important part of your identity. (For instance, these might be 1) sense of humor, 2) generosity, and 3) open-mindedness.)
Now, note a few guiding principles that inform how you behave and view the world. Also briefly describe your outlook on the world—what’s the lens through which you view what’s happening around you? (A sample principle might be: “Treat others as you wish to be treated,” and your outlook might be described as: “Don’t take life too seriously.”)
Next, think of a brief story that describes a self-improvement or learning journey you’ve been on. What’s something about yourself you’ve worked to improve over the years? What initially made you notice that thing? (For instance, you used to be anxious around other people but have worked to increase your social comfort because you wanted to connect more to others.)
Finally, complete the above steps for your company, thinking of your company as an individual with a personality, thoughts, and feelings. What are your company’s strongest qualities? How does it view the world and what are its guiding principles? What problem did it notice and seek to solve?