What is Blue Ocean Strategy
Blue Ocean Strategy was developed by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. They observed that companies tend to engage in head-to-head competition in search of sustained profitable growth. Yet in today’s overcrowded industries competing head-on results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Lasting success increasingly comes, not from battling competitors, but from creating blue oceans of untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.
Blue Ocean Strategy challenges everything you thought you knew about strategic success and provides a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant. Get inspired, learn more, watch the video below.
8 Key Points of Blue Ocean Strategy
It’s grounded in data
Blue ocean strategy, developed by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne,
is based on a decade-long study of more than 150 strategic moves spanning more than 30 industries over 100 years.2
It pursues differentiation and low cost
Blue ocean strategy is based on the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost. It is an ‘and-and,’ not an ‘either-or’ strategy3
It creates uncontested market space
Blue ocean strategy doesn’t aim to out-perform the competition. It aims to make the competition irrelevant by reconstructing industry boundaries4
It empowers you through tools and frameworks
Blue ocean strategy offers systematic tools and frameworks to break away from the competition and create a blue ocean of uncontested market space
It provides a step-by-step process
From assessing the current state of play in an industry, to exploring the six paths to new market space, to understanding how to convert noncustomers into customers. Blue ocean strategy provides a clear four-step process to create your to-be blue ocean strategy6
It maximizes opportunity while minimizing risk
The blue ocean idea index allows you to test the commercial viability of your ideas and shows you how to refine your ideas to maximize your upside while minimizing downside risk7
It builds execution into strategy
The process and tools are inclusive, easy to understand and communicate, and visual – all of which makes the process non-intimidating and an effective path to building execution into strategy and the collective wisdom of a company8
It shows you how to create a win-win outcome
As an integrated approach to strategy, blue ocean strategy shows how to align the three strategy propositions – value, profit, and people – to ensure your organization is aligned around your new strategy and that it creates a win for buyers, the company, and for employees and stakeholders
Blue Ocean Strategy Tools
Click on the icon to learn more.
Red Ocean vs. Blue Ocean Strategy
Four Actions Framework
Pioneer Migrator Settler Map
3 Tiers of Noncustomers
Sequence of BOS
The Buyer Utility Map
Price Corridor of the Mass
Four Hurdles to Execution
Tipping Point Leadership
All analytic tools © Kim & Mauborgne. All rights reserved.
Blue Ocean Strategic Moves
Select from the icons below to explore classic blue ocean strategic moves.