This document discusses how to find "blue oceans" or untapped market opportunities by focusing on problems rather than solutions, deeply understanding customers, and quickly experimenting through prototypes. It emphasizes starting with customer problems, avoiding feature-matching competitors, conducting interviews and creating journey maps to understand customers, and using digital marketing prototypes to test ideas at a small scale before fully developing products. Examples are provided for how companies like iTunes, Salesforce and 5-Hour Energy found blue oceans by solving customer problems in new ways.

1. Finding Blue Oceans:
Lessons from Technology
Kerusso Institute • Matt Baxter • Oct. 31, 2018

2. My Background
User
Experience
Designer
Product
Manager
Engineer

3. What is a product manager?
https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2011/10/what-exactly-is-a-product-manager/

4. The Blue
Ocean
Strategy
● Red Ocean: known market space that
is full of competition.
● Blue Ocean: unknown market space
where competition is irrelevant.
● Instead of fighting within red oceans,
you want to find blue oceans to
cultivate new offerings and
opportunities.

5. Red Ocean vs. Blue Ocean
Compete in existing market space Create uncontested market space
Beat the competition Make the competition irrelevant
Exploit existing demand Create and capture new demand
Make the value-cost trade-off Break the value-cost trade-off
Align the whole system of a firm’s
activities with its strategic choice of
differentiation or low cost
Align the whole system of a firm’s
activities in pursuit of differentiation
and low cost

6. Blue Ocean Examples
iTunes: Focus on choice and hardware

7. Blue Ocean Examples
Salesforce: Focus on ease-of-use for businesses of all sizes

8. Blue Ocean Examples
5-hour Energy: Focus on the need for a boost

9. How do you find your Blue Ocean?
Start with problems,
not solutions
Understand your
audience
Experiment
quickly
1 2 3

10. Start with
problems, not
solutions

11. “The quality of a problem
statement makes all the
difference in a team’s ability to
focus on the few features that
really matter.”
- Harvard Business Review
https://hbr.org/2012/05/six-myths-of-product-development

12. If you create a
solution to a
problem that
doesn’t exist,
who will use it?

13. Technology looking for
a problem to solve
Smalt: The “smart”
salt shaker
Bluetooth speaker, mood
lighting, app connection…
for $199

14. Technology looking for
a problem to solve
Nissin Ramen Fork
Emits a frequency that makes
your slurping noises quieter…
for $130

15. Technology looking for
a problem to solve
Remote Control
Pillow Cushion
What you see is what you get…
for $30

16. What is a customer really
looking for?
Not a solution — they’re
looking to make progress in
some area of their lives.

17. Dangers of starting with solutions
1. Blinding yourself to what you’re competing with.
2. Constantly chasing the leaders, known as
“feature-matching.”

18. Unexpected competition
● A condominium developer targeting
“downsizers”
● Everything you could want in a
condominium, great sales staff, big
marketing campaign
● Lots of traffic, but no conversion
What were they missing?
Source: https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done

19. Unexpected competition
What were they missing?
They discovered that “downsizers” were
emotionally having a hard time letting go of
their furniture that had memories, like their
family dining table.
Solution: Create larger dining areas and give
a year free of storage.
Source: https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done

20. Problems with feature-matching
● You’ll always be playing catch-up.
● You’ve got to be good enough to convince a
customer to switch, being the same won’t cut it.

21. Finding a
Blue Ocean
Not like painting, where you create
something that didn’t previously exist.

22. Finding a
Blue Ocean
More like sculpting, where you uncover
something that was there all along.

23. Evaluate the opportunity
1. Value proposition: What problem will this solve?
2. Target market: For whom do we solve this problem?
3. Market size: How big is the opportunity?
4. Competitive landscape: What alternatives are out there?
5. Target window: Why now?
6. Go-to-market strategy: How will we get this product to market?
7. Metrics: How will we measure success?
8. Solution requirements: What factors are critical to success?
https://svpg.com/assessing-product-opportunities/

24. Understand
your audience

25. No matter your product, service, or
industry, the ultimate question you’re
asking is…
How will this
impact people?

26. “Customer behavior and
perceptions are not static –
revisiting customer data and
insights to account for both
planned and emergent strategy
becomes paramount to staying
ahead.”
- Gartner for Marketers
Source: https://blogs.gartner.com/kirsten-newbold-knipp/2018/03/23/focus-on-customer-insights-strategy-will-flow/

27. You must understand your audience’s...
Goals
Motivations
Fears
Environment
Questions
Emotions

28. Consider their full journey to solve their
problem...
Recognize
need
Research
options
Making the
decision
Using the
solution
Evaluating the
experience

29. Just asking isn’t enough...
People don’t always know what solutions
are possible.
People are bad at predicting their own
behavior.

30. Understanding
& Empathy

31. Techniques for understanding
Interviewing & Observation
Journey Mapping

32. Example
interview

33. Exercise 1: Conducting Interviews
Select one person from your team to interview about their
travel to the seminar. One person should be the interviewer,
others can take notes.
Remember to dig into the why behind each stage and decision.
Start with when they first thought about booking travel.

34. Journey map
examples

35. Source: https://blinkux.com/ideas/the-fine-art-of-creating-experience-maps

36. Source: http://www.adaptivepath.com/

37. Source: http://dapperapps.com.au/

38. Identify opportunities by asking...
1. What kind of progress are they trying to make?
2. Where are the biggest points of friction?
3. Where are they most confused?
4. Where did it cost them the most?
5. What work-arounds are they employing?

39. Exercise 2: Creating a Journey Map
Based on your interview, create a journey map.
1. Identify the phases of their journey
2. For each phase, identify: Goals, Questions, Concerns, People,
Tasks

40. Experiment
quickly

41. “None of my inventions
came by accident. I see a
worthwhile need to be
met and I make trial
after trial until it
comes.”
- Thomas Edison

42. Two
inconvenient
truths...
1. Most ideas will fail.
2. The ideas that do
work require
multiple attempts.
https://svpg.com/the-inconvenient-truth-about-product/

43. How can you find the time and
resources to test every idea?
By learning the art of prototyping.

44. Prototyping
Creating a Minimum Viable Product that captures the core
value proposition and tests the main risks.
1. Value risk
2. Usability risk
3. Feasibility risk
4. Business risk

45. Prototyping
Increasing
Learning
Decreasing
Effort

46. Avoid the sunk
cost effect.

47. Prototyping
If you had a new idea for a cake, what would be the best way to
test your idea, as quickly as possible?
A few ingredients
at a time
A smaller version
of a big cake
OR

48. Evolution of a product or service
It’s still “cake” at every step.

49. Prototyping example

50. Prototyping example

51. Using digital marketing to reach people
● Target demographics or behavior
● Intent-based
● Geography-restricted
● Tailored messaging

52. Digital Marketing
Example

53. Using digital marketing to find customers

54. Using digital marketing to find customers

55. Using digital marketing to find customers

56. Using digital marketing to find customers

57. Using digital marketing to find customers

58. Using digital marketing to find customers

59. Using digital marketing to find customers

60. Using digital marketing to find customers

61. Exercise 3: Brainstorm a prototype
1. Identify pain points in your journey map
2. Come up with an experiment for a solution
3. Define some behaviors and demographics that would be
included in a digital marketing campaign