This is how Barnes and Noble elevated their offer beyond the fare of the ‘corner bookstore’.  In ‘Blue Ocean strategy’, authors Kim and Mauborgne describe a six step process to define and execute Blue Ocean strategy:

Redefine your market boundaries

The core thinking and conversation tool is the Strategy Canvas for charting the criteria on which competition is based and for planning the next move.  In this step they describe six different ways in which the strategy canvas can be used to redefine the boundaries in your market.  The illustration shows how Intuit compared the profile for personal financial software with the humble pencil to define a set of criteria in which they were unique.

blue ocean strategy

Strategy Canvass for Intuit

 

Focus on the ‘Big Picture’, not the detailed numbers

Your current strategy process may driving you back into a red ocean.  The visual, interactive process allows you to focus on new ideas.  The first step allows the strategy team to compare their understanding of your current offer and how it stacks up in the market.  There is step in which the team go out and collect, for themselves, real experience on the current offer and create strategy canvasses for new offers.  They compare their finding and agree an approach which is communicated with the company.

Reach beyond your existing demand

How do you resist the tendency to augment your offer to retain and expand your existing customers only?  Adding features and finer segmentation only leads back to red oceans.  The tools in this step focus attention of categories of non-customers for possible target segments.

Define your offering following the right sequence

Once you have agreed the strategy canvas describing the blue ocean you have chosen there is a specific, order in which to create your business model.

Overcome the organisational hurdles to execute your Blue Ocean Strategy

Implementing your blue ocean strategy and profitable business model may incur significant resistance in your organisation, especially if you have decided on a significant shift from the current offer.  There are four predictable obstacles.  The solution offered for each of these hinges on the insight that change happens when effort is focussed on the critical mass of people or actions that exercise a disproportionate influence on performance.

Build execution into strategy

Your change will only take root when all the members of your organisation including each person in the front lines are aligned around your strategy.  You can overcome all the hurdles, but engaging the attitudes and behaviours of your staff requires fair process in which you engage your people in strategic decision making process.  You should then explain the rationale behind the final decisions made.  Finally you must make clear what you expect of everyone in the organisation in terms of goals, targets, responsibilities, rewards and penalties Each of these steps includes conversation and management tools that can be used by your business to step through the process from struggling to be heard in a crowded market place to standing as the only offer in a place where the clamour dies away into irrelevance and your offer stands alone.