The contradictory situation faced by many enterprises: the more they focus on dealing with their competitors, trying to compete and defeat them, the more similar they are to their competitors. This is the origin of homogenization.
For a long time, the traditional circus industry has taken it for granted to retain some elements and never questioned its importance. Cirque du Soleil cut off these elements, kept the necessary thrilling performances, and strung together unrelated performances with themes or story clues, with unique music and lighting, which made the performance elegant because it added artistic atmosphere and far-reaching artistic conception. Its ticket price is several times higher than the traditional circus performance, but it can be accepted by most adult audiences who are used to watching drama performances.
Value curve is the basic component of strategic layout, which graphically depicts the relative strength of an enterprise in each element of industrial competition.
Elements on the value curve need to be updated:
1) What elements are taken for granted by the industry and need to be eliminated?
2) Which elements should be reduced below the industrial standard?
3) What elements should be added to the industrial standard?
4) Which industries have never had elements to create?
Among them, new elements are often borrowed from other sex industries (users will do B when they don't do A), such as: Cirque du Soleil borrows art and themes from drama; Yellow-tailed wine is easy to drink, easy to choose, interesting and adventurous from young people's fat house drinks; Southwest Airlines draws lessons from frequent point-to-point direct flights from car travel.
1)NetJets observes the innovation after he chooses the service:
Business travelers in enterprises usually choose between airline flights and special planes because they want to avoid queuing, security checks and connecting flights, and also save costs. NetJets creatively provides the third alternative service, providing each customer with116 of the aircraft ownership, and sharing the whole aircraft with other 15 customers * * *, thus taking into account the advantages of the original two alternative services.
2) Novo Nordisk's innovation after crossing the buyer's chain:
All insulin manufacturers are trying to provide more pure insulin for doctors, with purity as the only measure. Novo Nordisk turned its attention to patients and found that it was very troublesome for patients to inject insulin, so it took the lead in developing more convenient insulin injection tools (Novo Nordisk Pen, Novo Nordisk Needle Syringe, Novo Nordisk Meter) and still dominates the market.
Market research rarely gives people new inspiration on what attracts customers, because what customers expect is what the industry teaches them. When filling out the questionnaire, they parrot back: what the industry gives them, they demand more and hope the price is cheaper.
A useful exercise is to plot the existing and planned business composition of the company on the pioneer-migrator-complacent orientation map.
Pioneer: Providing unprecedented value, the value curve is very different from competitors, and it is the most powerful source of profit growth.
Those who are content with the status quo: the value curve is basically the same as the industrial curve, belonging to the "Me too" business. Although the growth potential is small, it is usually the current money-making machine.
Migrator: somewhere between the above two, we will further develop each element on the value curve and provide more things to customers at a lower price without changing the basic shape of the value curve.
Three levels of non-customers:
The first level: the "quasi-non-customer" who lingers on your market boundary and is ready to abandon the ship at any time. Such as office workers who can only go to restaurants for lunch → fresh, healthy, affordable, fast and take-away sandwich fast food.
The second level: the "rejected non-customers" who deliberately avoid your market. Outdoor advertisements on traditional means of transport that are inefficient and rejected because of a quick glance→ outdoor advertisements on urban public facilities (such as bus stations) that have broken time to browse.
The third level: the "unexplored non-customer" who is far away from your market. The needs of these people and the business opportunities associated with them are always taken for granted to belong to other markets.
After finding blue seafood, scarcity (the difficulty of being imitated) determines the product pricing. It is difficult to imitate mainly considering two factors, one is to be protected by patents or copyrights, and the other is to have exclusive assets (such as expensive production equipment) or core competence barriers (such as unique design capabilities) that can prevent competition.
The blue ocean strategy needs to pass the following blue ocean creativity index test in turn from the formulation side to the implementation side:
1) Do your products and services have outstanding utility? Is there a convincing reason to urge the buyer to buy?
2) Can your pricing be easily borne by the buyers? (Note: it is not for low pricing, but for strategic pricing, with reference to the price of other products selected by non-customers)
3) In order to achieve this pricing, can your cost structure meet the target cost?
4) Have you solved the barriers to acceptance of employees, business partners and the public from the beginning?
1) Cognitive impairment: employees are obsessed with the comfortable situation of the Red Sea and fail to see the importance of major changes.
2) Resource obstacle: Limited resources and budget, which is a common problem of enterprises.
3) Motivation obstacle: employees who lack motivation are frustrated and demoralized.
4) Political obstacles: opposition from powerful internal and external vested interests.
Three strategic propositions are crucial to strategic success:
1) Value proposition: Develop products or services that attract and convince buyers.
2) Profit proposition: create a business model so that enterprises can profit from this business.
3) Personnel proposition: In addition, people who work for and cooperate with the enterprise need to be encouraged to implement this strategy.
Example: "Comedy Relief" charity fund-raiser
Value proposition: traditional fund-raising organizations use sad or frightening pictures to stimulate people's negative emotions such as guilt and pity and urge them to donate. And "comedy relief" makes people forget pity, do interesting things and donate a little money (no matter how small the donation is, comedy relief pays attention to it and recognizes it) in the way of comedy show to change the world.
Profit proposition: it doesn't spend time and money to organize extravagant donation dinners, write proposal reports to apply for funds from the government and foundations, and doesn't open charity shops. Instead, it uses retail stores from supermarkets to fashion shops in existing commercial streets to sell its little red nose. On "Red Nose Day", donations from ordinary people make a mickle.
Personnel advocate: let everyone have a wild game, instead of making support actions a burden or sacrifice.
Imitation barrier:
1, coordination barrier: as in Chapter 9, coordinate values, profits and personnel claims to form a formidable barrier to sustainability.
2, cognitive barriers: think that a blue ocean behavior has no future, such as Zhang Chaoyang to QQ.
3. Organizational barriers: Imitation will cause great organizational changes and cut the meat. Technical barriers are also included, which means building a technical team that has never been seen before.
4. Brand Barriers: Imitation will conflict with the existing brand image, and the imitator will win the customer's mind.
5. Natural barriers: The area of Brussels cannot support the second super cinema.
6. Cost barrier: Wal-Mart's huge economies of scale in procurement made other enterprises retreat.
7. Social barriers: The more online users of Twitter/WeChat, the greater the overall appeal to the public, and the less willing people are to switch to potential imitators.
8. Legal barriers: Patents and legal licensing rights give exclusive rights to value innovators.
For the blue ocean with shallow barriers, we should launch a new round of value innovation when the value curve of competitors is about to coincide with our own, so as to get rid of competition again.
For example, Saleforce, which is different from the traditional CRM software package in terms of high price, complicated installation, difficult use and expensive maintenance, introduced a network-based CRM solution-providing core functions, which can be used immediately after users register, reliable and convenient to use, and connected to the Internet anytime and anywhere at a low price, thus capturing the non-customers of traditional CRM such as small and medium-sized enterprises. Later, there were more and more entrants, and Saleforce launched Force.com (an additional application development platform based on cloud) and AppExchange (an online trading market for application software), which enabled users to obtain various tailor-made applications at low cost and upgrade their value; At the same time, Chatter (a private social network application service for enterprises) is launched, which enables colleagues in enterprises to send and receive information and track information updates in real time, solves the headache of information fragmentation in traditional CRM, and realizes the extension of value.
Automobile industry: luxury goods for the rich → Ford Model T (one color, one model, durable and easy to repair, cheap) → comfortable and fashionable cars of various styles and colors of General Motors → small and energy-saving Japanese cars (while the Big Three of America are fighting with each other) → Chrysler's mini van (this kind of car is just what the American nuclear family needs with bicycles, dogs and other necessities, and later developed into a sports utility vehicle SUV in the 1990s).
Computer industry: TMC's expensive, difficult-to-use, and constantly-maintained watch-making machine →CTR's rent-only watch-making machine →IBM's commercial electronic computer → Apple's personal computer with keyboard, power supply, image display and software wrapped in a plastic case → Compaq's MVP personal computer server designed for the most commonly used files and printers to enjoy functions → Dell's cheap speed-up computer directly to customers → Apple's tablet touch-screen computer iPad.
Cinematography: a theater featuring live entertainment → a five-cent theater (bench+screen+cheap working area, most Americans belonged to the working class in the early 20th century and the live theater was geared to social elites) → a movie palace (high-end environment+longer movies, Push the film to the rising middle class and upper class) → Multi-hall film (to solve the risk that customers will not come if the film is not good, and it can be adjusted dynamically) → Super cinema (with the popularization of TV and the multi-hall being divided smaller and smaller, the film loses its unique advantages, so the screen (24 screens), seats (gymnasium-style arrangement will not block the back row), sound and lighting are optimized).