Build Something Your Market Hasn't Seen Yet

I saw a post on LinkedIn with this idea on it, "Trying to be a better version of your competitor turns you into a cheaper version of them." The example used in the post was Nintendo. In 2006 it released a console that gave up graphics power, cost less than either PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, and outsold each of them.

The part of that statement worth leaning into is what it leaves open. If becoming a better copy of the leader isn't your way forward, a potentially better alternative is building something your market hasn't seen, even if it starts as a new take on a service people already know. That door is open to any business, whatever its size. And, as in all aspects of commerce, perspective matters.

What Nintendo Built Instead

The console was the Wii. Nintendo built it on a lower-powered chip, which limited the graphics and kept the cost down. It launched in November 2006 at $250, when the Xbox 360 sold for $399 and the PlayStation 3 for $499 to $599. The hand controller for this console was the new idea. It was a wireless, motion-sensing wand you moved to control what happened on the screen, and Nintendo aimed it at people who didn't normally play video games.

Those people were the point. Nintendo went after the audience the other two weren't built for. They told their investors the company had been working to reach people "5 to 95 years old." When it measured the gaming population, it counted the people who had never played a video game at all, and it described its strategy as growing the number of people who play. Titles like Wii Fit and Wii Play became some of the system's best sellers. Nintendo reports lifetime Wii sales of 101.63 million units, more than either competitor has reported for its console of that generation.

The encouraging part for the rest of us is the question Nintendo asked. Who isn't playing, and what would it take for them to want to? Anyone can ask a question like that, whatever their budget. It starts with looking at the people the rest of the market has left out of the picture.

Why the Familiar Path Is So Hard to Pull Away From

Copying is often the default, and for understandable reasons. The leader has already shown what sells. Their service list, their packages, and their pricing are all right there to study. Following that pattern feels safe, and when the risk of a small business sits on your shoulders, safe has a strong pull.

The trouble with that path is where it leads. When your offer looks like the leader's, a buyer has little to go on besides the name they already know and the price. You end up improving on someone else's idea of what works.

The other path starts by trading "How do I do what they do, but better?" for "What would this look like if nobody had done it before?"

Where New Ideas Come From

New ideas for a business rarely arrive out of nowhere. They tend to come from paying close attention to places most competitors aren't looking.

One of those places is the people your market doesn't serve. Nintendo looked at people who had never picked up a controller. In your field, it might be the client who's too small for the big firms to bother with, the one who's too far out of town, or the one who needs the work explained in plain language before they'll trust it. Many markets have buyers who want what you do and can't find a version of it built for them. You'll often find them by listening for the questions that go unanswered, the pain points that aren't addressed, or the reviews that get ignored.

Some buyers go unserved, because serving them doesn't pay. So, check that the need comes with buyers willing to purchase before you build around it.

Another place is the step your customers dread. Most services have one: the confusing intake form, the long wait for a quote or an appointment, the handoff where information gets lost, the part of the process the buyer has to manage on their own. Someone who removes that step, or redesigns the service around it, may be offering something the rest of the market isn't.

A third place is the combination only you have. Your background, the industries you've worked in, and the kinds of people you understand add up to a mix potentially no competitor shares. A bookkeeper who used to run a restaurant knows what a restaurant owner's month feels like. An insurance adjuster who used to work as a contractor knows what a homeowner is facing after a storm. Those combinations are raw material for an offer built around a specific buyer's needs, and they're easy to overlook because they feel ordinary from the inside. They're anything but ordinary to those who are without your background and experience. They're the answers to pain points other people can't solve.

Finding these ideas calls for curiosity about the people you serve and a willingness to take what you notice seriously.

What Being Small Makes Possible

A small business can work in ways a large one would have to reorganize to attempt. The owner can answer the phone. The person who scopes the project can be the person who builds it. You can decide to serve one kind of client and know their work in detail. You can change how you deliver something next week, because the only approval you need is your own.

Those are real advantages when the goal is invention. A large company runs on consistency, because consistency is how it serves customers at scale. A small business can try something the market hasn't seen, learn from it quickly, and adjust. Many of the ideas a large competitor won't bother to copy come straight out of the traits a small business might be tempted to treat as limits.

Being small also makes it easier to build an offer around one kind of buyer. When the offer is written for a specific need, the right client can see that it fits their situation without having to work that out for themselves.

Try It Small and Keep Inventing

Not every new idea will land. Nintendo's next console, the Wii U, came from the same company with the same appetite for doing something different, and it sold 13.56 million units. The company kept inventing, and the console after that, the Switch, had sold 156.59 million as of June 2026. Invention is a bet, and some bets miss, even for a company that has made good ones.

The way to keep that bet affordable is to size it. Build one new offer around one idea, describe it in the words your buyer would use, and put it in front of the kind of client it's meant for. Give it a season.

People asking about it is a good sign. The test is whether the clients you want pay for it at a price worth your time. If they do, you've found something worth building. If they don't, you've learned something specific about your buyers, and your next idea starts from better information.

You can try this without giving up what's working. Keep your current offers running while you test the new one. What changes is where your attention goes, which ideas you're growing, and which ideas you're learning from before retiring them.

There's likely room in your market for something you've noticed that nobody else has built yet. The next time you catch yourself studying a competitor's price sheet, set it aside and ask who in your market isn't being served, and what it would take to build something for them.

Written by Melissa Usher, The Free Range Dev, LLC

References

• Nintendo's investor relations page, Dedicated Video Game Sales Units, lists lifetime hardware sales of 101.63 million for the Wii, 13.56 million for the Wii U, and 156.59 million for the Nintendo Switch as of June 30, 2026.
• Nintendo's Financial Results Briefing for Fiscal Year Ended March 2009 records Satoru Iwata describing the company's goal of reaching people "5 to 95 years old" and its gaming population expansion strategy, including survey categories for people who had never played.
• The EBSCO Research Starters entry Nintendo Wii gives the November 19, 2006 launch, the launch prices of the Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, the lower-powered chip, the motion-sensing controller, the focus on people who did not normally play video games, and the sales of Wii Fit and Wii Play.
• Sony Interactive Entertainment's Business Data and Sales page puts the PlayStation 3 at more than 87.4 million units as of March 31, 2017.
• GameSpot's report E3 2014: $399 Xbox One Out Now, Xbox 360 Sales Rise to 84 Million (June 9, 2014) records Microsoft's last public Xbox 360 sales figure.