Blue Ocean Strategy: Sailing Your Way to the Top

The typical marketing strategy for a business firm would be to study what their competitors are doing and find ways to do better than that. But with the status of the existing products and businesses in the industry right now, being competitive is not enough when the market is already oversaturated, competition is getting more tough, entry is more difficult and market shares among companies are being reduced.

With this, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne theorized the concept of blue ocean strategy as a new way for businesses to sail their way to the top.

Blue vs Red

What comes to your mind when we say red? Most will probably say blood and war. That is exactly what the red ocean is all about. Just like what is happening to the market right now, companies are in a bloody and merciless competition to gain more profits. Whereas, its complete opposite, the blue ocean is the market that is not yet discovered and exploited. There’s no competition at all.

That’s how blue ocean works -- to create a new, clean market space and make competition irrelevant.

Who sailed across the blue ocean?

One of the best examples of blue ocean strategy is Cirque du Soleil, the one, that despite the declining industry of circus, still managed not only to survive but to thrive. How are they able to do this? Simply because they strayed away from the path of the typical street circus performers. They targeted a wider and richer audience. Those who can pay twice and even thrice the price of the usual fee for street performances. They mixed the art of theater along with circus performances.

How can you sail across the blue ocean too?

It takes a lot of innovation, creativity, and resourcefulness for you to be able to raise your sails and journey across the vast blue ocean. Thinking out of the box is a must in this strategy so here comes marketing research. Before anything else, you’ve got to know what are already existing and what are still needed in the industry. You need to be updated about what’s going on in the market. If before, you can’t have a virtual address, now you can. If the good old days won’t let you sell your things on the internet, now you can.

Just imagine the endless possibilities of creating a new market space where only you are the top player. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”