Blue Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy is the framework urging firms to trade the bloody competition of existing markets for uncontested market space: a blue ocean. Its core tool is value innovation, lowering cost and raising customer value at once by eliminating, reducing, raising or creating industry factors. Cirque du Soleil, fusing circus and theatre, is the canonical example. The criticism is substantial: the success stories are selected in hindsight, failed ocean-seekers stay out of view, and new markets rarely remain as uncontested as promised. As a creative search heuristic it is useful; as a predictive strategy the evidence is thin.

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