Idea 4 - Blue ocean strategy Innovate! Innovate! Hardly a new idea. Everyone knows that the dream Business strategy is to create a new product that everyone wants and no One else is offering, but that's easier said than done. How do you do it? W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne think they have an answer, a framework To help companies swim free of the threshing, bloody red ocean of Competition into calm and uninfested waters - the blue ocean Ever since Michael Porter, most companies have built their strategies around the idea of competition. But Porter's theories of competitive advantage through differentiation or cost leadership have been so persuasive that they have become a given. Everybody does it. Strategic and operational benchmarking has given us not differentiation but a bland international conformity. Oversupply of comrnoditized products, static if not falling demand and declining brand loyalties have led to price wars and shrinking profit margins.