How to Break Through a Crowded Market

Raise your hand if your company is attempting to differentiate itself and gain mindshare and market share in a crowded market. Lots of hands. Great. After all, what market isn't a packed mass of hungry competitors these days? Sometimes, it feels downright impossible to break through and see daylight ahead.

Well, it's not. Here are seven contemporary examples of how ideas and passion can trump conventional wisdom and penetrate jam-packed markets in the process. Note that I'm foregoing the usual tired old examples like Victoria's Secret, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Netflix, Tivo, and Lexus.

7 Companies with Breakthrough Products in Crowded Markets

1. Spanx. With $5K, a pet peeve for visible panty lines, and a pair of scissors to cut the feet off her pantyhose, Sara Blakely entered the age-old and super-crowded women's lingerie market. Eight years later, sales reportedly hit a remarkable $750 million in 2008.
2. Twitter. Transforming Web-based communications and creating one of the most powerful grass-roots social networks on the planet by asking folks to tell other folks "What's Happening?" in 140 characters or less? Come on, that's just crazy, right? Nope.
3. Pet Airways. Who would have thought there was entrepreneurial potential in the brutally competitive airline industry? Who would have thought you could build a business by exclusively flying pets in the main cabin of an airplane? One couple (and their dog Zoe) did. Not a winner yet, but it looks good to me.
4. Apple iPhone. I can still remember reading John Dvorak's Second Opinion: "Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone." Who would have believed that Apple could transform the entire cell phone market as it did with MP3 players? Not John. Not me.
5. Tesla Roadster. An electric car, I sort of get, even though the concept flopped the first time around and electricity is anything but cheap. But a six-figure priced electric sports car? I didn't see that coming. In any case, Tesla's doing it, and picking up big investors like Mercedes in the process.
6. Google search ads. A decade ago, I was wondering if Internet advertising would ever really work. Google didn't invent search, it didn't invent pay-per-click, and it certainly didn't invent Web-based advertising. But it somehow figured out how to print money combining the three, hitting a $200 billion market cap in just ten years.
7. Howard Stern. How long has radio been around? How many radio stations and DJs on the airwaves at any given time? This one's not a company or contemporary, but he did reinvent a tired old medium and manage to make an ungodly amount of money in the process. An amazing example of how one person's determination and belief in a concept can win against all odds.