From Red Ocean to Blue Ocean

Blue ocean strategy is not about out-competing rivals in an existing industry — it is about making rivals irrelevant by creating uncontested market space. This map traces how boundary-crossing demand scans, current-state value mapping and portfolio diagnostics are progressively synthesised into a new value curve that delivers higher buyer value at lower cost.

Stage 1
Demand Scan
Looking across industry boundaries for uncontested demand
6
Six Paths Framework
Kim & Mauborgne — six systematic routes to uncontested demand
Scans beyond the current industry to find where uncontested demand might lie. The framework identifies six paths along which buyer behaviour migrates: across alternative industries, across strategic groups, across the buyer chain, across complementary offerings, across functional/emotional appeal, and across time.
Demand-shift signals Boundary-crossing insights Non-customer cues
Stage 2
Canvas Mapping
Plotting current effort against the industry value curve
C
As-Is Strategy Canvas
Plotting the current value curve against the industry standard
Maps the organisation's offering against the standard competing factors of the industry, alongside key rivals. The resulting value curve exposes where the organisation is investing effort that buyers no longer value — and where the whole industry has converged on an identical profile.
Current value curve Over-invested factors Industry convergence points
Six Paths reveal where
uncontested demand lies
As-Is Canvas reveals where
current effort is wasted
Stage 3
Portfolio Mapping
Plotting current and proposed offerings on the value-innovation spectrum
P
Pioneer–Migrator–Settler Map
Kim & Mauborgne's portfolio diagnostic for value-innovation status
The synthesis point. Outputs from the Six Paths scan and the As-Is Canvas are used to classify every existing and proposed offering into one of three tiers — Pioneer, Migrator or Settler. The map exposes where future profit and growth will come from (Pioneers) versus where current revenue is generated (typically Settlers). A portfolio dominated by Settlers is a signal that future profit pools are not being built; a healthy blue-ocean strategy aims to convert Settlers into Migrators and to launch Pioneers.
Pioneer
A value-innovator. Creates new buyer value and a new cost frontier simultaneously — uncontested market space. Commands the highest growth and margin trajectory in the portfolio. Few firms have any.
Migrator
A value improver. Offers buyers something better than the industry standard but does not break the conventional cost-vs-value trade-off. Margins above industry average, but the position is competitively contestable.
Settler
A me-too business. Sits on the same value curve as every other competitor, competing primarily on operational efficiency and price. Generates current cash but contributes little to future growth.
Pioneer ambition sets the
target for value-curve reshaping
Stage 4
Curve Reshaping
Pulling the four levers that redraw the industry value curve
4
Four Actions Framework
Eliminate, Reduce, Raise, Create — the levers of value innovation
The action engine of blue ocean strategy. Having identified where value innovation is possible, the Four Actions Framework forces the organisation to answer four questions about the existing industry value curve. Together, the answers define a new curve that lowers cost AND lifts buyer value at the same time — the trade-off that conventional strategy says is impossible.
Lowers Cost
Lifts Buyer Value
Radical
Eliminate
Which factors that the industry takes for granted should be abolished entirely?
Create
Which factors should be created that the industry has never offered?
Moderate
Reduce
Which factors should be dialled well below the industry standard?
Raise
Which factors should be lifted well above the industry standard?
The four actions combine into
a coherent new value curve
Stage 5
New Value Curve
A strategically distinct profile with full traceability
N
New Value Curve
The blue ocean move — a value curve unlike any competitor's
Every blue ocean move traces back through the chain: which Six Paths insight surfaced the demand, where the As-Is Canvas showed waste or convergence, where the Pioneer–Migrator–Settler map placed the existing portfolio, and which of the four actions are being pulled to launch the Pioneer position. The output is not a better version of what competitors offer but a strategically distinct value curve that simultaneously lowers cost and lifts buyer value.
Eliminated factors Reduced factors Raised factors Newly created factors
Traceability Example
How a single recommendation traces back to raw data
Six Paths Insight
Looking across alternative industries — everyday money management is migrating into lifestyle apps that bundle fitness, goals, and peer coaching, not standalone banking
→
Plotted on the PMS Map as
Blue ocean target: A low-cost, high-engagement financial-life proposition — an area the industry is currently ignoring while converging on branch and call-centre coverage
→
Four Actions Applied
Eliminate branch-based account opening; Reduce call-centre staffing; Raise personal-finance insight quality; Create goal-tracking and peer-benchmarking tools in-app
→
Recommendation
Launch a mobile-first "financial life" proposition with embedded coaching and goals, funded by a stepped-down branch footprint rather than net new spend — a value curve unlike any incumbent's
The Synthesis Principle
Six Paths is a boundary-crossing tool. The As-Is Canvas is a reality check. The Pioneer–Migrator–Settler Map is the portfolio diagnostic — the point at which the strategic ambition is given a target shape. The Four Actions Framework is the execution discipline. Each link in the chain asks a different question, and skipping any one collapses blue ocean strategy back into either me-too innovation or unsupported cost-cutting.