Blue ocean strategy asks, “Why compete when you can create?”. In other words, why be a red ocean company, competing for a greater share of limited demand, when you can make the competition irrelevant by creating something new and different and even attract new kinds of buyers?
Yet, here we are in a competition. Isn’t that a contradiction? Our response is: “No”.
The idea here is to use the competition to try to tease out the very best ideas and blue ocean products or concepts possible. One of the things our judges look for is a unique idea that has “legs”. In other words, it has broad appeal and can be big enough that it can turn into an industry or support an organization.
One of the purposes of the Blue Ocean High School Entrepreneur Pitch Competition is to help you make competition (for your business idea) irrelevant. But we are also comparing different business ideas and trying to determine which is the best idea, and has been presented most effectively within the context of the blue ocean framework and has the best market applicability and potential.
So the Blue Ocean Competition is motivating you to create something that may not exist today or has sufficient differentiation that makes alternative solutions irrelevant using concepts like the ERRC Grid, Strategy Canvas, and the Three Tiers of Noncustomers. But we are also creating competition between your idea and other great blue ocean ideas that may not have anything to do with your idea.
Competition in this context is useful and will help you grow. As you move forward, you will be competing with other blue ocean strategists’ for talent, funding, and other key aspects. This competition will help you learn to create, but you will also learn to compete with other great ideas. That is what entrepreneurship is all about.
