Category Design
Also: Category Strategy
The deliberate work of shaping how a market thinks about a problem and its solutions, so the category itself favours you.
Why it matters
Category design is the discipline behind category creation and category leadership. It defines the problem frame, the language, and the criteria buyers should use, and then builds the narrative and proof to make that frame stick. Whoever sets the criteria the market evaluates by has a structural advantage.
What good looks like
Effective category design produces a problem frame buyers adopt in their own words, evaluation criteria that map to your strengths, and a narrative that makes the status quo feel like a cost. If the market keeps describing the problem in a competitor's terms, the design has not landed.
Related terms
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