In response to Hirsch’s challenge (last post) to go after the "populations" for which the typical models, methods or approaches of church planting (movement building) have no appeal, I pulled off my shelf a well-known book on business strategies that seemed to offer some principles that might apply.
In their book on innovative business practices, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, the authors describe the red ocean as where most companies compete, seeking customers from the same market as their competitors. Kim and Mauborgne suggest that companies break out of the red ocean of bloody competition by creating uncontested market space in the blue ocean that makes the competition irrelevant.
Red Ocean Strategies, they argue, focus on existing customers, compete in existing market spaces, center their efforts on beating the competition, make value-cost trade-offs, and attempt to align their whole system on differentiation or low cost.
Blue Ocean Strategies, on the other hand, focus on non-customers (those to whom current products have no appeal), create uncontested market spaces, make the competition irrelevant (bec. no one is working in this area), create and capture new demand, break the value-cost trade-off calculation, and align whole systems to pursue differentiation and low cost.
Guiding Principles
As you create your blue ocean strategies, be aware of four guiding principles.
The first is to break from the competition and reconstruct market boundaries.
Innovation is the cornerstone of blue ocean strategies. We must allow our efforts to break from typical models/methods and pursue atypical and innovative ones.
The second guiding principle is to focus on the big picture, not the numbers.
Innovation may not initially lead to an increase in numbers, so leaders must stay focused on the big picture (i.e. the need to reach populations to which the typical models and methods no longer appeal)
The third guiding principle is to reach beyond existing demand.
In other words, we have to beware of just defining a particular niche and not going after new markets of appeal. Historic strategic planning processes encourage focusing on current markets and further defining niches, thus continuing a red ocean existence.
To have a profitable and robust strategy, you must follow the fourth guiding principle: get the strategic sequence right. The right strategic sequence of costumer utility, price, cost, and adoptions will ensure commercial viability.
All blue ocean strategies start with "utility" or "value to the customer." Assuming the certain appeal of the gospel message, what can we do in our models and methods that might get that appeal into populations for which old models and methods no longer appeal. The question is obviously not a "change in the wine of our message" but "in the form" it is communicated to populations—populations for whom the message would appeal if "encased" in new wineskins.
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