BizyDad
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Well, do you know what happens to most pioneers?
They die with arrows in their backs.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of innovation – I'm more of a fan of solid, reliable work, and building a brand/reputation and system to do the work better. And doing it in a competitive industry.
I can see where you're coming from, since you're in software, maybe it's more relevant there. But in my opinion, "Blue Ocean Strategy" is for most people a terrible choice. I'd argue that most beginners fail precisely because they're trying to innovate and follow the blue ocean approach. In other words, it's precisely because they don't work in the confines of an older paradigm.
Creating a new paradigm is something that will simply be inaccessible to most businesses. Thousands try, only one succeeds. Virtually 99.9% of innovators I've seen here or elsewhere have failed. Every day there's a new app, a new software, that the owner thinks will revolutionize an industry, establish a new paradigm. Most people severely underestimate the costs of opening up a blue ocean, financial as well as political.
Opening up a blue ocean is virtually impossible without significant (ie, millions) in financial backing and access to the backing of at least some established players. Sure, there are some people out there who will successfully open Blue Oceans. I'm you can cite some. But I see them as the exception, not the rule.
Personally, I started by copying everything that my most successful competitors were doing. I still copy good things I see to this day. That's free market research for me, and I get the goods, without paying the price. If I were to start again in a different industry, I'd take the same approach. Who is making money? What are they doing to make that money? Let's do the same first, make some money, then begin making it better.
Better in all ways – better at getting case studies, better at getting results, better at selling, and so on. All of these are the result of better business processes. I have a better process to get case studies... therefore while you get 1 case study, I get 10. I have a better process of selling the service... while you get 1 new customer, I get 2 or 3.
But the point is you always want to start from what's working already. And yes, it's true, I'll never start the next Facebook. So what?
I'm arguably in one of the reddest oceans out there: lead generation. I have thousands of competitors. Every day I get messaged by at least 4-5 of my competitors. What helped me is that they're all hustlers, and I'm a builder. I will sit there and build better systems than they will to do the same work. I don't care about innovating. I'll let someone else innovate, and then steal their innovation if it's good. And if it's not, I've spared myself the costs.
Respectfully, I think you are missing the point entirely.
It doesn't matter if you're in a blue ocean or a red ocean.
What matters is... Do people want what you have to offer?
Your tactic of sticking a competitive industries does show market demand. And for that reason it works. Not because the industry is competitive, but because there is market demand.
A blue ocean can be opened without requiring millions of dollars. My ex-wife has a friend who was a fry cook at McDonald's. Single mom. About to be homeless. She got tired of the way bed sheets would come off the bed. So she invented bed sheets with elastic on the corners.
Voila, a new category of bed sheet. My ex-wife helped her and get a small business loan. The lady knew nothing about business. But she got the right people around her and within a couple of years was a millionaire.
Because her idea solved a problem people were having.
She didn't consider herself an innovator, or an inventor, or entrepreneur. She was just a mom who wanted bed sheets to work the way they're supposed to work. She's also the closest person I've ever met to being an actual " overnight success".
In her case, opening up this blue ocean was easy because again there was existing market demand.
Someone developing something unique has a harder time bringing it to market because often the market needs to be educated on the problem.
I think I posted recently about my friend who is doing this software play for banks and hospitals. His sales process is a lot slower than bed sheet lady, because the banks and hospitals tech staff need to be educated about the problem. And then they have to admit in their fragile egos that they didn't catch the problem in the first place. And then they have to go through a whole thing of deciding whether they can try and fix this problem themselves.
But the writing's on the wall for my friend's business. There's a very real security issue. People are becoming more aware of it. In another, maybe five years, maybe 10 years, a service like his will become practically a requirement for bank/hospital CTO's to use. A "best practice" if you will.
His issue is, can he last long enough to get to that point? Right now, the market has a need, but doesn't know it has a need, therefore there isn't much demand. But there will be.
On a forum of a guy who preaches the message of "solve a problem to create value" (obviously I'm paraphrasing) you tried to make the conversation about "market competitiveness". Market competitiveness is the symptom.
A blue ocean is simply a large problem that no one is solving. A red ocean is a problem "everyone" is solving.
The cool thing about a red ocean that perhaps makes it feel like the safer choice is it has N and possibly S built in.
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