Blue ocean strategy

This article is best read after first reading “Value Innovation: The Strategic Logic of High Growth” by the same authors. It argues that creating markets allows companies to grow larger and faster than competing in well known markets.

Blue oceans denote all the industries not in existence today

The data included shows that only a small percentage of products surveyed were Blue oceans - yet they represented a large share of the profits (over basic line extensions). Blue oceans are created from within Red oceans that already exist.

The key feature of the Blue ocean strategy is removing features that have low value to users, increasing (or adding) features that do have high value, and reducing the overall cost to the user.

Care needs to be taken with this article - Blue ocean strategy does not mean creating widely new markets in distant fields like the name implies.