Blue Ocean Strategy

As stated by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne in the Harvard Business Review, within the business world, there are two distinct types of market spaces that a company can exist in: Red Oceans or Blue Oceans. While Red Oceans include all those industries that already exist and encompass the known market space, Blue Oceans include all that market space that has yet to be filled with new industries and businesses. Blue Oceans represent a valuable opportunity of growth and success for those companies and ventures willing to follow a Blue Ocean Strategy.


Red Ocean Strategies focuses on:

• Competing only within current industries and existing market space

• Outdoing their competition in order to increase market share
• Exploiting demand in a market that is already saturated with competitors
• Attempting to make the trade-off of creating high value products or services while keeping production costs low
• Aligning a business to follow a strategy focused only on low cost or on differentiation - not both factors together

While it is possible to be successful with a Red Ocean Strategy, it is a feat that has become increasingly difficult with decreasing profit margins as those existing markets become further saturated with competing entities. The merits of a Blue Ocean Strategy far outweigh those found within a Red Ocean Strategy. Creating a Blue Ocean for you to conduct your business in serves to increase a ventures chances of sustaining success and excellent performance.

Blue Ocean Strategies focus on:

• Generating uncontested market space through the creation of businesses or industries that do not currently exist
• Making the competition irrelevant due to the fact that a Blue Ocean venture will be the first to enter that market space
• Creating new demand instead of fighting other companies for already existing and scarce demand
• Not choosing between either high value products and services and low cost
• Aligning a business to follow a strategy that pursues both high-value differentiation and low cost

Bobalew Ventures aims to invest in opportunities that exemplify these points, as well as the other factors that go into creating a Blue Ocean Strategy.