
Discovering a Blue Ocean Idea - jkuria
https://capitalandgrowth.org/articles/720/part-3-six-paths-to-discovering-a-blue-ocean-idea.html
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hyperpallium
There's a weird comformity effect where one tends to think in the same _terms_
as those around you, so you see the same issues, consider the same
alternatives along the same dimensions. This can happen without you noticing
it, your direct perception sublimating like a dream on waking.

There is gold, just one or two steps off the beaten track, but we can't see
it, because we are on rails, only thinking in terms the track affords.

But it's not so easy to go off the rails: you can easily get disoriented and
overwhelmed, and once you have found something, it's difficult to verify...
and even harder to convince anyone else.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Note, too, that there’s more garbage than gold off the rails. Simply going off
the rails isn’t enough. Thoughtful exploration, on the other hand, can be
tremendously rewarding.

~~~
Lambdanaut
Note, three, that all garbage is gold under the light of a sufficiently child-
like mind devoid of expectations, ideals, creeds, beliefs, biases, and
stigmas.

The insane man is only insane when in a world of sane men.

~~~
dwaltrip
Ehh. Some things are just not as useful as other things. This follows directly
from the laws of nature.

All elements lighter than iron _release_ energy when they fuse together, while
iron and anything heavier must _consume_ energy to fuse together.

Carbon is one of the most important elements for life due to its unique
chemical properties and immense number of useful molecular arrangements.

The molecule we call water is essential to life as well, as it is incredibly
effective, compared to the alternatives, at transporting materials to and from
different parts of an organism (among other things [1]).

And so on...

[1] [http://www.ivyroses.com/Biology/Why-is-water-important-to-
li...](http://www.ivyroses.com/Biology/Why-is-water-important-to-life.php)

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baybal2
Take a look what Chinese do, and their logic:

Making manufacturing business is HARD, harder, or many times harder than a yet
another online service.

Growing and scaling such business is also hard, and it does not scale much
downward as such (you have to fire workers, and they riot on you, storm your
apartment and beat you and your familiy.)

The business is noticeably seasonal and have sharp highs and lows when it
comes to consumer goods.

"The next big thing" opportunity like phones and tablets are come and go, they
last a maximum of 2 "feast" years.

There are "cash crop" type products like battery banks, chargers, usb flash
sticks. It makes profit all the time, but it's not that high.

In between big contracts, or when the factory is busy making products for
itself in a feast year, factory owner do not shed capacity, but switch most of
if to cash crop product

Then he puts together most talented engineers and gives them task to invent
random stuff, and do trial run manufacturing.

Instead of setting up a brand around these new products, they are
unceremoniously dumped to trade agents.

If agents will be placing a lot of repeating orders, then, more consideration
will be given to such product.

That is "the complicated Chinese strategy" in 9 sentences.

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muzani
Be careful of blue ocean ideas though. Most of the time, the market might not
exist yet. The ocean is blue because there's nothing to feed on there.

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pascalxus
The hard part isn't ideas. The hard part is finding actual problems that can
be solved in a better way. As ycombinator put it: You have to "find customers
with their hair on fire". Finding that kind of problem, along with a better
way to solve that problem, is the key.

~~~
snarf21
Exactly, execution is everything. Ideas are, at best, a head start. People
tend to focus too much on the idea and not the value proposition. Remember,
people will always buy a "better" life, you just have to make sure you can
give it to them.

~~~
platz
He's not even talking about execution. He's referring to understanding
customers needs.

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mannykannot
Metaphors are easier to come by than good ideas.

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baybal2
Chinese factories and OEMs are great at this soft of things, and they do it in
a very simple way. That simple way is rather hard to adopt for companies in
the West that are invested in their "core product" even if they have full
realization that it is about to die.

Remember things like selfie sticks, electronic cigars, the bloody wifi
lightbulbs and kettles, hoverboards, child trackers, consumer grade drones,
and tons of other stuff that most people buy without giving any thought to who
and how made the original product.

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bobsil1
Why fight over chewed-up turf? If you're able, focus on a greenfield hard tech
idea well ahead of anyone else.

~~~
kristiandupont
Because the turf is actually there. Focusing on something well ahead of
everybody else will very often lead you nowhere.

~~~
ccozan
There are numerous examples of ideas/business that were based on that ideas
that came ahead of their time and lost big.

Only a few people, for example Musk, might be able to bet on some idea and
(maybe) win. He might want to fly now to Mars, but this way ahead, we are
nowhere of this capability.

~~~
timthelion
Ahead of your time isn't just a problem of tech. Consumers won't buy into a
product that they are "not ready for yet". A good example of this is CAS file
systems al-la IPFS. The tech has been around for at least 35 years. plan9 had
a fully functional CAS file system. But now, IPFS is finally getting traction,
mostly because users are comfortable enough now with cloud-like services that
they are capable of mentaly dealing with the abstraction.

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mankash666
I find this to be empty & impractical. If this methodology were beneficial,
blue ocean businesses would be propping up like mushrooms.

I challenge anyone who's read this to propose a single blue ocean idea here

~~~
maneesh
The blue ocean idea for Pavlok[1] (a wearable device habit/behavior trainer)
wearable we developed came from a similar thought process. We wrote it up
here: [https://old.pavlok.com/forgotten](https://old.pavlok.com/forgotten)

[1][https://pavlok.com](https://pavlok.com)

~~~
CharlesW
> _The blue ocean idea for Pavlok (a wearable device habit /behavior
> trainer)…_

A digital rubber band is not a "blue ocean idea".

[http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-09-02/features/91030...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-09-02/features/9103060011_1_dear-
ann-landers-rubber-band-biting)

~~~
maneesh
Did you read the forgotten link I posted? The whole point is that we used
already discovered concepts, with modern technology, to solve any bad habit.
The market was and is wide open.

It's connecting multiple different technologies to attack a wide open market
space. Think: smoking, drinking, gambling, oversleeping, getting over your ex,
overspending, unhealthy eating, etc.

If that isn't blue ocean strategy then I don't know what is.

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