Six Misconceptions about Blue Ocean Strategy

by JI Mi

Originally published in Chinese

in Guanli Xue Jia (Management Scientist), April, 2008
Translated by the author with minor adaptations

Since its initial publication in 2005, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested
Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant has become an international bestseller,
arousing huge interest among managers and business academics across the globe. Today, many
companies and public organizations are using the frameworks and tools of Blue Ocean Strategy
to pursue value innovation and achieve strategic transformation.

In China, “blue oceans” and “red oceans” have become frequently cited terms among
business executives. Press and media often report stories about blue ocean business launches. In
the meantime, there have occasionally been voices of scepticism or criticism about Blue Ocean
Strategy, which, to a large extent, stem from misinterpretations or misunderstandings of this new
and rising theory of strategy. This article seeks to identify and clarify the major misconceptions
about Blue Ocean Strategy.

Misconception 1: Blue Ocean is about new products, new technologies or diversification

beyond a company’s core business.

A new product could simply be a product extension or upgrade targeting a finer segment
of the market. A new technology could turn out to be a mismatch for the market. And a business
area that a company enters for diversification purposes could already be a red ocean of bloody
competition itself. Using “new or old” to divide and define blue oceans and red oceans could be
misleading, as it tends to push companies to pursue new things and give up existing
competencies indiscriminately while neglecting the true essence of a blue ocean strategic move.

In fact, blue oceans are not about extension of existing product lines, nor about
technology innovations per se. Blue oceans are created through looking across existing

1
boundaries of competition and reordering and recombining value elements in different markets,
thereby reconstructing market boundaries. A blue ocean strategic move normally creates
breakthroughs in value for both buyers and the company and unlocks new demand. In this sense,
value innovation is the cornerstone of Blue Ocean Strategy. In reality, blue oceans are created
with or without new technologies. For example, Motorola’s multi-billion dollar project Iridium
was a technological wonder. But as it didn’t capture what buyers truly valued, the product was
not able to unlock market demand and ended up a commercial failure. On the other hand,
companies like Starbucks and Cirque du Soleil successfully created their blue oceans of new
market space not by relying on new technologies, but through reconstructing industry boundaries
to create unprecedented buyer value. In other blue ocean strategic moves such as Sony Walkman
and Swatch, technology innovations were guided by and based on value innovation to play a key
role in creating blue oceans.

What is new about blue oceans, therefore, is the exceptional buyer value they provide.
The creation of a blue ocean of new market space is based upon reordering and reconstructing
market realities and capturing new demand, rather than founded upon preempting technological
trends in the future.

Misconception 2: Blue Ocean Strategy is a cowardly approach as it asks companies to

evade the competition.

Some scholars interpret Blue Ocean Strategy as a strategic approach that asks companies
to give up their existing businesses and switch to blue oceans. In their view, such an approach
induces companies to evade the competition and take the blue ocean shortcut, and therefore is a
speculative and cowardly approach. Theirs, however, is a complete misinterpretation of the blue
ocean strategic thinking.

Blue Ocean Strategy stresses that blue oceans and red oceans form a continuum and that
they are equally important in business practice. As managers are generally familiar with the rules
of competition in the red oceans but know little about blue oceans, the founders of Blue Ocean
Strategy focused on uncovering the strategic logic behind blue ocean strategic moves.

2
 Looking back at the history of industrial evolution, one can find that red oceans and blue
oceans take turns to dominate industrial landscapes. Oftentimes, bloody competitions in the red
oceans give rise to brilliant strategic moves that create new market space and trigger a new round
of industrial transformation. Blue oceans and Blue Ocean Strategy, therefore, are not coming out
of thin air, but are patterns distilled from real business practice.

Whereas red ocean competition can be explained by competitive strategy, industrial

transformation is a vacuum area in this school of strategy. Competitive strategy seeks to explain
corporate behaviour under given structures. According to this strategic view, industrial
transformation is determined by changes in exogenous conditions such as technological advances
or macroeconomic conditions. However, when we study the history of industrial development,
we can see that the process of industrial transformation is one of creating and re-creating
industries by micro actors. Consider, for example, how IBM created the modern computer
industry and how Apple and IBM opened the personal computers market. Indeed, when
companies reconstruct markets by looking across conventional boundaries of competition, the
old rules of competition are rendered irrelevant. Blue ocean creators therefore are entering into
an uncontested market space. In this sense, blue ocean creators, rather than evading the
competition, leave the latter far behind based on a thorough understanding of the dynamics of
competition and key competing factors in the existing market space.

In reality, a company’s business portfolio is likely to be composed of both red ocean and
blue ocean businesses. Accordingly, the company may apply Red Ocean Strategy to some
businesses and Blue Ocean Strategy to the others. When red ocean businesses can still provide
revenue and profit streams for the company, business strategies suited to the red oceans are
naturally needed. As competition gets increasingly intensified and the room for profit and growth
shrinks day by day, it becomes imperative for the company to create new sources of profitable
growth. The theoretical framework and actionable tools of Blue Ocean Strategy are created to
meet such needs.

Misconception 3: Blue Ocean Strategy is a customer-oriented strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy asks companies to shift its focus from the competition to the buyer
side. Does this mean that Blue Ocean Strategy is a customer-oriented strategy? The answer is no.

3
Blue Ocean Strategy talks about buyer value, not customer value. And buyers include both a
company’s customers and its noncustomers.

The notion of “customer orientation” or “customer is king” is nothing new. In fact,

companies either try out of their ways to meet customer needs or actively guide such needs.
Either way, they tend to focus on existing customers of the company and the industry. Market
surveys normally target such customer groups. Consequentially companies make adjustments
and modifications over existing value elements without gaining insights into how to reconstruct
market boundaries.

Blue Ocean Strategy, on the other hand, tries to discover the paths for reconstructing
market boundaries and creating new demand through exploring the industry’s noncustomers.
Consider, how did Southwest Airlines create a blue ocean of short-haul air travel? If the
company had focused its attention merely on existing customers, it would have benchmarked
other airline companies in providing better lounges, better food, and more hubs in big cities. In
reality, Southwest Airlines looked at the industry’s noncustomers, i.e., those travellers who chose
ground transportations over air travel. In doing so, it found that what travellers truly valued was
the flexibility and low costs of ground travel. Based on this insight, Southwest Airlines came up
with a value curve that combined the flexibility and economy of car or bus travel with the speed
of air travel, thereby providing breakthroughs in value for both the existing customers of
commercial airlines and ground travellers.

Blue Ocean Strategy, therefore, is not about customer-orientation, but about creating new
demand and capturing the mass of the target buyers based on noncustomer insights. Evidently,
the principle behind Blue Ocean Strategy is totally different from that of market segmentation in
traditional strategic thinking. Instead of looking for differences that divide customers, Blue
Ocean Strategy focuses on the commonalities that unite buyers. Rather than trying to maximize
market share through segmentation, Blue Ocean Strategy seeks to consolidate demand through
desegmentation.

Misconception 4: Blue Ocean is only wishful thinking, as any blue ocean created usually
turns red rapidly

4
 Some people comment that although Blue Ocean Strategy depicts a very promising
market prospect, it is more often than not wishful thinking or a flash in the pan, as in the world
today where technologies are highly advanced and competition ever-intensified, any new product,
once launched, will soon be imitated and copied. This is also one of the major mental blocks that
hinder companies’ moves towards blue oceans.

In fact, those “blue oceans” that turn red rapidly are usually not truly blue oceans. As
mentioned above, people often mistake new products, new technologies, or new business
launches for blue oceans, while in reality they could miss the key characteristics of a blue ocean
strategic move.

Blue Ocean Strategy is in the first place a process rather than a market outcome. In this
process, companies should follow the logic and sequence of a blue ocean strategic move. To
create a blue ocean, a company should start off providing excellent utilities to the buyers. Next it
should price its product or service strategically to capture the mass of the target buyers. Once a
strategic price is determined, it is time to start from this pricing point to drive down costs in
order to obtain a sufficient profit margin. Together, unbeatable buyer utilities, an attractive price
accessible to the mass of target buyers, and a viable cost structure constitute Blue Ocean
Strategy’s built-in imitation barrier that effectively fends off imitators.

A traditional strategic approach often prices a product high at the beginning, leaving a
rather big space easily accessible to imitators and low cost players, whose entries eventually turn
the market into a red ocean. By contrast, Blue Ocean Strategy does not target high-end niche
markets. Instead it aims to capture the mass and core of the reconstructed and expanded market.
In this regard, Swatch provides another classical example. When Swatch was launched as a mass
market fashion watch, the company did not price the watch at $ 80 based on the labor and
production costs in Switzerland. Instead, it priced Swatch at $40, a price affordable to mass
market buyers. Then Swatch worked backwards to lower costs through innovations in
technology and production to finally arrive at a cost structure that ensures a lucrative margin for
the company. Although Japanese and Hong Kong watchmakers historically enjoyed a cost
advantage and were known for their quick ability to imitate, they were not able to pose a credible
challenge to the excellent buyer utilities and attractive price of Swatch. Through pursuing these
strategic steps in the right sequence, Swatch was able to create a blue ocean which it has

5
dominated over a long period of time. With an economy of scale and the word of mouth, Swatch
has attracted mass followers and loyal fans, which constitute even higher barriers to imitation.

Misconception 5: Blue Ocean Strategy is like an old wine in a new bottle, as it is just a
modified version of differentiation strategy.

Some people judge that the value innovation that Blue Ocean Strategy talks about is a
different way of saying differentiation, and therefore is an old wine in a new bottle. This notion
stems from a misunderstanding about Blue Ocean Strategy as well as one about the strategic
choice of differentiation in Porter’s competitive strategy.

The so called differentiation is one classical strategic choice in competitive strategy. In

the strategic logic of competitive strategy, a company has to make a strategic choice between
differentiation and cost leadership. The former seeks to build a premium brand through R&D and
marketing efforts, whereas the latter seeks to maximize market share with a low cost offering. To
competitive strategists, a company has to choose between these two strategic paths, as
differentiation can only be achieved at a higher cost.

Competitive strategy summarizes the rules of the game in the red oceans correctly.
However, as competition becomes more and more intensified in the red oceans and as demand
stops increasing and even begins to shrink, the prospects for growth and profitability become
dim. Take the example of the North American Airlines industry. Various airline companies
competed in providing better onboard catering and ground facilities and services only to end up
with higher cost structures that drove many airline companies into losses or even bankruptcy.

Value innovation as proposed by Blue Ocean Strategy seeks to point a new way out for
these troubled companies. Blue Ocean Strategy is not about making a trade-off between
differentiation and low cost, but about breaking the trade-off between the two. To achieve this,
one needs to look across conventional boundaries of competition and reorder and reconstruct key
factors of competition in different markets. Again, take the example of Southwest Airlines. It
looked across the market boundaries of commercial airlines and ground travel, eliminated and
reduced some of the factors that airline companies normally competed on, and raised and created

6
factors that buyer truly valued, thereby combining exceptional buyer value with a lower price
and allowing itself to create a distinctive brand effect and unlock huge market demand.

The simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost, therefore, is what separates Blue
Ocean Strategy from traditional differentiation strategy. In a way, Blue Ocean Strategy starts
with subtraction rather than addition. The four actions framework allows companies to improve
their cost structure through eliminating and reducing, on the one hand, and to provide
exceptional buyer value through raising and creating, on the other. To companies facing a
resource crunch, the process of creating a blue ocean is one that leverages existing resources to
achieve breakthroughs in value.

Misconception 6: Blue Ocean Strategy does not fit the need of Chinese companies

As Blue Ocean Strategy cites many empirical examples of Western companies, does this
mean that the theory is rooted in Western business practice and does not suit the need of Chinese
enterprises? The answer is no.

Indeed, the historical study of Blue Ocean Strategy is mainly based upon the business
practice of European and American companies over a period of more than 100 years, although
the book also cites some Asian examples. This is largely due to the fact that Western economies
have a relatively long history of market economy and industry practice, and therefore may
provide a larger sample of strategic moves for systematic comparisons and analyses.

In fact, Blue Ocean Strategy responds primarily to the needs of companies operating in a
market economy. Twenty or thirty years ago, Blue Ocean Strategy might not be applicable to
Chinese companies – at that time market economy was not established in China; many industries
were in their infancies, and the country’s domestic market was largely closed. Under these
circumstances, many companies or entrepreneurs took advantage of the economic transition and
achieved success simply by copying foreign business models or pursuing price arbitrage.
However, since China’s accession to WTO, its domestic market has become increasingly open
and liberalized, and competition gets more intensified. The low cost strategy that Chinese
companies have been relying on has exacerbated the situation to some extent. On the one hand,
companies increasingly engage in price wars in the domestic market, which has accelerated

7
product commoditization and eroded companies’ profitability. On the other, in international
markets, low priced Chinese products are increasingly subject to protectionist pressures and
under the attack of anti-dumping litigations. How can Chinese companies overcome the
difficulties and try to profit from the high value added portion of foreign trade? In the domestic
market, how can companies break away from the competition to create new space of profitability
and growth? Undoubtedly Blue Ocean Strategy provided a set of actionable frameworks and
tools for Chinese companies to face up to the challenges both at home and abroad.

In short, as a strategic thinking, Blue Ocean Strategy is derived from the rich history of
industrial development and business practice. It summarizes the underlying logic of those
strategic moves that look across conventional boundaries to achieve breakthroughs in value and
reset the rules of the game. Rather than following the blue ocean fashion blindly or rejecting it
rashly, managers need to have an accurate understanding about the theory itself and a good
mastery of its practical tools and frameworks. After all, to create blue oceans, managers need
not only enthusiasm and passion, but also a systematic analytical approach and an effective
process of strategy formulation and execution.

Dr. JI Mi is currently an Institute Executive Fellow at the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute
(IBOSI) in Fontainebleau, France. She has worked with the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy – W.
Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne on Blue Ocean Strategy since 2001. She was the official
translator of the Chinese version of Blue Ocean Strategy, which topped the bestseller list and
won numerous awards in China. Mi holds a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University, an
MBA from INSEAD, and a B.A. from China Foreign Affairs University. Before joining the IBOSI,
Mi was a professor of International Political Economy at the School of International Studies,
Peking University.