3.6

Strategy Canvas / Blue Ocean

A plot of a category's competing factors against the level each player offers on them, used to force raise, reduce, eliminate and create decisions.

Kim & Mauborgne — value innovation HBR (1997), canvas HBR (2002), book (2005)

What it does

Plots the category's competing factors and forces a raise / reduce / eliminate / create decision on each. Its worth is dragging product debate off the feature list.

When it breaks

Examples are selected after the fact and there is no evidence on the method's forward success rate. Uncontested space is frequently uncontested because there is no demand in it.

Case

Cirque du Soleil cut animals and star performers, added theatrical narrative, and drew 150m+ spectators in 300+ cities in under twenty years. It then filed for creditor protection under Canada's CCAA in June 2020 with about US$900m of debt, with Chapter 15 recognition in the US — not Chapter 11, as it is usually reported.

Bloomberg Law — Cirque du Soleil files Chapter 15 ↗

Diagram — not yet drawn

The canonical value curve, with a second faint curve added: demand at each factor level. Where the blue-ocean curve rises over a zero-demand factor, mark it.

In the wild

Unvetted · not part of the tier assessment

What has been written about this tool in the last twelve months. Machine-retrieved and unchecked — everything above this line was checked.

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