Can your business communicate under water?

Can your business communicate under water?

Blue Ocean Strategy: A key utensil in the Blue Ocean Strategy toolset is the Six Path Framework, which allows for the exploration of business strategy from six distinct perspectives, leading to the discovery of blue ocean market space. One of the perspectives, ‘Strategic Groups’ tells us that in most industries, all the fundamental strategic differences among customers are captured by a small number of clusters called “strategic groups.” Blue Oceans can be created by challenging these delineations or by establishing new strategic groups.

Consider the example of scuba diving. Scuba divers make use of hand signals to communicate basic information under water, such as “I am low on air,” “Stay together,” or “Look over there.” But the extent of underwater communication is greatly limited, which may deter more social, talkative adventure seekers from taking the plunge.

Suppose a dive shop wanted to reach out to the previously overlooked strategic group of customers: Chatty divers. They could attempt to accomplish this by significantly expanding the underwater hand signal repertoire with an array of new expressions such as “You look great in those flippers,” or “That grouper reminds me of my mother-in-law,” etc. In the process, this pioneering dive shop would overstep traditional industry definitions of target customers and establish a new strategic group--well on its way towards a Blue Ocean market space.