There is a book that I read a couple of years ago called Blue Ocean Strategy. Tim Moenk referred the book to me and we both focused on the importance of creating our Blue Oceans.
The brief explanation of a Blue Ocean is an appealing offering that has little to no competition. A red ocean is a competitive environment where everyone is cutting costs, adding value adds, and in some case cutting throats to get a deal. A blue ocean company has diversified their offerings enough to stand away from the blood bath.
My favorite case study in the book is Cirque du Soleil:
Cirque du Soleil very successfully entered a structurally unattractive circus industry. It was able to reinvent the industry and created a new market space by challenging the conventional assumptions about how to compete. It value innovated by shifting the buyer group from children (end-users of the traditional circus) to adults (purchasers of the traditional circus), drawing upon the distinctive strengths of other alternative industries, such as the theatre, Broadway shows and the opera, to offer a totally new set of utilities to more mature and higher spending customers.
When I launched this agency I was definitely in a Blue Ocean. Although the market was young, the offerings were unique and we leveraged the distinctive strengths of other areas. More and more I have watched as social media has gone from an industry that no one understood or respected to an absolute bloodbath and I wonder if I have lost my blue ocean.
Today I spent some time reviewing what is going on and who is doing what. I found it interesting that what the new people entering in this space are offering is the same thing that other social media consultants offered 4 years ago when I entered. Offerings that I looked at and decided was going to be a red ocean as I set out to find my blue ocean.
This concerns me sometimes, but more often than not it keeps me searching for ways to find new oceans to float in.
