Blue Oceans: A Brief Description

As stated in the "Blue Ocean Strategy" by Chan Kim and Renee Maubourgne, a blue ocean is used to refer to an industry which is not in existence today, in other words, the unknown marketplace, while a red ocean is a collective term used to refer to all known industries. Unexplored and untainted by competition, blue oceans are vast, deep and powerful in terms of opportunity and potential growth. It should be noted that all red ocean Industries started their existence in what we could refer to as the blue ocean market, making the classification of a red ocean the next logical step in the growth of a blue ocean industry. A good example of such a shift from red to blue ocean would the expansion of the internet marketplace, growing from a niche industry (an apt description would be the wild west of entrepreneurship) to an open, extremely crowded and cut-throat business environment.


A blue ocean strategy is primarily focused on creating new demand instead of monitoring their competition, as a blue ocean is non-zero-sum in nature, unlike a red ocean in which the total existing wealth is divided between competing companies. Given that a blue ocean provides ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid, a good blue ocean strategy should focus on making their newly-discovered industry more accessible to a large pool of potential customers/clients via innovative methods to reach said consumer base.