Life isn't one big, blue ocean ~ Brand Mix

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Life isn't one big, blue ocean

I love the idea behind Blue Ocean Strategy : that you can make the competition irrelevant by capturing uncontested market space. No argument that companies should always be trying to find such opportunities and that most, caught up in red-ocean battles with competitors doing exactly the same as them, don't find or create the breathing room.

What worries me is the implication that all companies can find blue oceans all the time if they just cared to look. That just doesn't strike me as real world. For most companies, the bulk of their revenues are going to come from red oceans and they can't abandon these markets for quixotic searches for oceans of blue.

A good example of a company that has been able to be blue and red at the same time is Toyota. It's winning in the red ocean and, with the Prius, winning in a blue ocean as well.

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