I’m sure many people felt sympathy for Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge when they saw he had to run most of the Berlin Marathon in late September with the neon-green insoles of his new Nike shoes hanging out. He still won the marathon, but fell 63 seconds short of the world record that was his goal, perhaps in part because of the shoe malfunction.

Other people may have felt sympathy for Nike for having such a public flop.

Yet, despite the insole debacle, Nike continues to grow more than 10 percent each year, with sales at a whopping $30.7 billion in 2015. The company controls a commanding 62 percent of the U.S. athletic footwear market, more than four times the sales of their next three competitors combined. Despite the recent insole humiliation, Nike knows how to minimize innovation risk by clarifying the target customer’s needs before attempting to generate solutions. Every company should do the same.

Nike’s “Category Offense” Strategy

“The key to unlocking (growth) potential is and always has been to focus on the consumer…This is why our Category Offense is such a powerful advantage. The insights we draw from our deep consumer connections fuel our ability to create new products and services that excite and engage.” 

– Mark Palmer, CEO of Nike

The initial focus of Nike’s Category Offense is not to create better shoes or apparel; it’s to identify what athletes are trying to accomplish and where they currently struggle. Only after the athletes’ unmet needs have been discovered does Nike attempt to apply its technical prowess to create new and improved offerings. By identifying its customers’ unmet needs first, independent of any solutions, Nike is not constrained to current solutions. It is free to develop whatever product, service, or technology best addresses its customers’ unmet needs. This explains how Nike transcends the “shoe and apparel” categories and generates breakthrough new offerings.

There’s a good reason why doctors conduct a diagnosis before prescribing a treatment plan: it dramatically increases the likelihood of success. There will always be inherent risks with innovation, but these risks can be dramatically reduced by clarifying what customers are trying to accomplish functionally, emotionally, and socially, and how they measure success before attempting to generate solution ideas.

Every company should implement a Category Offense. But to do so effectively, you must discover what jobs your customers are trying to get done and how they measure success. That’s how big winners like Nike “just do it,” and you can, too!