Publishing February 24, 2026 PRE-ORDER NOW

The Category Creation Formula

DISCOVER, DESIGN & WIN
NEW MARKET CATEGORIES

Kevin Maney & Mike Damphousse

Innovative concepts, tools, and playbooks for discovering, defining, and taking charge of new market categories.

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ABOUT THE BOOK

The most exciting—and often most valuable—companies create, develop and win new categories of products or services. Examples range from the Zamboni company a century ago to OpenAI today. It also includes startups that you may not have heard of yet – but will as their categories take off.

Category creation and development should be the goal of any company that wants to make a difference. And the way to achieve that is through the discipline of strategic category design.

Kevin Maney helped introduce category design in the bestseller Play Bigger. Now, he and Mike Damphousse—an experienced CEO, investor and marketing executive—share the secrets that they’ve learned over the past decade, plus new concepts and tools that help companies see and frame new categories. Their advisory firm has worked on strategic category design projects with more than fifty companies and guided workshops for hundreds more at incubators and VC portfolio gatherings. 

The Category Creation Formula reveals the processes they rely on and the truths about categories that they’ve uncovered, clearly laid out so any entrepreneur or leadership team can benefit from them, too.

The Category Creation Formula guides company leaders on everything they need to pursue a category-defining strategy, including how to write a powerful category point of view and how to set the rules for a category so your company always maintains an advantage. The Category Creation Formula is the crucial resource for anyone who has the ambition to change the way we live and work.

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Meet the Authors

Kevin Maney and Mike Damphousse founded Category Design Advisors in 2016. They've since worked with more than 50 companies on strategic category design and influenced countless others through workshops and lectures.

KEVIN MANEY

Kevin Maney is a bestselling author, award-winning commentator and a founding partner of Category Design Advisors. He co-authored Play Bigger, which has influenced company strategy throughout the tech ecosystem. Kevin has written for publications including USA Today, Newsweek, Fortune, The Atlantic, and Wired, and often appears on radio and television. He writes a historical newsletter about technology and strategy, Front Row Seat For a Revolution.

MIKE DAMPHOUSSE

Mike Damphousse brings an experienced, pragmatic aspect to strategic category design from three decades as a founder, CEO, CMO, startup advisor and a limited partner with Stage 2 Capital. He was most recently founder and CEO/CMO of Green Leads, which was acquired by Next 15, and has served on several boards. Mike holds a BS in Computer Science from Merrimack College and lives on the water in both New Hampshire and Florida with his wife, Linda.

Category creation and development should be the goal of any company that wants to make a difference. And the way to achieve that is through the discipline of strategic category design.

DOWNLOAD A SAMPLE

  • "If you want to stand out in the amazing AI era, then strategic category design may be the most valuable new skill you will want to have. It's all in Kevin Maney and Mike Damphousse’s new book, The Category Creation Formula."

    John Sculley, Chairman, RxAdvance and former Apple CEO

  • "In an era of unprecedented technological change when AI is reshaping every industry, strategic category design is a requirement. This is the playbook for founders who want to define markets, rather than compete in them."

    Hemant Taneja, CEO, General Catalyst

  • “Kevin Maney and Mike Damphousse have written a concise and enlightening ‘how to’ guide on new category creation. This new formula helps creatives and entrepreneurs reimagine and reshape the old and push it out to make it new.”

    Ted Leonsis, Vice Chairman Emeritus, AOL; Founder and CEO, Monumental Sports

  • “The difference between breakout success and mediocrity often lies in how a company defines – and dominates – its category. The Category Creation Formula distills decades of front-line experience guiding founders through the messy, high-stakes process of category design.”

    Mark Roberge, Co-Founder, Stage 2 Capital, Professor, Harvard Business School

  • "This book totally nails the strategy for defining your market's playing field and setting the rules for everyone else. The Category Creation Formula is a required read for every ambitious founder, CEO and product leader."

    Mark Templeton, CEO, Citrix (retired); multiple-startup board member

  • "A thoughtful, fun-to-read and enormously helpful [play]book that captures how innovators can see and frame new opportunities amid great technological change."

    Don Tapscott, entrepreneur and bestselling author

  • "This latest work by Kevin and Mike brings uncommon clarity to what it means to create not just a product, but a place in the world for it. "

    Zach Reitano, CEO and co-founder, Ro

  • "With The Category Creation Formula, Maney and Damphousse provide a valuable framework with novel ideas such as market-product fit along with informative case studies to help leaders build their strategies for success."

    Paul Daugherty, AI Advisory Chair, TPG; former chief technology and innovation officer, Accenture

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Download chapter 1 of the Book