In the world of business, beating the competition is a common goal that almost everyone strives to achieve. But what if the competition was made irrelevant, and what if there was a way to create new, untapped territories for growth? This is where the Blue Ocean Strategy comes in. This strategy, as detailed in the book titled “Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant,” offers businesses a new perspective on strategy, challenging the traditional approach of taking on competitors head-on.
The Book
Renée Mauborgne and Chan Kim co-authored “Blue Ocean Strategy” after conducting a study of 150 strategic moves that spanned more than 100 years across 30 different industries. The authors concluded that lasting success comes not from battling competitors but from creating blue oceans– untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.
The book is hailed as a Wall Street Journal bestseller and business week bestseller, having been published in a record-breaking 47 languages. It has gained recognition as one of the most iconic and impactful strategy books ever written. Both authors have received widespread recognition for their work in the form of various awards and distinctions.
Renée Mauborgne and Chan Kim are both professors of strategy at INSEAD, one of the world’s top business schools, and co-directors of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute in France. Renée was named the #1 management thinker in the world, becoming the first woman to ever secure this spot on a global leadership list.
The Blue Ocean Strategy offers businesses a new way of looking at a strategy that is both innovative and refreshing. The strategy emphasizes creating new markets rather than being bogged down by existing competition, thus creating new and uncontested market spaces.
Learnings from the Blue Ocean Strategy
The Blue Ocean Strategy is an all-encompassing approach that offers businesses the blueprint for creating an uncontested market space. The following are some of the key learnings from the book:
1. Creating uncontested market spaces
The Blue Ocean Strategy is premised on the idea that the market is divided into two distinct categories: the Red Ocean and the Blue Ocean. The Red Ocean represents all the known market spaces, filled with competition; it is already saturated and characterized by cutthroat competition. The Blue Ocean is the untapped, unexplored market space that is free of competition. As such, creating uncontested market spaces requires businesses to think beyond the current market spaces and uncover new opportunities that could bring untold revenue streams.
2. Making the competition irrelevant
Traditional business strategies focus on being better than the competition – by identifying ways to outperform them in the market. The Blue Ocean Strategy positions the competition as irrelevant– when businesses create new market spaces, they redefine the market altogether and open up new territories, allowing them to be innovative and create demand. The strategy enables businesses to make the competition irrelevant by creating a unique offering that focuses on value innovation, which creates a fundamental shift in the value proposition.
3. Framework for creating and capturing new demand
To create and capture new demand, businesses must develop an understanding and a framework for market creation that can help them build an uncontested market space. The Blue Ocean Strategy offers such a framework, its visual-empirical strategy canvas, which enables businesses to identify the critical factors that drive demand and those that can decrease it. Once these factors are identified, the strategy offers tools and frameworks for developing new value propositions that will meet unmet or underserved customer needs.
4. Breaking the value-cost trade-off
For years, businesses have operated under the belief that a trade-off exists between value and cost, which restricts businesses’ potential. The Blue Ocean Strategy explores how value and cost can be positioned to complement each other, creating a win-win situation that becomes a key driver of business innovation.
5. Aligning the whole system of a firm’s activities in pursuit of differentiation and low cost to achieve Blue Ocean’s success.
Businesses must focus on a culture of innovation that is driven by value innovation. The whole system of a company’s activities must be aligned to seek to differentiate and create a low-cost structure that creates the ideal platform to develop exceptional products or services.
“Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant” is a groundbreaking book that offers businesses a blueprint for success in today’s highly competitive business environment. The strategy, based on the creation of uncontested market spaces, offers businesses a new approach that focuses on value innovation, breaking the tradition of ‘me-too’ business strategies and enabling businesses to stand out in the competitive marketplace. With its frameworks and tools, the Blue Ocean Strategy provides businesses with the impetus they need to develop a culture of innovation focused on creating value and reducing costs, making it a must-read for anyone looking to make an impact in business.
