Blue Ocean Strategy Substack: Examples, Explainers, Cases, & Thoughts : Innowiki

Here is a list in reverse chronological order of the articles in our substack blog, Blue Ocean Thinking. It’s filled with explainers, cases, thoughts, articles, and the occasion recipe related to blue ocean strategy.

Screenwriting & Startups: Similarities
Two Fields Separated At Birth

Financial Bubbles Blow
Innovate Something Read

Blue Ocean Example: Pastrami for Elvis
A Noncustomer Example

Ideas Alone Aren’t Innovations
Makers Make

Jeff Immelt Whines
His Legacy: GE Tossed From the Dow Jones Index After a Century

Featured Stupid Feature: Auto-Off Scales
A “Feature” So Bad People Pay to Get Rid of It

From Intel to Apple — Noncompetes are Bad Business
If You Can’t Keep Your Employees, You Don’t Deserve Them

Nintendo & Blue Ocean Strategy: Record Profits … Again
Oops, They Did It Again

Wikipedia: the Overlooked Monopoly
Yes, it’s Useful. It’s Also Arguably a Monopoly.

Oneida: The Victorian Free Love Commune that Changed the US
Free Love Communists Made Great Capitalists

Remembering Farmville, a Game that Changed It All
An Obit for Farmville

Leadership: INSEAD Professor Neil Bearden
Leadership Often Requires Radical Change

In Memory: Sir Harold Evans
The Greatest Business Writer Who Ever Lived

Worst Startup Advice Ever: “Always Be Kind & Supportive”
Watching Disasters is Neither Kind Nor Supportive

Bitcoin, Fruitcake, and Christmas Pudding
On the Importance of Being Open to New Ideas

Inspirational Entrepreneur: Bette Nesmith Graham
An Abandoned Single Mom, in the 1940s, Builds a Business Empire

Blue Ocean Example: Differentiation & Low Cost .. Plus a Bagel Recipe
How to Make Your French Bakery Stand Out? Make Something Different.

Business Model Study: Anova, Professional Tools on a Personal Budget
Blue Ocean Anova Brings Pro Tools to Home Cooks

Can Blockchain-Based ID Cleanup the Web?
A Global Authentication Service Could Vastly Improve Online Discourse

Paramount’s Direct to Streaming Pivot
Involuntarily Pushed Into a Potential Pool Blue Ocean of Noncustomers

Blue Ocean Strategy Basics – Buyer Utility Map
Finding Areas of Opportunity Where Others Aren’t

Blue Ocean Strategy Basics – Buyer Experience Cycle
A Simple Tool To Think Through Your Value Proposition

Blue Ocean Strategy Basics – Noncustomers
Not New Customers; Buyers You Never Thought About

Blue Ocean Strategy Basics – Breaking the Value/Cost Trade-Off
Spending more doesn’t always get more and, oftentimes, nets less

Blue Ocean Strategy Basics – Making Competition Irrelevant
Don’t Play a Rigged Game: Reinvent Your Own

Blue Ocean Strategy Basics – Value Innovation
A brief overview of value innovation, the core of blue ocean strategy.

Random Posts

LASER
LASER’s allow light to be intensely focused. There are many uses, from reading digital media at low power to cutting at higher powers. Countless applications rely on LASER technology. In 1957, Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes, of Bell Labs, worked on an infrared LASER, called an “optical MASER.” They patented the invention in 1958. In … Continue reading "LASER"
Synthetic Ammonia
Fritz Haber arguably saved and killed more people than any other single person in history. Synthetic ammonia vastly lowered the cost of making fertilizer, explosives, and other chemicals. The process to create synthetic ammonia was a concurrent invention. That is, two scientists came up with it at the same time independently of one another. Because … Continue reading "Synthetic Ammonia"
Fast Food
McDonald’s primary innovation is that food should be ready instantly. No sooner does a customer order than food appears. Individual restaurant orders, individually prepared was the norm for non-buffet restaurants before McDonald’s. In 1937, the McDonald brothers created their iconic restaurant and built several stores. Eventually, Ray Kroc was a 52-year-old milkshake machine salesman who … Continue reading "Fast Food"
Roll Film & Roll Film Camera
Kodak’s original camera contained plates. Later versions contained one-hundred exposures; customers would take their pictures, mail in their camera, and the company mailed back developed pictures and a refilled camera. Roll film changed all that, vastly lowering the cost and complexity of photography and eventually enabling the creation of movie film. Ordinary people could purchase … Continue reading "Roll Film & Roll Film Camera"
Spreadsheet
Spreadsheets simplify calculations and basic database work. Background During a lecture at Harvard Business School, in 1978, student Dan Bricklin watched his professor struggle to erase and rewrite cells in a blackboard-based ledger. Thinking about the newly popular Apple II computer Bricklin thought of a better way, a program that allowed users to enter and … Continue reading "Spreadsheet"
Pasteurization
French scientist Louis Pasteur disproved the theory of spontaneous generation, the idea that certain organisms are ever-present in nature. For example, early scientists believed fleas came from dust and maggots from dead meat absent anything else. Pasteur theorized and later proved that all organisms come from something else, that nothing exists in a vacuum. He … Continue reading "Pasteurization"
Modern Advertising
Before Albert Lasker advertisements tended to be crude, raising awareness or reinforcing a brand name. Many ads were not much more than offers to purchase something, with no overarching idea. Lasker used the emerging science of psychology and budding technology of radio to radically change advertising. Background Born in Germany, Lasker moved to the US … Continue reading "Modern Advertising"
Hard Disk Drive
Disk drives quickly store and retrieve information for computers. The primary inventor is Reynold “Rey” Johnson. Previously, he invented and sold the technology that reads pencil dots, usually for taking tests, to IBM. Subsequently, he then joined them as a staff engineer. While at IBM he developed the hard disk drive. The first hard drive, … Continue reading "Hard Disk Drive"
Ted Hoff’s General Purpose Microprocessor
“…even though science and technology are wonderful, what really gets them out there for people to use is to have businesses built around them. It takes savvy businessmen as well as savvy technologists to make that work.” Tedd Hoff Background Ted Hoff had access to then state-of-the-art vacuum tube circuits in high school. In 1954, … Continue reading "Ted Hoff’s General Purpose Microprocessor"
Sonography
Sonography is the process of using sound waves as an imaging device, typically for medical purposes. Background Indeed, the principles of sonography come from the natural world. For example, bats and whales are mammals that use sound waves for navigation. In 1794, after performing medical studies on bats, Lazzaro Spallanzani gained a basic understanding of … Continue reading "Sonography"
Facsimile (FAX) Machine
Alexander Bain created a telegraph that transmitted light and dark dots that were reproduced on the other side, the fax machine, long before the telephone. Early faxes were popular with newspapers due to their ability to quickly transmit crude images. Countless modifications and improvements followed over the years. Despite the obvious differences in the innovation, … Continue reading "Facsimile (FAX) Machine"
FM Radio
History In 1906, Lee de Forest invented the “three-electrode Audion” cathode ray tube. However, by his own admission, saw no use for it in radio. During his time at Columbia, Armstrong worked with Audion tubes and realized they could recycle a radio signal, amplifying it by sending it repeatedly through the tube. Further, by reversing … Continue reading "FM Radio"
Bra
Communist spitfire Ida Rosenthal came from a line of Jewish intellectuals in what was then Russia and is now Belarus. She returned from college an outspoken communist revolutionary and with a boyfriend, William. Threatened with jail, the army, or both they fled to the US in 1905 and married in 1906. Ida, who was 4′ … Continue reading "Bra"
Rock & Roll
“If you’re not doing something different, you’re not doing anything.” Sam Phillips Background Billboard magazine started charting songs in 1940. Eventually, they divided songs into three categories, pop, country-and-western, and “race music.” Around 1949, race music was renamed rhythm and blues (R&B). Music sales were proprietary and closely guarded so Billboard based their charts off … Continue reading "Rock & Roll"
Television
Before Farnsworth, there were various types of mechanical TV that used spinning disks (Nipkow disks) and electrical transmitters, none of which ever gained traction. John Logie Baird invented the most widely known mechanical TV. Electrical Television Farnsworth had a small group of innovators, who invested $25,000. They eventually told him to give up so he … Continue reading "Television"

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