Blue Ocean Strategy is good, but Blue Sky Strategy is better. (Episode 129)
Interview with Dawid Sold, Managing Director of G4S in Serbia.
When the book Blue Ocean Strategy came out in 2004 it became a big hit with companies.
The book is built around a metaphor of the “blue ocean” and “red ocean”
In the red ocean, “companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of existing demand. Products become commodities, leading to cutthroat or ‘bloody’ competition. Hence the term red oceans.”
Instead companies should aim for the blue ocean which is “an analogy to describe the wider, deeper potential to be found in unexplored market space.
It is about creating and capturing uncontested market space, thereby making the competition irrelevant.”
Great concept, but here is the flaw: It focuses on the company and its competitors. Not the customers!
Now, let me instead introduce you to Blue Sky Strategy. Here you are focusing on using creativity and innovation to create demand by uncovering new opportunities that the customer doesn’t see.
Your focus is not on you vs your competitors. Your focus is on you and your customers.
In Blue Sky Strategy your job is to “clear the clouds of ignorance for your client.”
Clouds of ignorance are areas where customers do not see solutions that could be good for them because they are not aware of them. In this metaphor, the clouds symbolise how the customer’s ignorance is “clouding” their judgment.
I learned about Blue Sky Strategy from Dawid Sold, Managing Director of the global security solutions provider G4S in Serbia. In a previous job he was working in logistics and created a solution that would help customers (who normally shipped their products by truck) to instead start shipping with containers.
The customers were “clouded” by the idea that shipping by truck was the best solution, but Dawid and his team were able to open customers’ minds to a new solution (containers) that they were just not considering before.
Do not spend your focus, energy and attention on what your competitors are doing or how you are doing compared to them.
Instead, spend your focus, energy and attention on your customers’ potential needs, their unseen potential and the customers’ untapped opportunities.
Innovation with a customer focus. Not a competitor focus.
Innovation with a focus on solutions that the customers are not aware of yet.
Help your customers to see clearer by removing their clouds of ignorance.
Apply The Blue Sky Strategy.
15
Apr