Is your business locked in competition warfare, defending a position that costs you blood, sweat and profit? That’s the red ocean: a race where every win costs you more and every race is ultimately to the bottom. It’s red because there’s blood in the water.
Now imagine clear blue waters—an ocean of possibilities. What if you could make competition irrelevant, by creating an uncontested market space where you get to set the rules? What if you stopped benchmarking against others and instead created a benchmark of your own? What opportunities have your competitors ignored because they’re too busy watching each other?
That’s the premise of Blue Ocean Strategy, developed by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. Instead of struggling within industry norms (such as price points) defined by others, blue ocean thinking challenges you to create something unique, so that you own the category. It’s not about tweaking what already exists, but creating new value in areas your competitors haven’t seen yet. Think of Apple or Cirque du Soleil—they’ve defined themselves by products that customers didn’t yet know they wanted.
Here’s the edge regional businesses have: you’re deeply embedded in your community, with insights about customer needs that big-city competitors can only guess at. What can only you see about your market, thanks to your local insight? With blue ocean thinking, you’ll use that vision to uncover unserved markets and unmet needs.
We run a half-day workshop on redefining strategy, where we help you explore tools including blue ocean thinking. It’s not woo-woo; just a framework to spark innovative, powerful ideas that align directly with your customer’s unsolved needs. It’s about defining your path to a market without rivals and building the tools to get there.
Ready to re-create your position in the market? Ready to stop going with the flow and start navigating for yourself? Call us today, and let’s get you into clear waters.