Strategy Canvas

tool · management · organizing-schema

Blue Ocean visual contrasting an industry's value-curve to identify reinvention opportunities.

The Strategy Canvas, introduced by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne as a core analytical tool of Blue Ocean Strategy (2005), is a visual representation that plots the competing factors of an industry along a horizontal axis and the offering level on each factor along a vertical axis, generating a 'value curve' for each competitor. The canvas's analytical purpose is to make industry strategy visible at a glance: when competitors' value curves substantially overlap, the industry is in a 'red ocean' of competitive convergence, and the strategic question becomes how to draw a divergent value curve. The Four Actions framework (Eliminate, Reduce, Raise, Create) operates on the Strategy Canvas to suggest specific moves: eliminate factors the industry takes for granted, reduce factors below industry standard, raise others well above standard, and create new factors the industry has never offered. Cirque du Soleil's value curve compared to traditional circuses is the canonical Blue Ocean illustration.

Originators

W. Chan Kim; Renée Mauborgne high

Year / Decade

2005 (Blue Ocean Strategy book; tool elements presaged in earlier HBR articles) high

Primary sources

Kim, W.C. & Mauborgne, R. (2005). Blue Ocean Strategy high

Core components

Horizontal axis: competing factors of the industry
Vertical axis: offering level on each factor
Value curve per competitor
Visual divergence from competitor curves as strategic test
Pairing with Four Actions framework (Eliminate, Reduce, Raise, Create)
Use in workshops to surface tacit industry assumptions

Primary use case

Blue Ocean Strategy formulation workshops; visual industry analysis; surfacing strategic-positioning conversations among executives; teaching tool for value-innovation thinking.

Common criticisms

Selection of competing factors is judgment-heavy and can be made to support any desired strategic conclusion
offering levels are subjective absent customer research
can produce visually compelling but analytically superficial output
ignores competitor response and capability constraints
like Blue Ocean Strategy generally, value curves are typically drawn ex post for successful blue oceans rather than predicted ex ante
doesn't address whether divergence creates sustainable advantage
can become a workshop artifact rather than driving real decisions.

Lineage

Child of: Blue Ocean Strategy
Siblings: Blue Ocean Strategy
Derived from: Blue Ocean Strategy