How to create uncontested market space - Blue Ocean Strategy

Recently, I read the Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.  I found the book to be a must have Strategy book. What makes it different from some other books in the same genre is that you can put to use some actionable frameworks from it.

Concepts like strategy canvas and 4-action framework are worth exploring.

Strategy Canvas captures (competitive/investment) strategic focus of a company on a graph. We can plot different segments within the industry to see where the focus of each segment lies.

Once the competitive factors are identified and strategy canvas is plotted, next step is to apply the 4-action framework to the factors.

The 4-action framework asks us to consider the identified factors and further:

Eliminate - Remove some of the factors from your strategic focus.

Reduce - Reduce focus/investment on some of the factors.

Raise - Identify the factors of strategic importance to you and raise those factors.

Create - Identify the new factors and induce them into the competitive factors to create strategic shift.

Bingo! You will identify new strategic initiatives to set company on a high growth & profitability path and, which would make competition irrelevant. Simple...

Sounds to be simple, however, applying 4-action framework is not as straightforward as it seems.

To identify new factors and the factors which needs to be reduced, eliminated and raised is a bigger challenge.

To identify these factors you have to look across user needs, across different markets, across industries, across demand, across time, across channels, etc. A lot of brainstorming in these areas taking along the strategic intent/direction of the company is a must to strike the gold.

Even after strategic initiatives are identified, there are more important aspects to put strategy into action. Execution!

Book is a great attempt to cover this entire process and also to give a direction on how to go about this.

Enjoy the read.

Cheers.

P.S. Can we develop some more actionable frameworks around these concepts? Let's see.