Blue Ocean Strategy is an impactful business model that can revolutionize an organization’s strategic planning and drive remarkable growth. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the core principles, indispensable tools, and case studies of the Blue Ocean Strategy. It will also provide practical advice to help leaders navigate their way into making the competition irrelevant.
The structure of this guide will delve into the understanding of the Blue Ocean Strategy, its key principles and associated tools, some powerful case studies, and useful tips for leaders considering its implementation.
The concept of the Blue Ocean Strategy was introduced by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in their eponymous book. The strategy is an approach to business planning that encourages organizations to create new, uncontested market space or “Blue Oceans”, rather than competing in an existing market with fierce competition, known as “Red Oceans.
For leaders, understanding and competently applying the Blue Ocean Strategy is pivotal in formulating innovative business strategies, driving business growth, and creature lucrative new markets.
Understanding the Blue Ocean Strategy
Red Oceans vs Blue Oceans
Red Oceans are existing market spaces where industry boundaries and rules are well-defined. Organizations compete on defined parameters, fighting for market share. These markets become crowded over time, leading to cut-throat competition and diminishing profit margins, symbolized by ‘red’ from the strife.
On the other hand, Blue Oceans are untapped market spaces where competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue Oceans offer ample room for growth, profitability, and swift market penetration.
Key Principles of the Blue Ocean Strategy
Eliminate: Identify and stop investing in the factors that the industry takes for granted but no longer holds value for customers.
Reduce: Determine and minimize the factors that are over-designed, outstripping industry standards and hence unnecessarily increasing cost.
Raise: Identify and amplify factors that should be raised well above the industry’s standard to attract potential customers.
Create: Discover and create new factors that the industry hasn’t offered yet to generate additional demand and customer loyalty.
Companies like Apple (with its iPhone), and Netflix (with its online streaming service), have demonstrated successful application of these principles, thereby creating uncontested market spaces.
Tools for Creating a Blue Ocean Strategy
The Strategy Canvas
The strategy canvas is a central diagnostic tool in the Blue Ocean Strategy. It graphically illustrates a company’s relative performance vis-à-vis its competitors across its industry’s key success factors. It allows companies to see the current state of play, to unlock opportunities for differentiation and innovation.
The horizontal axis captures the range of factors that an industry competes on and invests in, while the vertical axis captures the offering level that buyers receive across all these key competing factors.
Amazon, for instance, has successfully used the Strategy Canvas by innovating on dimensions such as convenience, variety, and price, to create a dominant online marketplace.
Case Studies of Blue Ocean Strategy
- Cirque du Soleil: By reducing expensive star performers and aisle concessions, raising the level of unique themes and environment, and creating a niche of refined theatrical entertainment combined with circus arts, Cirque du Soleil made traditional circuses irrelevant.
- Yellow Tail: The Australian wine brand eliminated ageing quality, wine complexity, and vineyard prestige to reduce cost, raised the easiness of selection and the fun of drinking, and created a fruity, easy-to-drink wine, expanding the wine industry’s boundaries.
- Southwest Airlines: The airline minimized services like meals, seating choices, and inter-airline luggage transfers but created short-haul, point-to-point flights and entertaining flight experience, attracting a new market of price-sensitive air travellers.
Tips for Implementing Blue Ocean Strategy
Practical Advice
- Start by analyzing your current market position and competition.
- Identify key factors that your industry competes on and challenge the necessity of these factors.
- Seek insights from noncustomers in existing markets and explore adjacent industries.
- Test your strategy before rolling it out entirely.
Pitfalls to Avoid
- Do not focus solely on competition when there’s a potential to create.
- Do not let organizational politics hinder the strategy’s development or execution.
Step-by-Step Guide
- Draw your Strategy Canvas, highlighting your offering against competitors.
- Apply the Four Actions Framework to explore how factors can be eliminated, reduced, raised, or created.
- Identify a new value proposition and its target customers.
- Test your idea, refine it, and implement it.
The Blue Ocean Strategy, while challenging, can transform an organization’s strategic planning, opening avenues for unparalleled growth and profitability. We hope this guide has enlightened your understanding and stimulated your curiosity towards creating your own ‘Blue Ocean’.
For further exploration, refer to the book “Blue Ocean Strategy” by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.
