In 2024, competition is fiercer than ever in just about every industry. In many communities across the United States, industries have reached a cyclical saturation point, where traditional competition is now resulting in diminished returns. To stand out, companies need to shift from competing solely in overcrowded markets to creating new demand through innovative strategies.
Enter the Blue Ocean Strategy—a framework that encourages businesses to seek uncontested market space, making the competition irrelevant. Instead of fighting for a larger share of an existing market, Blue Ocean thinkers create new markets altogether.
The Rise of Blue Ocean Thinking
The past few years have seen a surge in disruptive business models, from subscription services to the gig economy, highlighting the power of innovation-driven growth. Companies like Netflix, DoorDash, Spotify, Uber, Instacart, and Tesla didn’t just compete; they changed the game entirely by ideating, iterating, failing fast and failing forward and ultimately offering something new that consumers did not realize until they had it that they didn’t want to live without.
Developing a Blue Ocean Strategy
- Redefine Your Value Proposition – What can you offer customers that your competitors can’t? Blue Ocean Strategy involves identifying areas where customer needs are under-served or completely overlooked.
- Dream Bigger – Stop focusing solely on outperforming rivals in current markets. Instead, think about how you can generate demand in areas that have yet to be explored by you or your worthy rivals in the market. Remove the constraints from your ideation sessions by bringing in third parties without a dog in the fight to facilitate brainstorming. Ask provocative questions and don’t settle for the first or the fifth idea you arrive at.
- Innovate by Design – Look for the uniqueness of the idea through the new, novel, or improved experience customers will become addicted to through your big idea. If the experience is not new, novel, or improved, then go back a step to uncover something better.
How to Deliver the Promise of a Blue Ocean Strategy
Now that you have landed on a remarkable blue ocean, it’s time to devise a strategy to own it to your benefit before someone else discovers these uncharted waters.
- Relevance – Ensure your idea is relevant to the needs of your target audience. Be certain they know what they are missing out on by NOT experiencing your exciting new offering. At the same time, demonstrate you are indeed a relevant and reliable provider in this space. If not, get to work redefining what potential customers believe about you.
- Scalability – Pressure test the heck out of this idea and demonstrate pursuing it won’t sink the rest of your enterprises. Scalability relies on many things, but among them in the years ahead will be the potential for automation, technological incorporation, replicability, and cost of customer acquisition and retention.
- Attainable – We are after blue oceans, not white whales. With a sound delivery plan, you can map out the time it takes to achieve a return on investment (ROI). Use tiger teams or red teams to seek out the weaknesses in the plan to make the plan stronger before launch.
- Value – Achieving a balance between differentiation and cost-efficiency is key. Companies must find ways to offer superior value at a lower cost than what any likely competitor or customer can provide on their own for the same experience.
With this approach, businesses can unlock untapped potential and remain competitive by reinventing markets instead of simply fighting for market share in the overcrowded and overfished red seas.