Conquer That New Market: The Principles of Blue Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy is one of the most popular strategic frameworks that is focused on helping businesses identifying, and even creating, new markets that have not been explored before, hence the name of an empty ocean, with no competitors.

What is Blue Ocean Strategy

This is a strategic framework that focuses on innovation and the creation of new markets. Unlike traditional strategy (Red Ocean Strategy), which focuses on outperforming competitors, this approach aims to make these rivals irrelevant by creating a new market space.

It does create these new markets with a combination of innovation, research, and differentiation, providing a structured way to rethink how the company delivers value.

How does Blue Ocean Strategy work

For Blue Ocean Strategy to work, it requires the company to think differently and solve problems in a new way than others might be doing it at the moment. Key components of this strategy are:

• Research: Blue Ocean Strategy requires a deep understanding of the problem, and not just of the problem that maybe the market has, but also what happens before and after, and surrounding that problem, to have a big picture understanding of the potentially untapped needs.
• Innovation: for a successful strategy, companies need to think differently, and not solve the problems in similar ways to how it has been done previously. There might be some similarities, but overall, the solution needs to be a true paradigm shift.
• Bring more value: in the end, the customers want to get more value, or at least perceived value from the products they purchase, and here is where the blue ocean strategy can shine.
• Broad solutions: Blue Ocean usually requires that markets are created around problems that affect large parts of the population, and not just niche problems

Look for areas where your company can innovate and provide value in new ways. How can you identify the new opportunities, provide value on some of the next ways:

• Eliminating unnecessary features or customer expectations that don’t add value.
• Reducing the emphasis on factors that are overemphasized in the industry.
• Raising standards for elements that are often underappreciated by competitors.
• Creating entirely new offerings or features that haven't been explored by others in the market.

Best cases for Blue Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean is a strategy that is best fit for creating new markets and innovating, not for growing in existing markets. Here are some of the best use cases for it:

• Startups & Scale-ups: Early-stage companies can innovate freely without the constraints of an established market position, and creating a blue ocean early can provide significant first-mover advantages.
• Mature or Saturated Industries: Companies operating in industries where competition is fierce or growth is stagnating can use Blue Ocean Strategy to differentiate themselves and create new demand.
• Disruptive Innovation: Businesses aiming to disrupt traditional markets often find Blue Ocean Strategy useful.

Is The Blue Ocean Strategy For You?

If you are interested in creating a new market, or you feel like your product is stuck and cannot differentiate itself from the competition, I conduct workshops and sessions to help companies identify their best strategies