Blue Ocean change strategy

March 25, 2009

At a recent meeting of the Atlanta chapter of the Association for Strategic Planning (ASP), I heard a presentation on the basics of Blue Ocean Strategy, and thought the concept might be interesting when focused inward on an organization.

The premise behind Blue Ocean Strategy is that your current market of customers is only a subset of the customers who potentially need or want your product or service. The current market is called a Red Ocean because of all the competition tearing each other apart. The Blue Ocean represents all the potential customers who are not currently buying because they don’t have any idea what your product or service does or why they might need it.

The solution presented for engaging the Blue Ocean was through Value Innovation. The simplified method included finding the answers to these questions:

What causes people not to buy this product?
What can we do to overcome it? (What can we reduce, raise, eliminate or create?)

When you look at your organizational change initiative, you might see a similar pattern. There is a subset of the organization who “gets it,” pays attention, and is involved in making progress. And then there is everyone else, who is not buying what you’re selling. Not only that, but it’s not even on their radar.

Inquiry: What causes people to not to “buy” your change?

There are a number of other tools in the Blue Ocean Strategy framework that might be helpful to expand your thinking along these lines. Visit the official Blue Ocean Strategy site for some useful diagrams and more detailed concepts.

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