What is category creation?

Category creation is the strategy of naming and defining a new market category — rather than competing inside an existing one — and establishing your company as its default leader. Instead of being a better X, you claim there is a new problem that deserves its own name and your product embodies its solution.

It is high-risk, high-reward: educating a market is expensive and slow, but category leaders capture an outsized share of the category’s value. Most companies are better served by sharp positioning within a category buyers already understand.