In today's world, it's no longer enough to create great new products; rather companies now must create whole new categories that destroy old ones. Uber created a new personal transportation category and destroyed taxis and limos. Salesforce.com created a new category of cloud-base sales automation, dethroning the old CRM industry. Airbnb, Workday, Tesla and Netflix are all winning by creating entirely new business categories that destabilise old ones.

The category is the new strategy.

The conclusion: If you want to build a legendary company, you need to design and build a legendary category at the same time, and dominate it over time. Your company needs to be a Category King. And if you don't design a Category King, you're creating a failure.

Drawing on examples from within and beyond our own practice, PLAY BIGGER shows both entrepreneurs and established enterprises how to define, develop and rule a category over time.

About the Author
Dave Peterson, Al Ramadan and Christopher Lochhead are the founders of Play Bigger, a consulting firm in Silicon Valley that is on a mission to position great technology companies to become Category Kings. They specialize in category design - the discipline of conditioning a market to generate market pull and market cap. Dave, Al and Christopher are former entrepreneurs and executives with twenty-five year careers in the technology business. Today they are players turned coaches. For PLAY BIGGER they have joined forces with veteran journalist Kevin Maney.

Reviews
I can't overstate how much these guys are the heaviest lead foot on any gas pedal in Silicon Valley. -- Peggy Burke, branding and design guru to Silicon Valley, founder of 1185 Design
Every entrepreneur looking to alter the landscape and every CEO looking to reimagine their business can learn from this book. Play Bigger provides inspiration and a framework for building companies that transcend gravity. -- Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, Salesforce
Play Bigger is the new how-to guide for entrepreneurs and executives who want to build legendary, enduring companies. -- Jim Goetz, Partner, Sequoia Capital
Business leaders of the future need to create movements with passionate employees and fans that change the world's point of view, not just companies with employees that sell products. Play Bigger shows how category design is the roadmap for making this happen. -- Mike Maples, Funding Partner, Floodgate
Every entrepreneur who wants to take their game to the next level needs to read this book. Category design applies to sports governing bodies, event owners, national teams and even athletes. -- John Bertrand, Americas Cup winner, Olympic medalist
Category design is a principle that every successful entrepreneur has intuitively embraced. Now it is outlined here in Play Bigger for all business executives to learn and apply. An absolute must read for every person interested in the secret sauce found in Silicon Valley. -- Ann Miura-Ko, Lecturer, Stanford University and Co-founder Floodgate Fund
The news is out, it is not start-ups that count but those that are first to global scale: Category Kings. The authors write intelligently and entertainingly about the scale-up process and how it can be systematised and engineered. This is an easy book to read on a very complex and important topic. The paranoid will be sure to read it first. And only they survive. -- John Taysom, an early investor in 17 public technology companies, co-founder of Privatar and a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge
Smart, fast-paced and a thoroughly inspiring read. This book takes a fascinating look at how the most successful companies of today, the past and the future are creating and dominating entirely new categories. Every business leader interested in learning how to make it REALLY big must absolutely read this book. -- Nick Holzherr, CEO of Whisk.com
Smart, fast-paced and a thoroughly inspiring read. This book takes a fascinating look at how the most successful companies of today, the past and the future are creating and dominating entirely new categories. Every business leader interested in learning how to make it REALLY big must absolutely read this book. -- Nick Holzherr, CEO of Whisk.com


Awards
Short-listed for CMI Management Book of the Year Award, Innovation and Entrepreneurship category 2017 (UK).



Book Information
ISBN 9780349411361
Author Al Ramadan
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint Piatkus Books
Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
Weight(grams) 334g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 157mm * 21mm