Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne developed a technique they call the Strategy Canvas to assist in identifying a Blue Ocean market. 1 A Blue Ocean market is essentially an uncontested new market with high profit and significant growth potential. They use the Strategy Canvas as a tool to assist in identifying Blue Ocean markets. One purpose of the Strategy Canvas is to understand where the competition is playing and investing their time and resources. Another purpose of the Strategy Canvas is to try to identify new customer segments in uncontested market spaces. The idea is simply to create new markets and attract customers.
One area where the Strategy Canvas is deficient is in the identification of attributes and features for competition and differentiation. The FAD template is ideally situated for assisting in that process. The FAD template can be used as an input device for constructing the Strategy Canvas by facilitating the identification of important attributes and features on which to compete.
The following approach can be used to develop a strategic canvas:
- Use the FAD template to identify the key competitive factors in terms of product and process features including price, meaning, technology, performance, design, availability, customer support, technology, size, weight, speed, ease of use, and other product features. These key competitive factors are then placed on the X-axis of the canvas (either at the top or the bottom).
- Then, each competitor and your company are plotted on the Y-axis. If a competitor has a high level of a particular factor, then it is plotted above the middle of the Y-axis. Similarly, competitors with low levels of a factor are plotted below the middle of the Y-axis.
A generic Strategy Canvas with the FAD categories is illustrated in Figure 7.3. It incorporates the essential concepts from the FAD template into the development of a Strategy Canvas. Figure 7.4 illustrates how the Strategy Canvas could be used to position the Nintendo Wii. We identified what we believed is the key meaning of the Wii along with several important attributes and key design issues for the Wii. The feature categories that apply to the attributes are highlighted in bold. For example, the Appeal to the entire Family attribute is considered a point of differentiation and a Blue Ocean Feature. The attributes and their values are, of course, contingent on who actually constructs the Strategy Canvas and they will change very quickly according to the whims of the market. Figure 7.5 illustrates a more attractive graphic that was created using the Strategy Canvas data.
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