

Look at your competition and identify what they are doing that can be completely eliminated without damaging your value to customers.

It is a great way to have a fresh look at just about every aspect of your business. Since reading that chapter, I've been applying the grid to nearly everything I've come across. One such methodology is the Eliminate-Reduce-Raise-Create grid. This book takes something that any business person knows intuitively and puts it into a concrete methodology that can be applied in your own business. Although each of the companies highlighted in the book were not new information for me, I had never thought about what they've accomplished in terms of a Blue Ocean Strategy. Blue Ocean Strategy really opened my eyes to a new way of looking at strategy.
