B lue Ocean Strategy

• Blue ocean strategy is a management concept that prescribes that organizations, rather than going head-to-head with competitors, try to create and exploit new market spaces, so-called blue oceans.

• Blue oceans denote all the industries not in existence today – the unknown market space, unexplored and untainted by competition. Like the ‘blue’ ocean, it is vast, deep, and powerful – in terms of opportunity and profitable growth.

• Blue ocean strategists recognize that extra demand is out there, largely untapped, which requires a shift of attention from supply to demand, from a focus on competing to a focus on creating innovative value to unlock new demand. This is achieved via the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost.

• As the market structure is changed by breaking the value-cost tradeoff, so are the rules of the game. By expanding the demand side of the economy new wealth is created. Such a strategy, therefore, allows firms to largely play a non–zero-sum game, with high pay-off possibilities.

Blue Ocean Strategy has helped Marvel turn around its business many times and win success ultimately in today’s business industry. Marvel launches blue ocean at different stages of its ongoing business. In the early stage, Marvel took a blue ocean turn by focusing on noncustomer college students. Marvel invented characters that were people first and superheroes second: Spider-Man, The Hulk, Iron Man, etc. The business thrived because of it. After bankruptcy, Marvel then created a new type of blue ocean that went on to produce the most profitable movie franchise in history.