Navigating the Ocean

We’ve been talking about it for a few weeks now: Blue Ocean Strategy. Finding your niche & positioning yourself ahead of the competition is the name of the game.

But what are the key take-aways from Blue Ocean Strategy? If you could only remember 7 Blue Ocean ideas, what would they be?

7 Must-Know Ideas from Blue Ocean Strategy

#1 - Blue Ocean Strategy isn’t just a couple of guys’ arm-chair theory. It’s the result of 10 years of study covering 150 strategic moves. The moves were made by organizations in more than 30 industries & happened over the span of 12 decades (1880-2000). Adds a little credibility, eh?

#2 - Blue Ocean Strategy isn’t just about saving money or just about making yourself different. It’s really the intersection of being original & being profitable. The most cutting-edge & original products often fail because they’re just too expensive for the market to bear.

#3 - Blue Ocean positioning isn’t about merely making your product do better than your existing competition’s product. The goal is to transcend your current industry to create a new market that is yours alone. Think about the iPad. When Apple released it, the tablet was a little known concept. Apple didn’t just come up with an outstanding touch-screen laptop — they created a whole new product.

#4 - Innovation & successful new products aren’t just the domain of start-ups & entrepreneurs who are willing to take risks to experiment. Blue Ocean Strategy found that any organization can follow systematic processes to bring about their own niche offering. Apple & Google do it all the time — you don’t have to be zany start-up to succeed.

#5 - Working through your own Blue Ocean Strategy doesn’t have to be a lot of abstract words & concepts. There are several visual frameworks & tools that enable your entire organization to give their perspective & stay connected to the overall strategy.

#6 - Most strategies say that the environmental factors shape the strategy. Others say that the strategy actually shapes the environment. Blue Ocean Strategy does both: your strategy is informed by your environment & your environment is actually changed by your strategy. You achieve the success you aimed for.

#7 - As mentioned earlier, it’s not enough to have a stellar value proposition: you need a good profit proposition too. Blue Ocean strategy helps you align those two with an equally important third: your people proposition. It’s no good if you have a killer product that’s extremely profitable, but your organization just can’t execute. Value, profit, & people: get all of these right & you’ll be sailing smoothly into your own, beautiful Blue Ocean.

What’s Next

To ensure you keep getting your fix, we’ll be blogging about Blue Ocean Strategy for the upcoming weeks.

If you’d like to learn more, we’d love to chat about your particular needs & ideas.

You can get a hold of me at [email protected] or give us a call at 465-0659.