Moving Your Business Ahead Using the Blue Ocean Strategy

Businesses are always looking for competitive advantages in order to get ahead. Yet, what if a business was able to find a niche where there was no competition in the first place? Would it not be an easier place to earn money? The Blue Ocean Strategy helps your business explode into another realm by establishing new roles and mechanisms for success. Let’s take a glance at what the Blue Ocean Strategy encompasses and what makes it such a vital tool for enterprises wishing to succeed.

Avoiding Competition

Competition is often one of the scariest aspects to deal with for businesses. Constantly having to look over your shoulder can become a nuisance and start to hinder organizational progress. Businesses looking to push forward will have to take a glance at the Blue Ocean Strategy. What makes this strategy so special?

The example often given alongside this strategy comes in the form of Cirque du Soleil. This enterprise could have easily gone into their market and started targeting children. Most circuses and related shows of this kind relate with children and are made to appease this age group. Yet, Cirque du Soleil moved ahead of this and made a separate niche. Using the same concepts, they began targeting young adults and adults with this otherworldly event involving robust acrobatics. Adults would now be able to enjoy the same, magical fun their children would have at circuses.

This concept was a major hit. Cirque Du Soleil not only won over the adult’s market, they took over the children’s market to boot. How did this happen? Well, who would end up paying for the children? It was the parents and Cirque Du Soleil created a product that appeased their paying customers. In the past, adults could not go to the “circus” and have fun. All they would do is watch their children enjoy the show as they sulked in the corner.

A business has to aim to go into this blue ocean (no competition). Red oceans are those niches that have endless competition and become impossible to conquer.

New Demand

Many businesses will get stuck in a rut because of demand. Your business does not have to go through these issues, if the right approach is used. There is a lot of demand out and about that has to be fulfilled, yet is not even being looked at.

Each niche has its own untapped demand. This is the basis of the Blue Ocean Strategy. It is the enterprise’s main goal to ensure these demands are met by their business and not others. You have to look through the market’s requirements (perhaps take surveys) and try finding that specific demand that remains untapped.

Sometimes, it does not even have to be a drastic shift in focus. You could simply start implementing solutions abroad that might not be targeted at the moment. Perhaps, all the competitors are trying to gobble up the local target market? Yet, you could take your business into international waters and grab the entire market abroad. These are decisions that are dependent on your business and its specific niche.

Race against Yourself

Many businesses start focusing on others and forget about themselves.  The Blue Ocean Strategy teaches entrepreneurs to begin concentrating on their own race. The enterprise’s personal goals, visions, and dreams start taking priority. The competition becomes irrelevant and the race becomes about your own business.

The goal shifts from taking up the majority of the target market to focusing on maintaining all of the new developed target audience. These are subtle changes that can lead to impressive profit margins and increasing demand.

Concluding Thoughts

The Blue Ocean Strategy is considered as an academically sound theory and is taught in business intelligence degree programs. It has proven to work for some of the world’s leading businesses and continues to be implemented.  Some of the finest theorists respect this theory and believe it is logical and sound. Your business plans should start gearing towards finding blue oceans instead of drowning in the red oceans.