Blue Ocean Strategy for Market Creation Planning Training Course

Course overview

Established markets often reward incremental improvement while margins tighten, customer acquisition costs rise, and competitors quickly copy new features. This course equips leaders and strategy practitioners to identify where their organisation is competing on familiar factors and where it can create new demand. Participants learn to challenge industry assumptions systematically, distinguish genuine market-creation opportunities from untested ideas, and make strategic choices that can be defended with evidence.

The programme applies the Blue Ocean Strategy method from diagnosis through execution planning. Participants build a Strategy Canvas, identify buyer pain points and noncustomer demand, use the Six Paths Framework to reconstruct market boundaries, and apply the Four Actions Framework and Eliminate-Reduce-Raise-Create Grid to redesign value. They also assess opportunities using the Buyer Utility Map, Price Corridor of the Mass, and Strategic Sequence. By the end of the week, participants can formulate a focused value innovation proposition, quantify its strategic logic, and define the organisational conditions required to execute it.

Teaching combines instructor-led method demonstrations, worked examples, facilitated market-analysis sessions, and team workshops using a participant-selected business challenge. Teams analyse an existing competitive offering, map their current strategic profile, generate alternative market spaces, and test one priority concept against utility, price, cost, and adoption hurdles. Each participant leaves with a market creation planning pack: a completed Strategy Canvas, ERRC Grid, noncustomer analysis, strategic sequence assessment, and a 90-day action plan suitable for executive review.

The course is particularly valuable for managers responsible for growth portfolios, product and service strategy, transformation initiatives, innovation programmes, and category strategy. It is designed for professionals who already understand their market but need a repeatable method for moving beyond competitor-led planning.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Construct a Strategy Canvas that visualises an organisation's current competitive profile and key industry factors
• Identify first-tier, second-tier, and third-tier noncustomers to reveal untapped sources of demand
• Apply the Six Paths Framework to challenge market boundaries and generate market-creation options
• Use the Four Actions Framework and ERRC Grid to redesign buyer value and cost structure
• Develop a Buyer Utility Map that tests utility across the buyer experience cycle
• Assess a proposed offering through the Strategic Sequence of utility, price, cost, and adoption
• Create a Pioneer-Migrator-Settler portfolio map to prioritise growth initiatives
• Produce a 90-day Blue Ocean implementation plan with adoption barriers, owners, and decision gates

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Strategy Directors — who must develop growth choices beyond competitor benchmarking and annual planning assumptions
• Product and Portfolio Managers — who need to redesign offerings around unmet buyer utility rather than feature parity
• Business Unit Leaders — who are accountable for profitable growth in mature or contested markets
• Innovation Managers — who must turn opportunity concepts into testable, strategically coherent market propositions
• Marketing and Category Managers — who need to identify noncustomers and reposition value propositions within crowded categories
• Transformation and Corporate Development Managers — who assess new growth spaces, adjacent plays, and operating implications

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience contributing to strategic, commercial, product, innovation, or market-planning decisions and should be able to describe their organisation's customers, competitors, offerings, and revenue model. Familiarity with basic concepts such as customer segmentation, value propositions, pricing, market share, and SWOT analysis is assumed. Participants should bring a current business challenge, product line, service portfolio, or market category to use in workshops. No prior study of Blue Ocean Strategy, advanced finance, specialist market-research software, or statistical modelling is required. A laptop with spreadsheet and presentation capability is recommended for live exercises.

Training methodology

The instructor introduces each Blue Ocean tool through a short demonstration and a corporate case, then participants apply it to a live or selected business challenge. Working individually and in small teams, participants compare competitive profiles, identify noncustomers, construct ERRC Grids, and challenge assumptions using the Six Paths Framework. Facilitated critique sessions test each concept against buyer utility, pricing, cost, and adoption risks. The final day is an application-planning workshop in which participants assemble their Strategy Canvas, strategic sequence assessment, and 90-day implementation roadmap for executive discussion.

Course outline

Day 1: Diagnosing the Current Competitive Reality

• Blue Ocean Strategy principles and value innovation logic
• Red ocean versus blue ocean strategic moves
• Industry factors and the limits of competitor benchmarking
• Strategy Canvas structure and interpretation
• As-is value curve construction
• Buyer value factors versus internal operational factors
• Pioneer-Migrator-Settler portfolio assessment

Workshop: Participants create an as-is Strategy Canvas for a selected market and identify the factors on which competitors converge.

Day 2: Finding New Demand Beyond Existing Customers

• Three tiers of noncustomers
• Buyer experience cycle analysis
• Buyer Utility Map levers
• Utility blockers across purchase, delivery, use, and disposal
• Six Paths Framework overview
• Alternative industries and strategic group analysis
• Functional-emotional orientation of an industry

Workshop: Teams map noncustomer groups and complete a Buyer Utility Map to identify priority utility blockers and demand opportunities.

Day 3: Reconstructing Market Boundaries and Designing Value

• Path one: looking across alternative industries
• Path two: looking across strategic groups
• Path three: redefining the buyer group
• Path four: complementary product and service analysis
• Path five: reshaping functional-emotional orientation
• Path six: participating in external trends
• Four Actions Framework and ERRC Grid

Workshop: Participants use two Six Paths lenses and an ERRC Grid to produce a redesigned value curve for their chosen opportunity.

Day 4: Testing Commercial Viability and Strategic Focus

• Strategic Sequence framework
• Exceptional buyer utility testing
• Price Corridor of the Mass analysis
• Target costing for strategic pricing
• Cost innovation and partner ecosystem choices
• Adoption hurdle identification
• Compelling tagline and strategic communication

Workshop: Teams test their proposed offering through utility, price, cost, and adoption gates and revise their concept where a gate fails.

Day 5: Mobilising Execution for Market Creation

• Tipping Point Leadership principles
• Cognitive, resource, motivational, and political hurdles
• Kingpins and disproportionate influence
• Fair Process in strategic execution
• Sequence of engagement, explanation, and expectation clarity
• Blue Ocean initiative governance and decision gates
• Ninety-day market creation action planning

Workshop: Participants present an executive-ready market creation planning pack and produce a 90-day roadmap with owners, evidence needs, and adoption actions.

Tools & standards covered

Miro, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, ISO 56002 Innovation Management System Guidance

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions