Blue Ocean Advantage
by Stewart Hughes - Unicity CEO 
Not too long ago a couple of very smart business professors wrote a book called the Blue Ocean Strategy. In this book they put forth a premise for a company to really hit the mainstream and to become a giant in its industry. These professors researched more than 150 strategic moves from 30 different industries over the past 100 years. They found that most companies literally struggle for existence, battling day to day with their competitors over the exact same turf, none having any meaningful competitive advantage over the other. All these companies have essentially all the same products or services and can only really distinguish themselves from their competitor by lowering prices. This of course is countered by the competition lowering their prices and the effect of all this price cutting is net losses or what sometimes we refer to as the red ink. The abundance of red ink in the business world creates what these professors call the red ocean. Their position is and I agree with them that it is impossible to win big in this environment. A company may have a year or two with good results but soon a competitor comes along and a price war begins and both companies fight it out in a sea of losses - a red ocean. The basic finding from the research done by these professors is simply this: for a company to become a mainstay in the economy and be a big time winner it must leave the red ocean and find blue ocean market space. The company must have something that other companies do not have and it must stay focused on the blue ocean advantage.
Apple computer may be the classic case of a company about to die in the red ocean only to wake up at the last minute and realize that to keep competing with Microsoft and the PC computer world was simple torture leading no where good. They tossed out that idea and instead focused on their innovative capacity; they created the IPod and thereby created a whole new market of demand. They then kept the focus on innovation and created a distinction between the Mac Computer and the PC and now see their computer business highly profitable. They did this not by competing over the same old turf, rather they looked at what it was they did or could do better than anyone else. Then they just kept focused on that blue ocean advantage.
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