A new essay argues enterprise software categories are not designed but emerge from market forces, challenging a popular consulting narrative and its fees.
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A recent essay challenges the idea that enterprise software categories can be designed from scratch. The author argues that categories emerge through a messy, evolutionary process driven by many market participants, not by a single designer.
The essay draws an analogy to intelligent design: finding a watch on a beach and assuming a designer is like looking at a mature software category and assuming someone planned it. Categories, the author writes, arise from the push and pull of technology, customers, vendors, analysts, investors, and standards bodies. No single actor orchestrates the outcome.
The essay recalls an earlier era when category creation was a viable strategy. Startups would identify a problem, build software, assign a three-letter acronym, and persuade analysts to write about it. That worked because the market was smaller and multiple companies often discovered the same problem at the same time, each backed by different venture capitalists.
Today, the essay suggests, the narrative of category design is often sold by consultants who charge fees to help companies create a new category. The author is skeptical. Category design, in the essay's view, is largely retrospective storytelling. What looks like design is actually the result of many independent actors converging on a solution.
The essay does not dismiss the importance of categories. It argues that understanding existing categories and positioning within them is more practical than trying to invent one from scratch. The key is to recognize that categories are emergent, not engineered.
The essay calls the design narrative "mostly bunk." It recommends focusing on the market's natural evolution rather than trying to force a category into existence.
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