What makes blue ocean strategy imperative in today's business environment?

What makes blue ocean strategy imperative in today's business environment?

Prospects in most established market spaces (red oceans) are shrinking steadily. Technological advances have substantially improved industrial productivity, permitting suppliers to produce an unprecedented array of products and services. And as trade barriers between nations and regions fall and information on products and prices becomes instantly and globally available, niche markets and monopoly havens are continuing to disappear. At the same time, there is little evidence of any increase in demand, at least in the developed markets, where recent United Nations statistics even point to declining populations.

The result is that in more and more industries, supply is overtaking demand. This situation has inevitably hastened the commoditization of products and services, stoked price wars, and shrunk profit margins. According to recent studies, major American brands in a variety of product and service categories have become more and more alike. And as brands become more similar, people increasingly base purchase choices on price. People no longer insist, as in the past, that their laundry detergent be Tide. Nor do they necessarily stick to Colgate when there is a special promotion for Crest, and vice versa. In overcrowded industries, differentiating brands becomes harder both in economic upturns and in downturns.

As products and services increasingly become commodities in overcrowded industries and companies’ profitable growth shrinks, companies are driven to compete principally on cost. One result of this has been the rising exodus of jobs to low cost countries like India and China as companies increasingly engage in outsourcing. While governments may seek to solve the issue of outsourcing through legislation, history teaches us that this is not a long-term solution. The long-term solution to creating jobs is in companies creating compelling products and services that take them out of the vicious cycle of commodity competition. This means moving companies’ products and services from the red ocean to the blue ocean. These issues alone make blue ocean strategy a rising imperative for CEOs.