How do you name an innovation?
When we work with companies to help them identify and define a new market category, part of defining it is giving it a name. The definition of “innovation” is “a new idea, method or device,” and a new market category is essentially an innovation that the world needs. (There are lots of innovations that the world doesn’t need. For instance: quadraphonic stereos and inside-the-egg scramblers. They don’t end up creating flourishing market categories.)
The Naming Debate
In the room with our clients, the naming part always seems to stir up the biggest debate. We might perfectly nail the Point of View (POV) narrative about the category, painting a picture of what it is and how it will impact the way the customers work or live, but still struggle with the two or three words that name the category/innovation.
And, yeah, it can be tricky. A category name should be descriptive, understandable, and neutral enough so it is a category and not a brand. You want competitors to be able to adopt it, too – a category isn’t much of a category if it only has one player. The name can’t sound too strange or futuristic – the market might not get it. Yet it shouldn’t sound like meaningless jargon or like something that’s already been around. It has to have some freshness to it – understandable yet intriguing. It should feel like it’s leading us somewhere new.
Finding a Good Name
Some examples of category names you would know are cloud computing, search engine and microwave oven. While they once described something new, by now they are part of the vernacular. That’s a sign of a good name.
There are a lot of ways to get to a good category name. Sometimes the category POV leads to an obvious name – those are the easy ones. Other times, we’ve gotten into lengthy brainstorming sessions, listing words and concepts and trying to find a combination that the room can embrace.
But more recently, we’ve found one way to think about category names that’s a little more methodical and backed up by academic research. It was inspired by a 2021 study by two Yale professors, Jerker Denrell and Balázs Kovács, titled “The Ecology of Management Concepts.” It looked at why certain new ideas catch on and become popular.
One of their conclusions has implications for category naming. As the professors described, “Popular ideas often ride the coattails of other popular ideas. They also tend to be composed of like elements. If a concept is new or unknown or both, then we find it benefits by appearing together with other famous concepts, and by covering similar ground.”
In other words: snap a new-sounding word onto a familiar-sounding word.
If you think about it, innovators have been doing this for ages. It’s a way to signal something new and create the feeling of forward motion – like the new thing is taking us somewhere. When gas-powered cars were first invented, they were, of course, dubbed the “horseless carriage.” Everyone in the late-1800s understood what a horse-pulled carriage was. A carriage that moved yet didn’t need a horse? That sounded like a future they could get their heads around – in two words.
When electricity was new, the word was often used as a modifier to signal a new category. Those early contraptions that could clean dirty dishes were sold as electric dishwashers. Similarly, in that era you would find ads for electric drills, electric irons and electric lights. (Remember electric blankets? There’s another category that ultimately didn’t need to exist.)
In the 1970s, the idea of a computer that an individual could own seemed bizarre – most people knew computers as big hulking machines that buzzed in backrooms at corporations. When the category got labeled “personal computers,” it helped bring us along – we understood personal and computer, but putting them together opened up new possibilities.
As PCs got popular, we started sending messages around, calling them “electronic mail.” It married the familiar “mail” with a word that made it new, “electronic.”
Think Label Not Names
Those category names I mentioned earlier – cloud computing, search engine, microwave oven – all have that same property. In the 1990s, matching “cloud” with “computing” pulled us to a new idea from an old idea. “Engine” futurized “search.” In the 1970s, not many of us knew what an actual microwave was (a tiny wave, apparently), but it sounded cool enough to futurize the big old baking oven in our kitchen.
This labeling idea is still at work today. Artificial intelligence has been around for decades and is reasonably well-understood. Once ChatGPT came along, the category needed a name that could take us from what we knew to what was coming. “Generative” got paired with “AI” and now we accept “generative AI” as a cool new thing.
So, with our clients, this new+old pairing can help shortcut the naming debate. If we’re stuck, we can make a two-column list. One column can be words the market already uses and understands. The other can be appropriate words that push the old concept to a new place. Before long, a pairing pops out that makes sense.
Memetics
As a bonus, consultant and author Ken Rutsky points out that these kinds of new+old terms are more likely to catch on as memes. “Striking a balance between what’s known and what’s novel is key. This approach piques interest and curiosity, encouraging your audience to delve deeper into what your category offers,” he writes in his e-book, Making #CategoryMemes Stick.
However, that’s not the end of the story. We’ve always advised clients that category names evolve over time. Once a category name is released into the wild, the creator no longer controls it. That’s one way it’s very different from a brand. The name we come up with can help get a category off the ground, but then customers, analysts and competitors start using it and perhaps modify it or shorten it as it becomes more familiar.
The Yale study understood that, too. The professors found that, at some point, the association of the new with the old becomes unnecessary. Once all dishwashers are obviously electric, why bother adding electric to the name? Personal computers just become computers. Microwave ovens and cloud computing went the other way. The first just became a microwave. Now, if you use AWS or Azure, you’re just using “the cloud.”
That’s how innovators take people to the future – even in the words they use. The world rarely takes great leaps into science fiction. We get pulled from the past into the future, one step and one term at a time.
Seven Category Naming Guidelines
1: UTILITARIAN
Make it utilitarian, not clever. It’s not your brand. It’s a term you want competitors, partners, analysts and the general public to use.
2: FAMILIARITY
Consider marrying a familiar word to a new-sounding modifier, like adding cloud to computing or microwave to oven.
3: NEW
It should sound interesting and new, yet not so strange that it seems like sci-fi.
4: NO JARGON
Stay away from jargon. Simple and straightforward make it more memorable.
5: BE FLEXIBLE
Consider it a term that will help launch the category, but be ready for it to evolve as it gets into use. The market may shorten or adjust it. Go with the flow and embrace that.
6: GOOGLE IT!
Make sure it’s not already in use, or that it invokes a meaning that may be detrimental.
7: OPEN SOURCE
Once you nail it, make sure it stays “open source.” Buy the URLs so no one else can use them to claim the category. Don’t trademark the term, but file an intent-to-use application so you can prevent others from trademarking it.