How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant W. Chan Kirn & R. Mauborgne Harvard Business School Press (2005) 240 Pages, Hardcover, $27.95

For readers concerned with matters of business strategy and, in particular, with competitor analysis and market positioning, Chan Kim and Mauborgne's work should be familiar indeed. The piece presently under review represents the garnering and refinement of over a decade of collaborative research hitherto published in the top journals in both strategy and international business, and that is pitched squarely at the practicing manager. Based on the study of more than one hundred and fifty "strategic moves" (managerial decisions and actions delivering products/services that opened and captured new, untapped/uncontested market space or "blue oceans") in more than thirty wide-ranging industries, the authors argue that extant work on business strategy is misguidedly focused on "red oceans" or the savage, zero-sum competition for share in known and shrinking market space. In accounting for the roots of competitive advantage, they argue that it is the aforementioned strategic moves, rather than company or industry characteristics, that are the crucial analytical units. In this context, firms' strategic focus should shift from competitors to "alternatives" (goods/services with the same purpose but with different functions and forms), and from customers to "noncustomers" of the industry in which it resides. Utilizing their example of Cirque du Soleil to illustrate this point, the latter achieved rapid growth in a short time by breaking down market boundaries by focusing their creative attention on alternative market offerings to circuses (e.g. theater), but also by focusing on noncustomers (e.g. adult theater customers).

Their central thesis, then, is that successful firms like Cirque du Soleil or casella Wine's [yellow tail] are 'Value innovators" who look beyond the traditional Porterian structural/environmental determinism and make the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for customers and the company alike with "market-creating business offerings"; by successfully pursuing differentiation and low cost simultaneously, breaking the traditional value-cost tradeoff. They achieve this by radically reconstructing buyer value attributes, asking four fundamental questions; the first, 'Which of the attributes that the industry takes for granted should be eliminated?' and the second, 'Which should be reduced well below the industry's standard?' allow an insight into how firms might reduce cost. Further, 'Which attributes should be raised well above the industry's standard?' and 'Which should be created that the industry has never offered?' allow firms to lift customer value and grow new demand. To utilize an example from one of then* earlier works, that of Southwest Airlines, the latter created untapped market space in the guise of short-haul air travel by eliminating meals, in-flight films, designated seats, multiple seating classes from first to economy, membership in an airline reservation system, central airports, and hub-and-spoke route system, radically reducing their costs. Simultaneously, they created the concept of frequent point-to-point flights, with fares often 60 percent below competitors', plastic reusable boarding passes, airports in small cities or smaller, less-congested airports in larger cities and 15-minute gate turnarounds (against 35 minutes for the average carrier). By focusing on the key discriminating factors leading consumers to fly or else drive their cars, and eliminating or reducing everything else, Southwest inserted itself creatively between airlines and surface transport, thereby creating a new and highly profitable "Blue Ocean" market segment.

The book contains nine chapters in whole that are organized into three thematic parts; Conceptualization (chapters one and two), Formulation (chapters three to six), and Execution (chapters seven to nine). Notwithstanding the somewhat pithy title and the virtual barrage of often gratingly-labeled conceptual and analytical tools, frameworks and maps that seem to accompany practitioner-focused works of this nature, Chan Kim and Mauborgne's message is ultimately compelling. The present reviewer has much utilized the authors' ideas and novel case studies in graduate courses in both business economics and in strategic management, particularly in exploring the notion of defining competition in terms of substitute and alternative market offerings. Further, the authors exemplify all of their ideas with fresh and novel case study vignettes from a range of industries (examples of which include the US wine industry, corporate air travel, Japanese telecommunications, the US fitness industry, the insulin industry, and the Mexican cement industry) that practitioners and students alike can easily relate to. In summary, the volume should be of interest not only to strategic management practitioners, but also to teachers of business strategy, marketing, competitive analysis, and business economics.

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EastPay to Offer New Blue Ocean Payments Strategy Service

Blue Ocean Strategy Articles : EastPay to Offer New Blue Ocean Payments Strategy Service

RICHMOND, Va. -- EastPay is introducing a new Blue Ocean value-added service to its members that will allow them to roll out cash management services to business customers, or to expand existing cash management services. To launch this new service, EastPay has hired Steve Vaglio as Senior Vice President, Payments Strategy.

"Receivable and disbursement payment options have become more important to the service offerings of our members," said Norman Robinson, AAP, CTP, and President of EastPay. "Understanding those options is difficult and complex. Financial institutions struggle with investigating all of the potential cash management services available."

Tony Gautney, CCM, SVP, First Southern Bank, Boca Raton, FL and EastPay Vice Chairman said, "EastPay can now assist members in evaluating vendors, as well as with operational, marketing, pricing, and training issues. Even once these services are implemented there is often the need to fine-tune or reposition the service. EastPay can simplify what can be a very daunting process."

In this new position, Steve will round out a set of payment-related services already provided by EastPay, including ACH auditing and consulting services. Some of the cash management products that will be supported through this service will be:

* Disbursements: ACH Origination; Card Payments; Controlled Disbursements; Image Services

* Receivables: Remote Capture; Lockbox; Image Services; Merchant Services

* Information Services: Account Reconcilement

The delivery of these services can be on whatever level a financial institution desires:

* Strategy Assessment: Assisting members in identifying areas of potential expansion or revenue, based on customer needs; determining whether to provide services inhouse, or outsource; or simply developing a business case.

* Project Management: Supporting the institution's staff in managing the implementation of a new project, or in making improvements to existing products or operations to achieve the desired objective.

* Product Management: Assisting in determining the target market, service features and functions, pricing, contract language, risk management, billing, and marketing collateral materials necessary to a successful rollout.

"Providing this service to our members has been a long-term Blue Ocean strategic plan of the Board and will help EastPay truly become recognized as 'Your Payments Information Resource'," said Mr. Robinson.

Steve brings a wealth of background and experience in these areas, having been a senior manager in cash management for 25 years. His background has been in product management, operations, and technology. His experience has been with several financial institutions, including Bank of America and First Fidelity Bank, now part of Wachovia Bank.

Steve is well known to EastPay, having served as Bank of America's representative to its Board of Directors, including a term as Chairman of the Board. Steve will work in EastPay's Charlotte, North Carolina office.

ABOUT EASTPAY: EastPay is the Southeast's premier Regional Payments Association, providing over 800 financial institutions and businesses in Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida with electronic payments consulting, education, publications, and ACH audit services, as well as payments strategy support. As accredited experts on the operating rules of the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network, EastPay is a trade association that helps organizations take advantage of the opportunities and avoid the risk presented by the phenomenal growth of electronic payments. EastPay is a Regional Payments Association member of NACHA - The Electronic Payments Association.

COPYRIGHT 2007 Business Wire
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

Source: Blue Ocean Strategy, Business Strategy information at findarticles.com

The Limitations Of Blue Oceans Strategies And An Unexpected Alternative

Blue Ocean Strategy Articles : The Limitations Of Blue Oceans Strategies And An Unexpected Alternative

The vast red and blue oceans of the marketing world tsunamied into our awareness and vocabulary a few years ago, when two INSEAD professors, W.Chan Kim and Rene Mauborgne, claimed that competition can be rendered irrelevant.

Their book, Blue Ocean Strategy, heralded the news to marketing managers and CEOs all over the world: after years and years of surviving in red bloody oceans, swarming with murderous competitors, finally there's a better alternative!

In red oceans, executives captivated in a conception-cage of competitive strategy business thinking, have been rivaling head to head with their competition over the same consumer segments doing exactly the same things, only better and cheaper in order to offer customers a better cost/value tradeoff in order to convince them to stick around with their wallets open. In the process, these executives wore out their own companies and their profits were ground to dust. Now, the Blue Ocean enunciation, based on long years of research, claimed that both serenity and profitability can be amply found in Value Innovation, which creates, via a new business model and new products, a "Virgin territory devoid of me-too brand propositions and cutthroat pricing" (BusinessWeek).

Let us consider an example of a company which supposedly followed Kim and Mauborgne's Blue Ocean strategy:

Casella Wines, an Australian winery, decided to "de-complex" wine for the sake of intimidated unpretentious adults. It decided to create new wine drinking rules, and to make a fun wine, sweet and fruity, to suit any taste. The chosen brand name was Yellow Tail; the label was highly recognizable, the selection targeted the mainstream (Chardonnay and Red Shiraz), and the price just above budget: $6.99.

The result? The brand quickly became the number one imported wine into the USA, without a promotional campaign or consumer advertising. In just two years it emerged as the fastest-growing brand in the histories of both the Australian and US wine industries. Casella Wines even grew the overall market. Genuinely Impressive.

The big "Blue Ocean" promise took over the business world, but also aroused a great wave of criticism, partially justified; with the strongest claim being that the text carries no novelty beyond Ted Levitt's old differentiation directive, remolded with the trendy belief in the importance of innovation.

Personally, I think differently. First, Kim and Mauborgne talked about differentiation and innovation on the levels of strategy and business model, while most traditional occupation with differentiation and innovation has been focused on the level of products or brands. But more importantly, the Blue Ocean thinkers honed a major observation regarding the nature of business competition.

In sports competitions, competitors are compelled to completely defined rules while striving to achieve a superior result. In the business world, competitors also strive to achieve a better result of the same type: a larger share of the consumer's wallet. However, the competition does not restrict participants to any specific actions. The contrary is true.

And yet, it is in this aspect exactly that Kim and Mauborgne are wrong and misleading, upon claiming that competition can be rendered irrelevant. Even in the case of Yellow Tail, which obviously turned many non-wine-consumers to active buyers, clearly when consumers are buying Yellow Tail they are buying other types of alcohol that they would have purchased in its absence. The prospect of raising demand infinitely simply does not exist. This is where the Blue Ocean Strategy finds its limitation. Since you always take sales away from someone (whether a direct or an indirect competitor), and being that you will always be surrounded by businesses striving to increase sales, once your Blue Ocean Strategy works, sooner or later someone will copy or even improve your already successful model.

One must credit the writers that they are not blind to this fact. In an interview with W. Chan Kim posted on Business Innovation Insider on October 2005, he said very openly: "After a while the first copycats will arise, competing on the very same value points as you. That's completely normal; however it forces the entrepreneur to find a new strategy every several years."

In other words, the most brilliant BOS will grant you with no more than a limited, relatively peaceful, period of time. Does this mellow promise of the BOS express maximal possible achievement? Naturally, you can guess that my answer is no. Introducing the Unfair Advantage. An UA is a situation in which you become unique and adored by your customers, while competitors do not imitated you.

Beyond the not so simple challenge of creating a differentiated value innovation, the critical question is: what can be done which is immune from imitations? Apparently the principle is simple as it is unexpected: when your innovation and differentiation are improving on benefits considered central to customers in your industry, fully expected from a product or service such as yours (I call it On-Core Differentiation), then sooner or later imitations will mushroom, no matter how big your innovation. Why? Exactly because the benefit is considered relevant by your consumer. On the other hand, when your innovation and differentiation offer further benefits which are not considered relevant in your category (I call it Off-Core Differentiation), there is a good chance of avoiding imitations, even after years of success.

This kind of differentiation, when it manages to excite consumers, is that which creates the Unfair Advantage. Why will you not be imitated? Because what you offer is perceived by your competitors as weird, irrelevant, or overly-unique, such which is pointless to imitate. This is the big secret. This is your competitor's trap.

There are two main types of Off Core Differentiation: Imported Benefits, and Peculiar Particularity. In many cases a combination of the two is being used.

The first type happens when you import a benefit which is important to consumers in other product categories, but are not considered relevant in yours. Umpqua Bank turned its branches into a unique combination of packaged goods stores, and community clubs, in order to provide consumers with benefits of a pleasant buying experience as well as a social neighborhood hangout, to which they go on a regular basis for various activities and social gatherings. Umpqua is today the largest independent bank in the Pacific Northwest, and it grew in 15 years from four to 120 branches, which is an imaginary growth rate in the banking industry. And the best part is that no one even tried to imitate them.

The other type is a unique style which is not typical to the category. Take Toblerone, the Swiss chocolate brand. It has been producing its triangular alp-summit look alike chocolate bars since 1908. No one has imitated them. The Body Shop chain has grown to 2,000 shops in 50 states, to become the second largest cosmetics chain in the world. It is an active crusader fighting for environment protection, underprivileged rights, human rights and animal rights, worldwide. It fine tunes its acquisition policy, employee volunteering requirements, marketing communication budgets etc, for serving these purposes. Again, no one has imitated them.

So now you know and the choice is yours: a Blue Ocean Strategy, or an Unfair Advantage.


Source: Blue Ocean Strategy, Business Strategy information at articlesbase.com

The Next Blue Ocean Strategy is in Personal Franchises

Blue Ocean Strategy Articles : The Next Blue Ocean Strategy is in Personal Franchises

Blue Ocean Strategy by Chan Kim suggests the entrepreneurs and innovative start ups identify uncontested market spaces and render their competition irrelevant. The principle behind Blue Ocean Strategy is that all markets can be divided into red oceans and blue oceans. Red Oceans are characterized or stereo typed - who they are, who the customer is, who the vendors are, and what the product being sold is. Blue Oceans are not and an open market. The author states that successful businesses are either low-cost providers or niche-players. In our article we propose finding your business and offering value and lower cost.

Red Ocean
One of the industries we are seeing the biggest impact in is Personal Franchises. Many see them as MLM's, Network Marketing or Direct Sales. The old Amway's from 30 years ago. People like us didn't like the way the businesses were marketed, the way the products were pushed or the way some people were taught to present the opportunities. Not to mention hiding many of the ways people in that business profited!

Blue Ocean
Personal Franchising using integrity, honesty and people to bring superior products to market while allowing families to create a sustainable income based on their passion and what they love to do not what they have to do.

A Red Ocean sells to the same customers, buys from the same suppliers, makes the same thing, there is intense competition and thinner and thinner profit margins. The book suggests the following to create a Blue Ocean industry, product or service-

Seek Uncontested Market Space
The book suggests to direct ventures towards uncontested market space. Market niches where ventures are positioned so uniquely that competition is rendered irrelevant.

Create Value
To do that requires "Value Innovation." Value innovation is recognizing the values and desires behind the spending choices people make, and then restructuring enterprise resources to provide a superior alternative that is still consistent with those values.

Their example, when the theatrical circus, Cirque Du Soleil, began the circus industry was at an all time low. Rather than just putting together another circus, the founders of Cirque Du Soleil tried to understand the overall value system of people who go out for the evening. Why do they choose the theater or the movies, as opposed to the circus? The founders of Cirque Du Soleil found that people viewed the circus as low-brow, juvenile, even crude event.

So in putting together Cirque Du Soleil, the founders eliminated the three rings, presented the entertainment within a more sophisticated theatrical narrative, and got rid of the animals.

By combining the most valued elements of the theater and the circus, and eliminating the negatives of both, the founders of Cirque Du Soleil were able to create a superior alternative. An alternative which neither circus nor theater can directly contend with.

Identify Untapped Demand
Understanding your customers and potential customers often releases untapped demand. Often, obstacles to purchase can be easily removed. People right now are very focused on creating additional income. People are tired of going to jobs each day that they dislike and offer only poor compensation and uncertainty. They want the respect of being business professionals with some sort of security. They will not let this economy oppress them, they will no longer be reliant on the rich who get richer and take the tax advantages of business ownership only for themselves.

Position Yourself Along the Emotional-Commodity Axis
So given the necessity of identifying uncontested market spaces, where competitors are rendered irrelevant, we see that we must pursue value innovation. Recognizing the value system behind people's market choices and structuring resources into a superior, innovative alternative. For example, products are generally seen as either having an emotional appeal or of being merely commodities. By shifting a product's position along this emotional-commodity metric, we often find the uncontested market space we're looking for.

Focus on Buyers and Users
Your relationship with your customers will make or break your business. You want to build strong, long lasting relationships with your customers. To do so, you need to be able to engage them in discussions about their needs and your products or services without you being argumentative or feeling defensive.

The best Blue Ocean Strategy for the average person is a Personal Franchise. Personal Franchises offer some of the most creative and superior products on the market today.


Cash Flow Potentials - Find Your Personal Franchise


It's not exactly new; business has been done out of homes for decades. But the past 5 years have seen a revival in home businesses because of the Internet, and now between two and three million people in the United States are running businesses out of their homes. Cash Flow Potentials was created to empower people to create the ideal business for their family at home. Cash Flow Potentials founding principle is to consistently provide resources, information, and support to all families so that they can find their financial freedom to enjoy life, as they want. You can be one of the thousands of individuals realizing their dreams. The Internet provides a unique opportunity for business. Cash Flow Potentials provides the research, training and support. Home businesses are poised for explosive growth, and with that growth comes the responsibility to embrace the incredible diversity of different businesses and personalities.

Zyzyrgy - Introduce Your Product as a Franchisor


The personal franchising industry today is growing rapidly due to slow economic growth and a tough global economy. In order to increase cash flow for the average family, people are adopting radical strategies and alternatives. Angel investors are looking for the high returns they are accustomed to from the high tech industry and biotechnology and are turning to Personal Franchise opportunities.

Families are under extreme stress with the current economy. Many Americans are seeking a meaningful change in their life and want sustainable additional income. A part time or full time career as a Personal Franchise Owner provides the solution. The number of Americans starting home businesses has been expanding rapidly. The profession has seen strong sustained growth worldwide in recent years.

Source: Blue Ocean Strategy, business strategy at articlesbase.com

Blue Ocean Strategy: Tipping Point Leadership in Action

Blue Ocean Strategy: Tipping Point Leadership in Action

Continuing with our Blue Ocean Strategy Basics series, over the course of the next four weeks we will continue to highlight examples of Tipping Point Leadership and the Four Organizational Hurdles to Strategy Execution. Once an overview of each example or ‘hurdle’ is published, it is made accessible through the Blue Ocean Strategy Basics archive of this site. For the next entry in our series on Tipping Point Leadership and the Four Organizational Hurdles to Strategy Execution, we turn to pages 148 – 149 of the book Blue Ocean Strategy (co-authored by Professor W. Chan Kim and Professor Renée Mauborgne).

Blue Ocean Strategy: Tipping Point Leadership in Action

Consider the New York City Police Department (NYPD), which executed a blue ocean strategy in the 1990s in the public sector. When Bill Bratton was appointed police commissioner of New York City in February 1994, the odds were stacked against him to an extent few executives ever face. In the early 1990s, New York City was veering toward anarchy. Murders were at an all-time high. Muggings, Mafia hits, vigilantes, and armed robberies filled the daily headlines. New Yorkers were under siege. But Bratton’s budget was frozen….

yet in less than two years and without an increase in his budget, Bratton turned New York City into the safest large city in the United States. He broke out of the red ocean with a blue ocean policing strategy that revolutionized U.S. policing as it was then known. Between 1994 and 1996, the organization won as “profits” jumped: Felony crime fell 39 percent, murders 50 percent, and theft 35 percent. “Customers” won: Gallup polls reported that public confidence in the NYPD leaped from 37 percent to 73 percent. And employees won: Internal surveys showed job satisfaction in the NYPD reaching an all-time high. As one patrolman put it, “We would have marched to hell and back for that guy.” Perhaps most impressively, the changes have outlasted its leader, implying a fundamental shift in the organizational culture and strategy of the NYPD. Even after Bratton’s departure in 1996, crime rates have continued to fall.

Few corporate leaders face organizational hurdles as steep as Bratton did in executing a break from the status quo. And still fewer are able to orchestrate the type of performance leap that Bratton achieved under any organizational conditions, let alone those as stringent as he encountered. Even Jack Welch needed some ten years and tens of millions of dollars of restructuring and training to turn GE into a powerhouse.

Moreover, defying conventional wisdom, Bratton achieved these breakthrough results in record time with scarce resources while lifting employee morale, creating a win-win for all involved. Nor was this Bratton’s first strategic reversal. It was his fifth, with each of the others also achieved despite his facing all four hurdles that managers consistently claim limit their ability to execute blue ocean strategy: the cognitive hurdle that blinds employees from seeing that radical change is necessary; the resource hurdle that is endemic in firms; the motivational hurdle that discourages and demoralizes staff; and the political hurdle of internal and external resistance to change.

The man who baked his way to Blue Oceans

Blue Ocean Strategy Articles : The man who baked his way to Blue Oceans

We were recently tipped to an inspiring story about Johnlu Koa, a Philippine man who, using Blue Ocean Strategy-like thinking, is literally baking his way to success. Today, with over 36 The French Baker outlets in the Philippines, his story highlights the effectiveness of Blue Ocean-like thinking, and also demonstrates that creating Blue Ocean market space is not a static achievement — but rather a dynamic process — as evidenced in Koa’s next creation, Lartizan. What key principles of BOS do you recognize in his example?

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

Although Johnlu admits that there is competition all over the place, he remains undeterred and has once again put the Blue Ocean Strategy to the test with his new baby -- Lartizan.

While Honey Bread still exists, now managed by a younger brother and catering to small bakeshops and entrepreneurs, The French Baker serves the broad C, B and A markets, Johnlu says there remains a segment that is untapped -- the high or triple A market that Lartizan hopes to tap.

“I saw this trend seven to eight years ago, we would go back to basics and nature. This started in Europe, spread to the US now in Asia. There is an untapped, unserved market,” he says.

The bakery specializes in sour dough -- a unique bread popular in Europe that does not use chemicals and artificial flavors. The name is a play on the l’artisan, meaning the artisan in French.

“In any business or idea or challenge, you find an opening. In the case of Honey Bread, the opportunity was in the delivery time -- nobody wanted to deliver in the wee hours of the morning because at that time people were doing well, the economy was good. People were comfortable,” he says.

Johnlu says that with Lartizan, he addresses that segment of the market that can afford P150 for a loaf of bread.

(The loaf bread in the market these days range from about P40 to P56 per loaf).

“Instead of trying to get a market share of my competitors, I would rather serve a market that is not being served. This with the growing wellness awareness,” he says.

Defying Conventional Wisdom: Enterprising Snail

Blue Ocean Strategy Articles : Defying Conventional Wisdom: Enterprising Snail

Blue Ocean Strategy is all about challenging conventional wisdom – questioning taken-for-granted assumptions, and overstepping industry boundaries. It’s a frame of mind of continuously questioning and searching for a different angle and fresh perspective. You can draw inspiration from everyday life, and train your mind to have a discerning view of the world around you. Consider the following bit of comic insight as an example of challenging conventional wisdom.

Defying Conventional Wisdom: Enterprising Snail

Snapshot from the animal kingdom: As snails grow in size, they abandon their shells and seek bigger empty shells to move into. Going through the process repeatedly, could it ever occur to an enterprising snail that there is a real business opportunity in this? It could collect a selection of various size shells and lease them to fellow snails in exchange for food or protection, thereby creating a primitive barter system – which could then evolve into a sophisticated snail economy.

Blue Ocean Strategy, Tipping Point Leadership and the Four Organizational Hurdles to Strategy Execution

Blue Ocean Strategy, Tipping Point Leadership and the Four Organizational Hurdles to Strategy Execution

Continuing with our Blue Ocean Strategy Basics series, over the course of the next five weeks we will highlight Tipping Point Leadership and the Four Organizational Hurdles to Strategy Execution. Once an overview of each ‘hurdle’ is published it is made accessible through the Blue Ocean Strategy Basics archive of this site. For our introduction to Tipping Point Leadership and the Four Organizational Hurdles to Strategy Execution we turn to pages 147 – 148 of the book Blue Ocean Strategy (co-authored by Professor W. Chan Kim and Professor Renée Mauborgne).

Blue Ocean Strategy, Tipping Point Leadership and the Four Organizational Hurdles to Strategy Execution

Once a company has developed a blue ocean strategy with a profitable business model, it must execute it. The challenge of execution exists, of course, for any strategy. Companies, like individuals, often have a tough time translating thought into action whether in red or blue oceans. But compared with red ocean strategy, blue ocean strategy represents a significant departure from the status quo. It hinges on a shift from convergence to divergence in value curves at lower costs. That raises the execution bar.

Managers have assured us that the challenge is steep. They face four hurdles. One is cognitive: waking employees up to the need for a strategic shift. Red oceans may not be the paths to future profitable growth, but they feel comfortable to people and may have even served an organization well until now, so why rock the boat?

The second hurdle is limited resources. The greater the shift in strategy, the greater it is assumed are the resources needed to execute it. But resources were being cut, and not raised, in many of the organizations we studied.

Third is motivation. How do you motivate key players to move fast and tenaciously to carry out a break from the status quo? That will take years, and managers don’t have that kind of time.

The final hurdle is politics. As one manager put it, “In our organization you get shot down before you stand up.”

Although all companies face different degrees of these hurdles, and many may face only some subset of the four, knowing how to triumph over them is key to attenuating organizational risk. This brings us to the fifth principle of blue ocean strategy: Overcome key organizational hurdles to make blue ocean strategy happen in action.

To achieve this effectively, however, companies must abandon perceived wisdom on effecting change. Conventional wisdom asserts that the greater the change, the greater the resources and time you will need to bring about results. Instead, you need to flip conventional wisdom on its head using what we call tipping point leadership. Tipping point leadership allows you to overcome these four hurdles fast and at low cost while winning employees’ backing in executing a break from the status quo.