Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets

by Al Ramadan

“As [Siebel] began defending itself and acknowledging Salesforce.com,” Benioff wrote, “the press began to see this fight as an increasingly interesting story, and that further legitimized us. At this point, we had already won.”11 Salesforce won because once people can see the problem, they can’t unsee it. In a flash, Siebel had been labeled as a problem. Salesforce positioned itself as the solution. Benioff created the perception that Salesforce’s category kingship was inevitable. From nothing, his vision became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Be a category creator until you know you’re “done”—when you are the satisfied king of a category that has a big enough market to make you happy. Then make the turn from category creator to category harvester.