Book Review: Play Bigger
Play Bigger is a new book by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs (2016, Harper Business). The authors theme is that today s markets are so crowded that you cannot rely on niche marketing into white spaces; you have to create your own white spaces, or categories . The goal is to be a category king . The idea of niche marketing has been around forever. Ries and Trout documented these ideas in their classic, Positioning (2000). Authors Ramadan, Peterson, Lochhead and Maney propose that in today s markets, with enough money, genius and hard work you can create your own category. To build a business using their approach you need to create a category, a product and a company. They all need to work together. This is sound advice. The challenges are: what is your idea, how big is your category and is it defensible? IPads, ERP software and SaaS are examples of unique new categories that have gone to the business hall of fame. Even if you don t have ideas this big you can still take away very ...
Fred Scholl