Blue Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy

Companies have long engaged in fierce head-to- head competition in search of sustained profitable growth. They have fought for competitive advantage, battled over limited markets, and struggled for differentiation. However, leading companies succeed not by battling competitors, but by creating “blue oceans” of uncontested market space. BOS is a strategy development framework designed for the sole intention of arriving at innovative strategies. Emanating from the INSEAD Business School after a decade long study of 150 strategic moves spanning more than 30 industries over 100 years, its primary aim is not to seek out strategies designed to out-perform the competition, but to create new market space through the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost.

Determining whether your organisation is in need of an innovative strategy may be as simple  as answering yes to one or more of the following questions:

  • Is the marketplace for your products overcrowded and infested with fierce uncompromising domestic and international rivals, where price becomes the predominant factor which determines whether a sale is won?
  • Are you finding you need to advertise more to get noticed in the marketplace, yet the impact of each advertising dollar spent is falling?
  • Is your company focused more on cost cutting, quality control, and brand management at the expense of growth, innovation, and brand creation?
  • Do you blame your slow growth on your market?
  • Do you see outsourcing to low cost companies or countries as a principal prerequisite to regain competitiveness?
  • Are mergers and acquisitions the principal means your company sees to grow?
  • List your and your rival’s key competitive factors; Are they largely the same?