In Market Engineering: Because Markets Don’t Build Themselves, Bruce Cleveland outlines a disciplined approach to market creation and dominance. The reality is that strong products often fail to gain traction because markets resist adoption without deliberate shaping.
Cleveland, a Silicon Valley executive and investor, draws from experience in his roles at companies including Apple, Oracle, Siebel, and C3 AI, plus early investments and board positions at Marketo and others.
The book targets founders, CEOs, executives, and board members who build technology companies and need to lead market capture rather than rely on product quality alone.
Cleveland applies engineering rigor to markets, showing how category leaders compel demand instead of pursuing it.
You learn to position offerings for instant customer recognition, craft stories that cut through competition, establish industry rules through thought leadership, and incorporate AI-era tactics like Generative Engine Optimization.
What You Will Learn
You will learn to engineer markets by shifting from reactive marketing to proactive market definition.
The book covers:
- compelling the markets to approach you,
- clarifying positioning so customers grasp value immediately,
- developing breakthrough messaging and narratives,
- building thought leadership that defines category standards, and
- adapting strategies for AI-driven search and discovery.
These steps address why millions invested in products vanish without market traction.
Early mentions on platforms like LinkedIn and publisher pages highlight the book’s prescriptive nature as a follow-up to Cleveland’s prior work on traction gaps.
Our Key Takeaways:
- Market Engineering teaches you to treat markets as systems that require active design and leadership rather than passive acceptance.
- The book addresses founders, executives, and boards at startups and enterprises who aim to create or dominate new categories in technology.
- You should read it to gain a structured playbook for turning product investments into sustained market leadership through deliberate positioning and messaging.
You may also want to check out some of our other bestseller book spotlights.
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