Play Bigger

Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead and Kevin Maney, the founders of the Silicon Valley advisory firm Play Bigger, set out a discipline called category design. Their claim is that winning comes from inventing a new market category, growing it and controlling it over time, and that the best product alone will not secure a win. The authors use data analysis and interviews to study what they call category kings, companies such as IKEA, Uber, Salesforce and Amazon. They argue that category design can create demand where none existed by changing customers' expectations and buying habits. Though it defines the tech industry, the approach is presented as applying to every industry and even to personal careers.

Chattermill founder and CEO Mikhail Dubov named it among the few books that affected how he runs his company.