Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space
Creating new market spaces rather than competing in existing ones
"The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition."
— W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne
My Review
Blue Ocean Strategy is niche partitioning in business language. Creating uncontested market space is finding an ecological niche where competition is minimal. The value innovation framework maps directly to how organisms differentiate to reduce competitive overlap.
Why It Matters
Kim and Mauborgne provide practical tools for niche partitioning. Their strategic canvas is essentially a niche differentiation map, showing how to position relative to competitors.
Key Ideas
- Blue oceans are uncontested market spaces; red oceans are bloody competitive battles
- Value innovation creates new demand rather than fighting for existing demand
- Strategic canvas maps competitive factors for differentiation
- Eliminate-Reduce-Raise-Create grid for value innovation
How It Connects to This Framework
Book 1 Chapter 8's discussion of niche partitioning draws directly on Blue Ocean thinking. The competitive avoidance strategies throughout use this framework.
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The full Biology of Business book explores these concepts in depth with practical frameworks.