Blue Ocean 4 Actions Framework Template
Break the value-cost trade-off and create a blue ocean with four central questions.
About the Blue Ocean 4 Actions Framework template
The Four Actions template is designed to help entrepreneurs think in more innovative ways about the products they are creating relative to the industry. The framework will help you maximize user value and eliminate unnecessary product features by eliminating and reducing user pain, and raising and creating user gain.
Who created the 4 Actions Framework for Blue Ocean Strategy?
The Blue Ocean Four Actions Framework was created by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. They are Professors of Strategy at INSEAD, one of the world’s top business schools, and co-directors of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute in Fontainebleau, France. Together, they wrote a best-selling book Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant.
Why use the Four Actions Framework?
The Blue Ocean Four Actions Framework can help you assess whether you are spending money in the correct ways around your product to maximize user gain and minimize user pain. Identify the pains that really matter for your product and the gains that really matter with this template. This way, you are getting the most value with the least cost within the total product market.
When to use the Four Actions Framework Template
The Four Actions Framework Template is most useful when you help create value innovation and break the value-cost trade-off. W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne use the terms red and blue oceans to describe the market universe. They say that ‘red oceans are all the industries in existence today—the known market space.’ In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Blue oceans, in contrast, denote all the industries not in existence today—the unknown market space, untainted by competition. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. So the Blue Ocean 4 Actions Framework Template is a great tool to consider when you feel like your company or your product is stuck in the ‘red ocean’ and you are looking for ways to innovate.
How to use the 4 Actions Framework template
Step 1: Eliminate
In each column, it’s important to ask questions about the industry standards in your product space. First, ask yourself, which factors that the industry has long competed on should be eliminated?
Think of the factors that require a lot of investment and effort, but don’t bring a lot of revenue/new customers and, in general, don’t drive key metrics up. These can also be the factors that made more sense in the past but are not as useful now — for example, a feature of differentiated a digital product in the past but became obsolete as time passed.
Step 2: Reduce
Which factors should be reduced well below the industry’s standard? Think of the features/characteristics of your product that are well designed to beat the competition but take to much time and resources. Can you strip this down to something more simple but still competitive and relevant to your users?
Step 3: Raise
Which factors should be raised well above the industry’s standard? What are the pain points that the market does not address? Think of the way you can build features that will help your customers solve challenges that other companies are not solving.
Step 4: Create
Which factors should be created that the industry has never offered? This is one of the most challenging questions and it requires a deep understanding of your customers’ interests and desires, as well as a good insight into where the industry is going. The goal is to think about the future and the challenges customers haven’t articulated yet.
What is the Four Actions Framework?
The Four Actions Framework is a blue ocean strategy tool that poses four central questions designed to help you create value innovation and break the value-cost trade-off. These four key questions or actions include: Eliminate, Reduce, Raise and Create. The framework helps you raise and create customer value, and reduce or eliminate what is not needed.
Get started with this template right now.
Funding Tracker Template
Works best for:
Kanban Boards, Operations
For many organizations, especially non-profits, funding is their lifeblood—and meeting fundraising goals is a crucial part of carrying out their mission. A funding tracker gives them a powerful, easy-to-use tool for measuring their progress and staying on course. And beyond helping you visualize milestones, this template will give you an effective way to inspire the public to donate, and help you keep track of those donors. It’s especially useful when you have multiple donations coming from a variety of sources.
Perceptual Map Template
Works best for:
Marketing, Desk Research, Mapping
To shape your messaging, tailor your marketing, improve your product, and build your brand, you have to know your customers’ perceptions — what they think of you and your competitors. You can gain those insights by exploring a perceptual map. This simple, powerful tool creates a visual representation of how customers rank your price, performance, safety, and reliability. Put this template to work and you’ll be able to size up your competition, see gaps in the market, and understand changes in customer behavior and purchasing decisions.
Plus Delta Template
Works best for:
Software Development, Meetings, Retrospectives
The Plus Delta template is a simple but powerful tool for collecting constructive criticism from a group. The format encourages you and your team to focus on what went well, what you should repeat in the future, and what you should aim to change. To complete a Plus Delta template, simply make note of things that are working and things you would like to improve. You can then file these elements into two separate columns. Use Plus Delta to showcase wins and learnings for your team, stakeholders, employees, and bosses.
T-Chart Template
Works best for:
Ideation, Operations, Strategic Planning
T-Charts can help you compare and contrast two different ideas, group information into different categories, and prove a change through “before” and “after” analysis. T-Charts are visual organizational tools that enable you to compare ideas, so you can evaluate pros and cons, facts and opinions, strengths and weaknesses, or big-picture views versus specific details. Designers and content creators can use T-Charts to turn possibilities into actionable ideas. T-Charts are useful for discussing differences and similarities with your team or clients and can help you to reach a decision together.
SAFe Roam Board
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, Operations, Agile Workflows
A SAFe ROAM Board is a framework for making risks visible. It gives you and your team a shared space to notice and highlight risks, so they don’t get ignored. The ROAM Board helps everyone consider the likelihood and impact of risks, and decide which risks are low priority versus high priority. The underlying principles of SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) are: drive cost-effective solutions, apply systems thinking, assume that things will change, build incrementally, base milestones on evaluating working systems, and visualize and limit works in progress.
Cross Functional Flowchart
Works best for:
Org Charts, Business Management
Have a quick look at everyone on a project and see exactly what they’ll contribute. That’s the clarity and transparency a cross-functional flowchart will give you. These are also called “swim lane” flowcharts because each person (each customer, client, or representative from a specific function) is assigned a lane—a clear line—that will help you visualize their roles at each stage of the project. This template will empower you to streamline processes, reduce inefficiencies, and make meaningful cross-functional relationships.