The phenomenally successful book, “Blue Ocean Strategy” by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, powerfully teaches business leaders of all stripes how to “go where the profits and growth are and the competition isn’t.” Easier said than done, right?
But even if you know what a Blue Ocean Strategy is, and also if you don’t, how do you find this untapped market space where nobody else is? Where prospective customers with unmet needs are waiting for you to help solve their problems in innovative ways? These 10 blogs, podcasts and white papers will show you.
Hopefully they will also spark some Blue Ocean “a-ha” moments of your own and open your eyes to all the wonderful growth opportunities that might be right in front of you…if only you could see them. Enjoy.
BLUE OCEAN BLOGS
1. How Blue Ocean Strategy® Helps You Find (and Convert) Nonusers
Are you just thinking business innovation or are you doing it? Blue Ocean Strategy shows you how to find uncontested market space which you can own. It focuses on unlocking new markets, described as “blue oceans,” rather than competing in existing markets, or “red oceans.” By creating a blue ocean of new customers in untapped market space, you don’t compete for a small, highly competitive pool of existing customers—you create your own.
2. Are You Ready to Find Your Blue Ocean® And Get Growing?
At Simon Associates Management Consultants (SAMC), we’ve led over 300 Blue Ocean Strategy workshops and dozens of client engagements to help companies “see, feel and think” with fresh eyes—so they can step out of their current mindset and see new opportunities. In this blog, I share 3 stories of businesses that did just that. Perhaps they will trigger some ideas of your own that can help you grow your business…not by doing more, cheaper, but by re-thinking your role in the lives of your customers, Blue Ocean-style.
3. Want To Get A Fast Start On Your Blue Ocean Strategy?
Blue Ocean Strategy gets your business moving in new directions as you shift from competing to creating a new market space. Renée Mauborgne, one of the co-creators of Blue Ocean Strategy, just published her new book, “Blue Ocean Shift,” and has been speaking widely on the theory, methods and tools of Blue Ocean Strategy. I attended her presentation in Philadelphia in April and we spoke about the challenges our clients have in creating new markets, finding new users, solving unmet needs and making the competition irrelevant.
4. 5 Best Tools to Do Your Blue Ocean Strategy® for Changing Times
Need business growth? You might need a Blue Ocean Strategy. At SAMC, we specialize in helping companies redesign their business strategies so they can find unmet needs and add value in innovative ways. The aim is not to become just “another business solution” but the “only solution.” (At least for a while until others catch up.) In this blog, I share the 5 most important tools that are the keys to crafting and delivering on a Blue Ocean Strategy.
5. How To Get Your Brain To Let Go Of Its Old Bad Habits
At SAMC, we often work with companies that need or want to change in hopes that they too can be a Blue Ocean success story. What we find is that they can, but it requires a combination of a crisis, a willingness to make the unfamiliar familiar and a Blue-Ocean style toolkit that can provide process and comfort to the unknown. Here’s how.
BLUE OCEAN PODCASTS
6. Ask Andi—Blue Ocean Strategy®
In this Ask Andi podcast, I talk about Blue Ocean Strategy and explain the actual tools you can use to find your Blue Ocean in a field filled with lots of bloody competition. I describe how to out-compete your competitors, get insights about your market (who they are and how you can solve their unmet needs), and how to put a business strategy in place for the future.
7. Ask Andi—3 Companies That Saw A Blue Ocean Possibility
This is one of my favorite Ask Andi’s because I share three stories of clients of ours who, after one of our change workshops, all had wonderful Blue Ocean “a-ha” moments where they were able to see something that was right in front of them and make changes to take their businesses to new heights. In essence, this is what Blue Ocean Strategy is all about: rethinking the way you operate your business.
8. Ask Andi—Blue Ocean Strategy® Step 1
Here, I really dig deep into Blue Ocean Strategy and how its basic premise isn’t to continue to compete with others in the same industry that you’re in today. It’s really about identifying consumers’ pain points so you can offer them better solutions. In this podcast, you’ll learn the steps of how to find your Blue Ocean Strategy, specifically how to use a strategic canvas to help you see, feel and think about your business in new ways.
9. Ask Andi—Blue Ocean Strategy® Step 2
After lots of great feedback on my Blue Ocean Strategy Step 1 podcast, here is the follow-up Step 2. People wanted to know, what do they do next? They did their strategic canvas but where do they go from there? The answer is that once you’ve had a visual awakening, you’re ready to go visually exploring, which is a very exciting part of the Blue Ocean Strategy methodology. Your task now is to look for business opportunities that might be all around you that you’ve been ignoring.
BLUE OCEAN WHITE PAPER
10. 10 Ways To Swim in Blue Oceans and Avoid Those Red Ones
Once you “see” it, the logic and power of finding a Blue Ocean in a world of competitor-dominated Red Oceans is so clear. Yet deeply-entrenched habits often cloud people’s ability to see, feel and think in new, Blue Ocean ways. This white paper examines 10 traps that keep you stuck in a Red Ocean of bloody competition when instead, you should be looking beyond your current customers and rather, at all the possibilities that await you!
Ready to find your Blue Ocean Strategy? Let’s Talk.
At Simon Associates Management Consultants, we specialize in helping startups successfully find uncontested market space and capitalize on consumers’ unmet needs. Our 6-Step Process is specifically designed for entrepreneurs who need smart, innovative business strategies so they can adapt to changing times and capitalize on new technologies. Please contact us to discuss how our process works and also how we might help you find startup capital, launch your business, capture customers and grow market share. We look forward to hearing from you.
From Observation to Innovation,
Andi Simon, Ph.D.
Corporate Anthropologist | President
Simon Associates Management Consultants
Info@simonassociates.net
@simonandi
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