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 do you 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.
Get started with this template right now.
4P Marketing Mix Template
Works best for:
Marketing, Brainstorming, Workshops
Product, Place, Promotions, and Price. Starting with this template (and those 4Ps) you can choose the best way to take your product or service to market. The secret is to create just the right mix—deciding how much each P needs in terms of investment, attention, and resources. That will help you build your strengths, adapt to the market, and collaborate with partners. And our simple whiteboard tool is the perfect canvas to create your marketing mix and share with teams and across your organization.
Growth Experiments Template
Works best for:
Leadership, Desk Research, Strategic Planning
Many ambitious companies are eying the future and aiming to grow. But growth decisions can be leaps of faith that are risky and costly. That’s why growth experiments make so much sense. They offer a systematic six-step method that reveals which strategies are most effective, how they’ll affect your revenue, and how they compare to your past approaches. By helping you test out your strategies for scaling your business before you fully commit, growth experiments can save you serious time, resources, and money.
Reverse Brainstorming Template
Works best for:
Ideation, Brainstorming, Team Meetings
Reverse brainstorming is a technique that prompts a group to think of problems, rather than solutions. Because we naturally think of problems, it’s a great way to get a group to anticipate problems that may occur during a project. To engage in reverse brainstorming, start by identifying the problem, and then think of things that might exacerbate it. Ask your team to generate ideas around ways in which the problem could get worse. Reverse the problems into solutions again, and then evaluate your ideas.
Entity Relationship Diagram Template
Works best for:
Flowcharts, Strategic Planning, Diagrams
Sometimes the most important relationships in business are the internal ones—between the teams, entities, and actors within a system. An entity relationship diagram (ERD) is a structural diagram that will help you visualize and understand the many complex connections between different roles. When will an ERD come in handy? It’s a great tool to have for educating and onboarding new employees or members of a team, and our template makes it so easy to customize according to your unique needs.
Design Research Template
Works best for:
UX Design, Design Thinking, Desk Research
A design research map is a grid framework showing the relationship between two key intersections in research methodologies: mindset and approach. Design research maps encourage your team or clients to develop new business strategies using generative design thinking. Originally designed by academic Liz Sanders, the framework is meant to resolve confusion or overlap between research and design methods. Whether your team is in problem-solving or problem space definition mode, using a research design template can help you consider the collective value of many unrelated practices.
Priority Matrix Template
Works best for:
Business Management, Strategic Planning, Prioritization
If you need a little more than a basic to-do list, then you’d probably benefit from a Priority Matrix. The Priority Matrix template is designed to help you determine which tasks are critical so you can focus on the most urgent needs. In a 2x2 matrix, input your priorities based on whether they must be completed with high or low urgency and are of high or low importance. Applicable to project management and personal management alike, use the Priority Matrix template to improve business processes, create efficiency, remove blockers, and reduce operational waste.