Strategic Framework
Blue Ocean Strategy
Create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant by pursuing differentiation and low cost simultaneously.
The Core Idea: Value Innovation
Blue Ocean Strategy is about creating and capturing new demand. It's based on the view that market boundaries and industry structure are not fixed and can be reconstructed by the actions and beliefs of industry players. The cornerstone of Blue Ocean Strategy is 'value innovation' – the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost, creating a leap in value for both buyers and the company.
The Four Actions Framework
Eliminate
Which factors that the industry has long competed on should be eliminated?
Reduce
Which factors should be reduced well below the industry’s standard?
Raise
Which factors should be raised well above the industry’s standard?
Create
Which factors should be created that the industry has never offered?
Key Principles of Blue Ocean Strategy
Reconstruct Market Boundaries
Systematically look across alternative industries, strategic groups, buyer groups, complementary product/service offerings, functional-emotional orientation of an industry, and time to identify new market space.
Focus on the Big Picture, Not the Numbers
Use a strategy canvas to visualize the current strategic landscape and identify opportunities for differentiation and new value creation, rather than getting bogged down in operational details.
Reach Beyond Existing Demand
Challenge the conventional practice of focusing on existing customers. Instead, look to noncustomers and their unmet needs to unlock new demand.
Get the Strategic Sequence Right
Build a commercially viable blue ocean idea by ensuring exceptional utility, strategic pricing, target costing, and overcoming adoption hurdles.
Overcome Key Organizational Hurdles
Address cognitive, resource, motivational, and political hurdles that can prevent even the best strategies from being executed.
Build Execution into Strategy
Integrate execution from the start by involving people in the strategy-making process, fostering trust and commitment.
Finding Your Blue Ocean with Commercify
Commercify's AI-driven platform can significantly aid in applying Blue Ocean Strategy principles to uncover new market opportunities:
- Market Boundary Reconstruction: Our Market Intelligence Engine analyzes data from alternative industries, adjacent markets, and noncustomer segments to help you identify opportunities to reconstruct market boundaries.
- Value Curve Analysis: Commercify can help gather data on industry competing factors and customer perceptions, enabling you to draw an 'as-is' strategy canvas and identify areas for elimination, reduction, raising, or creation.
- Identifying Noncustomers: We assist in analyzing data to understand the needs and pain points of different tiers of noncustomers, unlocking insights for new demand creation.
- Testing Value Innovation: Our platform can help model the potential impact of new value propositions, assessing their utility, pricing viability, and adoption potential before large-scale investment.
By leveraging Commercify, you can systematically explore pathways to create blue oceans, moving beyond incremental improvements to unlock new levels of market creation and growth.
Benefits of Pursuing a Blue Ocean
- Create New Demand: Tap into previously unexplored customer segments.
- Make Competition Irrelevant: Move away from head-to-head competition in existing market space.
- Achieve Differentiation & Low Cost: Break the value-cost trade-off.
- Unlock High Growth & Profitability: Capture uncontested market space.
- Build a Strong Brand: Become synonymous with the new value you've created.
- Drive Innovation: Foster a culture of looking beyond current industry norms.
Ready to Discover Your Blue Ocean?
Explore how Commercify can help you apply Blue Ocean Strategy to find and capture new market space.