Blue Ocean Strategy Book Summary
How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant
Book by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
Summary
Forget battling sharks in bloody red oceans. Blue Ocean Strategy shows you how to create your own uncontested market space, making the competition irrelevant and opening a sea of opportunities for profitable growth.
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Section 1: Blue Ocean Strategy
Section 1 of "Blue Ocean Strategy" sets the stage for the book's core message: escaping the "red ocean" of bloody competition by creating "blue oceans" of uncontested market space. It highlights the increasing challenges faced by businesses in overcrowded industries, where competition is fierce and profits are shrinking.
The authors argue that companies need to shift their focus from battling rivals to creating new demand and value innovation. They introduce the metaphor of red and blue oceans to vividly illustrate the contrast between these two strategic approaches. Additionally, the section explores several global trends that make blue ocean strategy even more crucial in today's business environment, such as the rising demand for creative solutions, the power of social media, and the increasing ease of global competition.
Chapter 1 Details
- The problem: Businesses face increasingly intense competition in existing industries, leading to shrinking profits and limited growth opportunities.
- The solution: Blue Ocean Strategy encourages businesses to break away from the competition by creating new market space, making the competition irrelevant.
- The Analogy: Red Oceans represent existing industries with defined boundaries and fierce competition, while Blue Oceans represent untapped market space with the potential for high growth and profitability.
- Value Innovation: This concept emphasizes creating a leap in value for both buyers and the company, thereby rendering the competition irrelevant. It challenges the traditional value-cost trade-off by pursuing differentiation and low cost simultaneously.
- Case Study: By offering a unique blend of circus and theater, Cirque du Soleil created a new market space, attracting a new customer base and achieving high profitability.
- Impact of Blue Oceans: Studies show that blue ocean initiatives, despite being fewer in number, generate a significantly higher proportion of total profits and growth compared to red ocean initiatives.
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
[yellow tail] case study
Case Study: [yellow tail] By applying the four actions framework and focusing on non-customers, [yellow tail] created a blue ocean in the US wine industry with a fun and easy-to-drink wine, achieving rapid growth and profitability.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Cirque du Soleil: A Case of Value Innovation
The book uses Cirque du Soleil as a prime example of value innovation. Instead of competing with traditional circuses, Cirque created a new market space by:
Eliminating costly elements: like animal shows and star performers.
Reducing elements: like the number of rings and the emphasis on thrilling stunts.
Raising elements: like the quality of the venue and the artistic value of the performances.
Creating elements: like a storyline and multiple productions.
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
Focus on Noncustomers
"To fundamentally shift the strategy canvas of an industry, you must begin by reorienting your strategic focus from competitors to alternatives, and from customers to noncustomers of the industry."
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Quote from Chapter 1
"Instead of focusing on beating the competition, you focus on making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for buyers and your company, thereby opening up new and uncontested market space."
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
From Red Oceans to Blue Oceans: The Tools You Need
Chapter 2 introduces a set of analytical tools and frameworks for creating blue oceans:
The Strategy Canvas: A visual tool to depict the current state of play in a market space and identify opportunities for differentiation and low cost.
The Four Actions Framework: A framework with four key questions to challenge an industry's strategic logic and reconstruct buyer value elements.
The Eliminate-Reduce-Raise-Create Grid: A grid to ensure that companies pursue all four actions of the framework to create a new value curve.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Six Paths to Uncharted Waters
The six paths framework, a systematic approach to reconstructing market boundaries and creating blue oceans. These paths involve looking across:
Alternative Industries: Explore industries that offer alternative solutions to the same customer need.
Strategic Groups within Industries: Analyze different strategic groups within your industry and identify factors that lead customers to trade up or down.
The Chain of Buyers: Consider the entire buyer chain, including purchasers, users, and influencers, and explore opportunities to shift focus.
Complementary Product and Service Offerings: Identify pain points in the customer experience and offer complementary products or services to create a total solution.
Functional or Emotional Appeal to Buyers: Challenge the conventional functional or emotional orientation of your industry.
Time: Analyze trends over time and consider how they will impact customer value and your business model.
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
Section 2: Analytical Tools and Frameworks
This section dives into the practical tools and frameworks that are essential for creating and capturing blue oceans. It introduces the strategy canvas, a visual tool for understanding the current state of play in a market and for developing a differentiated strategic profile. The four actions framework helps companies break the value-cost trade-off by asking four key questions: eliminate, reduce, raise, and create. Finally, the eliminate-reduce-raise-create grid serves as a visual aid for implementing the four actions framework and building a new value curve.
From Functional to Fun: QB House Haircuts
QB House created a blue ocean in the Japanese barbershop industry by shifting the focus from emotional appeal to functionality. They stripped away unnecessary services and focused on quick, efficient haircuts, attracting customers who valued speed and convenience.
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
From Red to Blue in Four Steps
Four-step process for visualizing strategy and creating blue oceans:
Visual Awakening: Draw the current strategy canvas to understand your position and the need for change.
Visual Exploration: Go into the field and observe customers, noncustomers, and alternatives to gain insights into new value opportunities.
Visual Strategy Fair: Present potential blue ocean strategies and get feedback from external parties.
Visual Communication: Communicate the new strategy visually to ensure clarity and understanding throughout the organization.
Section: 2, Chapter: 4
The Power of Visual Strategy
Chapter 4 introduces an alternative approach to strategic planning that focuses on the big picture instead of numbers. This approach involves drawing a strategy canvas to visualize the current state of play in a market and identify opportunities for creating blue oceans.
Section: 2, Chapter: 4
Beyond Existing Demand: The Untapped Potential
Chapter 5 explores the principle of reaching beyond existing demand to maximize the size of your blue ocean. It challenges the traditional focus on existing customers and finer segmentation, arguing that companies should instead look to noncustomers and build on commonalities in what buyers value.
Section: 2, Chapter: 5
The Three Tiers of Noncustomers
The chapter introduces three tiers of noncustomers that represent potential sources of new demand:
First Tier: "Soon-to-be" Noncustomers: Those who minimally purchase your offering and are actively looking for alternatives.
Second Tier: "Refusing" Noncustomers: Those who consciously choose against your market.
Third Tier: "Unexplored" Noncustomers: Those who have never considered your market as an option.
Section: 2, Chapter: 5
Callaway Golf: From Noncustomers to Loyal Fans
Callaway Golf successfully reached beyond existing demand by focusing on the commonality among noncustomers: the difficulty of hitting a golf ball. Their Big Bertha driver, with its larger clubhead, made it easier for beginners and casual players to enjoy the game, expanding the market and creating new demand.
Section: 2, Chapter: 5
Strategic Pricing for Mass Appeal
This snippet explains the concept of the price corridor of the target mass, which helps determine the optimal price range to attract the largest number of buyers. It involves analyzing the price and volume of alternative products and services to identify the price sensitivity of your target market.
Section: 2, Chapter: 6
Section 3: Formulating Blue Ocean Strategy
1. Reconstruct Market Boundaries: This principle, explored through the six paths framework, encourages companies to look beyond the confines of their current industry and explore new market spaces by looking across alternative industries, strategic groups, buyer groups, complementary offerings, functional-emotional orientations, and time.
2. Focus on the Big Picture, Not the Numbers: This principle advocates for a visual approach to strategy formulation using tools like the strategy canvas and the pioneer-migrator-settler (PMS) map to develop and communicate a clear and compelling strategic profile.
3. Reach Beyond Existing Demand: To maximize the size of a blue ocean, companies should focus on noncustomers and their commonalities, rather than getting caught up in finer segmentation and catering to existing customer preferences. Understanding the three tiers of non-customers (soon-to-be, refusing, and unexplored) is key to unlocking new demand and expanding the market.
4. Get the Strategic Sequence Right: This principle emphasizes the importance of building a robust business model by following a specific sequence: buyer utility, price, cost, and adoption. Tools like the buyer utility map, the price corridor of the mass, and the three levers of target costing help ensure the commercial viability of blue ocean ideas.
Overcoming the Hurdles. ofChange
The challenge of executing a blue ocean strategy and overcoming four key organizational hurdles:
Cognitive hurdle: Waking employees up to the need for a strategic shift.
Resource hurdle: Dealing with limited resources.
Motivational hurdle: Motivating key players to embrace change.
Political hurdle: Overcoming internal and external resistance.
Section: 3, Chapter: 7
Tipping Point Leadership: A New Approach to Change
Tipping point leadership offers a way to overcome organizational hurdles quickly and efficiently by focusing on factors that exert a disproportionate influence on performance. Rather than a massive, resource-intensive approach, it concentrates on key leverage points to create a cascading effect that tips the entire organization towards the new strategy.
Tipping point leadership offers a way to overcome organizational hurdles quickly and efficiently by focusing on factors that exert a disproportionate influence on performance. Rather than a massive, resource-intensive approach, it concentrates on key leverage points to create a cascading effect that tips the entire organization towards the new strategy.
Section: 3, Chapter: 7
NYPD's Blue Ocean Strategy: A Case of Successful Transformation
The chapter uses the example of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) under Commissioner Bill Bratton to illustrate the effectiveness of tipping point leadership. Bratton successfully implemented a blue ocean strategy that dramatically reduced crime rates and improved public perception despite facing significant organizational challenges.
Section: 3, Chapter: 7
Resource Realignment: From Cold Spots to Hot Spots
Instead of focusing on acquiring more resources, tipping point leadership emphasizes maximizing the value of existing resources. This involves identifying and redirecting resources from "cold spots" (activities with high resource input but low performance impact) to "hot spots" (activities with low resource input but high potential for performance gains). Additionally, "horse trading" – exchanging underutilized resources between departments – can further optimize resource allocation.
Section: 3, Chapter: 7
Building Trust and Commitment: The Power of Fair Process
Fair process is a critical element for building trust and commitment among employees, fostering voluntary cooperation, and minimizing the risk of resistance or sabotage during strategy execution. It's particularly important for blue ocean strategies, as they often require significant changes to the status quo.
Section: 3, Chapter: 8
The Three E's of Fair Process: A Recipe for Success
Fair process consists of three key principles:
Engagement: Involving individuals in the decision-making process and seeking their input.
Explanation: Clearly explaining the rationale behind decisions to foster understanding and trust.
Expectation Clarity: Setting clear expectations for what is required of employees under the new strategy.
By adhering to these principles, leaders can create a sense of ownership and commitment among employees, leading to more effective strategy execution.
Section: 3, Chapter: 8
Three Pillars of Strategic Success
There are three fundamental propositions that underpin a successful and sustainable strategy:
Value Proposition: This proposition focuses on offering exceptional utility to buyers, making the competition irrelevant. It's about creating a leap in value for customers through innovation while keeping costs low. Tools like the buyer utility map and the six stages of the buyer experience cycle can help companies assess and refine their value proposition.
Profit Proposition: This proposition focuses on ensuring the company can make money from its blue ocean offering. It involves setting the right strategic price to attract the mass of target buyers and achieving a target cost structure that allows for a healthy profit margin. Tools like the price corridor of the mass and the three levers of target costing (streamlining operations, partnering, and pricing innovation) can help companies develop a robust profit proposition.
People Proposition: This proposition focuses on motivating and inspiring employees, partners, and stakeholders to execute the strategy. This involves creating a culture of trust and commitment, providing fair incentives, and recognizing the intellectual and emotional worth of individuals. The three principles of fair process (engagement, explanation, and expectation clarity) are crucial for building a strong people proposition.
Section: 3, Chapter: 9
Aligning for Blue Oceans
For a blue ocean strategy to thrive, all three strategy propositions (value, profit, and people) must be aligned around the goals of differentiation and low cost. This alignment creates a powerful synergy that is difficult for competitors to imitate and contributes to the sustainability of the blue ocean.
Section: 3, Chapter: 9
Staying Power of Blue Oceans
Blue ocean strategies often enjoy a period of sustained success due to several barriers to imitation. These include:
Alignment: The integrated nature of the three strategy propositions makes it difficult for competitors to replicate the entire system.
Cognitive Hurdles: Understanding and accepting the value innovation may require a shift in mindset for competitors, delaying imitation.
Organizational Challenges: Implementing a blue ocean strategy often requires significant changes to existing business practices, which can be hampered by organizational politics and resistance to change.
Brand Image: A strong brand image associated with the blue ocean offering can create a barrier for competitors trying to establish themselves in the market.
Economic and Legal Factors: Economies of scale, network externalities, patents, and legal permits can create economic and legal barriers that deter imitation.
These barriers provide a window of opportunity for companies to exploit their blue ocean strategy before facing intense competition.
Section: 3, Chapter: 10
From Pioneers to Settlers: Apple's Renewal Journey
Apple's success can be attributed to its ability to continuously renew its portfolio with a series of blue ocean offerings, including the iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad. These products redefined their respective markets and created new demand, propelling Apple to the forefront of the technology industry. As each pioneer business matured and faced competition, Apple launched new blue oceans to maintain its growth trajectory, demonstrating a dynamic approach to portfolio management and renewal.
Section: 3, Chapter: 10
The 10 Red Ocean Traps
1. Customer-Centricity ≠ Blue Ocean Strategy Don't confuse customer-centricity with blue ocean strategy. While focusing on existing customers may lead to incremental improvements, it won't unlock new market space. Blue oceans are created by understanding and addressing the needs of noncustomers – those who currently reject your industry's offerings.
2. Blue Oceans Aren't Always "Out There" : ou don't need to venture into distant, unknown industries to create a blue ocean. Many successful blue ocean strategies were born from within existing industries, by redefining the problem and reconstructing market boundaries. Look for opportunities to innovate within your core business before venturing into unfamiliar territory.
3. Technology is Not the Defining Feature: While technology can certainly play a role in blue ocean strategy, it's not the defining feature. Value innovation is about creating a leap in value for buyers, regardless of whether it involves cutting-edge technology. Focus on how your offering improves the lives of customers, rather than getting caught up in technological advancements for their own sake.
4. First-Mover Advantage is Overrated: While technology can certainly play a role in blue ocean strategy, it's not the defining feature. Value innovation is about creating a leap in value for buyers, regardless of whether it involves cutting-edge technology. Focus on how your offering improves the lives of customers, rather than getting caught up in technological advancements for their own sake.
5. Differentiation ≠ Blue Ocean Strategy: Differentiation alone isn't enough to create a blue ocean. Traditional differentiation strategies often involve higher costs and premium pricing, limiting their market potential. Blue ocean strategy, on the other hand, is about pursuing both differentiation and low cost simultaneously, making the competition irrelevant and opening up new market space.
6. Low Cost ≠ Blue Ocean Strategy: Simply offering low prices won't create a blue ocean. While low cost is an important element of blue ocean strategy, it must be combined with differentiation to create a leap in value for buyers. Focus on strategic pricing – pricing against substitutes and alternatives – to attract the mass of target buyers while maintaining a healthy profit margin.
7. Low Cost ≠ Blue Ocean Strategy: Not all innovations are created equal. While innovation is about creating something new and useful, value innovation is about creating a leap in value for buyers that unlocks new demand and makes the competition irrelevant. Focus on value innovation – the cornerstone of blue ocean strategy – rather than simply pursuing innovation for its own sake.
8. Bue Ocean is Not Just Marketing: Blue ocean strategy is not just a marketing theory or a niche strategy. While a compelling value proposition is important, it's only one piece of the puzzle. Sustainable success requires alignment across the value, profit, and people propositions, as well as effective execution throughout the organization.
9. Competition Can Be Good: Blue ocean strategy doesn't demonize competition. In healthy markets, competition can drive innovation and improve value for customers. However, when supply exceeds demand, excessive competition can lead to price wars, shrinking margins, and slow growth. Blue ocean strategy offers a way to break free from these limitations and create new market space where competition is minimized.
10. Beyond Creative Destruction: Blue ocean strategy goes beyond the concept of creative destruction, which focuses on displacing existing products or technologies. While blue oceans can involve some degree of disruption, they primarily emphasize nondestructive creation – creating new market space without necessarily destroying existing markets. This is achieved by redefining the problem and offering a leap in value that attracts new customers and expands the overall market.
Section: 3, Chapter: 11
Conclusion
Blue Ocean Strategy presents a compelling and actionable framework for breaking away from the cutthroat competition of red oceans and creating uncontested market space – blue oceans – where companies can achieve sustainable high performance. The book challenges conventional strategic thinking and provides a set of analytical tools and frameworks, such as the strategy canvas, the four actions framework, and the six paths framework, to guide companies in formulating and executing blue ocean strategies. By focusing on non-customers, creating a leap in value for buyers, and aligning the entire organization around the goals of differentiation and low cost, companies can unlock new demand, achieve profitable growth, and build a strong and lasting brand.
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