FEI - Renee Mauborgne

From the Front-End of Innovation conference in Boston ... this morning opened with Renee Mauborgne, co-author of Blue Ocean Strategy (another selection of InnovationNetwork’s Innovation Book Club) who encourages people to go where the competition isn't and create a leap in value for customers & the company.  She suggests that we ask the following questions:

• Who are the non-customers who we might be serving?
• What can you eliminate from your offering?
• What could you reduce well below the industry standard and thereby dramatically reduce the cost structure?
• What could you raise and create that the industry has never offered before?

Here’s a story from the book:  Understanding Customer Decision Factors

Consider Curves, the Texas-based women's fitness company.  Since franchising began in 1995, Curves has grown like wildfire, acquiring more than two million members in more than six thousand locations, with total revenues exceeding the $1 billion mark.  A new Curves opens, on average, every four hours somewhere in the world.

What's more, this growth was triggered almost entirely through word of mouth and buddy referrals.  Yet, at its inception, Curves was seen as entering an oversaturated market, gearing its offering to
customers who would not want it, and making its offering significantly blander than the competition's.  In reality, however, Curves exploded demand in the U.S. fitness industry, unlocking a huge untapped market, a veritable blue ocean of women struggling and failing to keep in shape through sound fitness.  Curves built on the decisive advantages of two strategic groups in the U.S. fitness industry--traditional health clubs and home exercise programs--and eliminated or reduced everything else.

Curves has eliminated all the aspects of traditional health clubs that are of little interest to the broad mass of women.  Gone are the profusion of special machines, food, spa, pool and even locker rooms, which have been replaced by a few curtained-off changing rooms.

Blue Ocean Strategy, p 57-58