Sail with the fleet or alone?
In World War II the allies learned early on that it was better to sail merchant ships in protected convoys across the Atlantic Ocean as opposed to letting each ship chart its own course at its own rate. The escorted convoy offered more protection from deadly submarines, mines and air attack. Sometimes the protection was ineffective, even illusory, but the method did save ships and deliver essential food, goods and war material.
Yet going it alone sometimes seems better. That's the theory of Blue Ocean, described by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in their book, Blue Ocean Strategy. Blue Ocean encourages not doing the same thing as market leaders and competition and instead finding an open market space or niche that is uncontested. The iPad, Salesforce.com, Southwest Airlines, the Tata Nano, Netflicks - these are all examples of products and services that are more or less "Blue Ocean."
Bue Ocean certainly seems compelling - clear water, no competitors attacking, growth and great destinations ahead!
Yet, Blue Ocean is easier envisioned than achieved:
You need to identify open market space and an innovative product or service that is unduplicated to launch into the space.
You need to gain attention in a space no one previously saw and entice customers to "think different" and try your new way.
You need a head start and at least some hurdles to entry to enable you to attract customers and build scale without competitors rivaling you.
The opposite of Blue Ocean is Red Ocean, the bloody, fierce world of head-to-head competition where the competitor with the heaviest guns, the most ships and the greatest resources typically endures and prevails.
Those who follow solo sailing know the stories of the boats and sailors who have set off alone and have never been seen again, pitchpoled in a storm, pounded aground on a desolate shore, engulfed by a rouge wave, holed by a whale or log, washed overboard, hijacked by pirates, eaten by a shark, starved to death and more. Blue Ocean success takes a combination of a great boat (the innovation, perhaps), clear water (unfettered space), tenacity (it's lonely on the open sea), excellent navigation (there's no one else to tell you if your course is good) and a large modicum of luck.
Over the course of a decade in my consulting practice I counseled entrepreneurs, companies and associations who sought to launch new magazines. Many never made it out of port and many more sailed off never to be seen again. Sometimes the dialogue with these would-be publishers started with their assertion that "we can do it better," which hinted at a Red Ocean strategy - we'll tweak the prevailing idea a bit and then hope we can hide from or outgun the competition. Sometimes the dialogue instead started with the statement that "we have a new idea," which suggested a Blue Ocean strategy - we'll sail an uncharted course to a great destination.
For the "we can do it better" clients, my entry-point mantra centered on why they thought their approach would sufficiently differentiate them from existing publications and did they understand and could they get access to the amount of resources (firepower) that would enable them to outgun the competition or at least hold it at bay.
For the "we have a new idea" clients, my entry-point mantra explored whether their idea was really new or whether it was a cloaked version of what others were doing or, worse yet, something that had been tested and proven not to be a great approach. If the idea seemed, indeed, to be new, the questioning moved to critical considerations about the size of the open market space, the feasibility and fit of the proposed publication to address the space, and how well equipped the would-be publisher was to survive the solo voyage to the promising distant shore.
By all means, look for that Blue Ocean and set sail on it if cool-eyed assessment shows the likelihood of success given your idea and resources. But short of a high degree of comfort in your assessment of success, it may be wiser to stay in port until you find a better course or to add firepower and sail the more tested course charted by the rest of the fleet, trying not to gain the attention of the destroyers, submarines and battle cruisers for as long as possible.
