Building and Applying Your Strategy Canvas
- Mr Anonymous
- 2 hours ago
- 6 min read
Understanding the Blue Ocean Strategy Canvas is only the beginning. The real value comes from using it to question how your business currently competes and finding opportunities to create something customers value differently.
Let’s look at how you can build your own Strategy Canvas, what to watch out for, and how other businesses have used similar thinking to stand out.
Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your Strategy Canvas
Creating a Strategy Canvas starts with understanding your market. Before thinking about what your business should do differently, you first need to understand what everyone is doing today.
Step 1: Identify the Competitive Factors
Start by looking at what businesses in your industry compete on. This could be price, product features, service quality, convenience, distribution, branding, or customer experience. Focus on the factors that actually influence how customers make their decisions.
You can uncover these through competitor research, customer feedback, interviews, industry reports, and conversations with your sales team.
Try to keep your list focused. Around 5–12 key factors is usually enough to give you a clear picture without making the canvas difficult to understand.
Step 2: Map the Current Value Curves
Next, compare your business with your competitors. Give each business a score across your chosen factors and plot them on the Strategy Canvas. This creates your value curves, showing where businesses are investing and how similar or different their strategies really are.
This is often where things get interesting. You may discover that your competitors are all competing on the same things. If everyone is trying to offer more features, better service, or lower prices, there may be an opportunity to stop playing the same game.
Step 3: Understand What Customers Really Need
Your Strategy Canvas should not be based only on competitor research. You also need to understand the people you are trying to serve.
Talk to existing customers, but don't forget about non-customers. Why are they choosing another solution? What frustrates them? What is stopping them from using your category altogether?
Customer interviews and tools such as customer journey mapping can help uncover these unmet needs.
Step 4: Use the Four Actions Framework
Now challenge the factors you have identified.
Ask four simple questions:
Eliminate — What could we remove?
Reduce — What could we offer less of?
Raise — What should we offer more of?
Create — What could we introduce that customers are not currently getting?
These questions help you move beyond simply adding more features. They encourage you to rethink what the customer actually needs.
Step 5: Create and Test Your New Value Curve
Use your answers to create a new value curve. The aim is not to be better at everything. Instead, your new strategy should show clear choices about where you will invest, where you will simplify, and where you will create new value.
But don't assume the idea will work just because it looks good on paper. Test it with customers. A prototype, small-scale experiment, or early customer feedback can help you understand whether your new value proposition actually resonates before you invest heavily in it.
Once validated, the strategy needs to move into implementation. This may mean changing internal processes, resources, technology, capabilities, or even the customer experience.
And remember: markets change. Your Strategy Canvas should be revisited as customer expectations and competitors evolve.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
A Strategy Canvas is useful because it makes assumptions visible. But it is easy to use it in a way that simply reinforces the way your industry already works.
Trying to Compete on Everything
One of the biggest mistakes is trying to improve every factor.
More features, more service, and more investment do not automatically mean more value. In fact, they can increase cost and complexity without giving customers a meaningful reason to choose you.
Blue Ocean Strategy is about making choices.
Knowing what to leave out can be just as important as knowing what to add.
Making Small Changes Instead of Creating Real Difference
Adding one new feature or slightly improving your existing service does not necessarily create a blue ocean.
If your offering still looks and feels similar to competitors, you are probably still competing within the same market.
The opportunity comes from finding a meaningfully different value proposition, not just making incremental improvements.
Solving the Wrong Problem
Customer complaints can sometimes point to a symptom rather than the real issue.
For example, customers might complain about long waiting times. The real problem could be poor service efficiency, an inconvenient process, or limited accessibility.
Take a step back and ask why the problem exists before deciding what needs to change.
Forgetting About Non-Customers
It is natural to focus on the people who already buy from you. But some of the biggest opportunities can come from people who don't.
Understanding why non-customers choose alternatives or avoid your industry altogether can reveal completely new possibilities.
Ignoring Whether You Can Actually Deliver It
Finally, a great Strategy Canvas means very little if your organisation cannot deliver the new value proposition. Consider your people, resources, technology, capabilities, and internal processes. A good strategy needs to be both desirable to customers and achievable by the business.
Real-World Examples of Blue Ocean Strategy
The easiest way to understand Blue Ocean Strategy is to see how businesses have changed the way their industries compete.
Cirque du Soleil
Traditional circuses often competed through animal shows, famous performers, and spectacular acts. Cirque du Soleil took a different approach. It removed elements such as animal shows and star performers, while introducing theatre, artistic themes, music, and dance. Instead of creating another traditional circus, it created a completely different entertainment experience.
The lesson: Sometimes the opportunity is not to make an existing category better, but to redefine what the category can be.
Nintendo Wii
While many video game companies focused on graphics, processing power, and increasingly complex games, Nintendo went in another direction.
The Wii introduced intuitive motion controls and focused on casual and social gaming. This helped attract people who might not have considered themselves traditional gamers.
Nintendo wasn't simply competing for the same audience. It was expanding who gaming was for.
Yellow Tail
Wine can feel complicated for people who are unfamiliar with the category. Yellow Tail took a more approachable route by simplifying the wine experience and using easy-to-understand choices and accessible branding. Rather than focusing heavily on traditional wine culture and expertise, it made wine feel easier and more enjoyable to a wider audience.
The lesson: Creating value can sometimes mean removing complexity rather than adding more.
What Can We Learn From These Examples?
Cirque du Soleil, Nintendo Wii, and Yellow Tail operate in completely different industries. Yet they share the same underlying idea.
They did not simply ask:
“How can we do what our competitors are doing better?”
They asked:
“What could we change about the way customers experience this category?”
That shift is at the heart of Blue Ocean Strategy.
What's Next?
Next blog, we'll explore how Blue Ocean Strategy can work together with Design Thinking, how businesses can use the Strategy Canvas for future innovation, and how to keep evolving as markets and customer needs change.
Last Words
I will be adding more articles on Design Thinking, Strategy and Innovation throughout the year. Articles of these 5 Step Action Plan and Modern Soft Skills will be added periodically to give my readers a broader insights to how to crush complex problems, overcome future challenges and spot AI opportunities.
Check out more articles via my blog: https://www.emerge-creatives.com/blog-1
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About the Author
Daniel Ling is a regional ex-Design Leader turned educator, and business owner of Emerge Creatives, an registered SSG training provider (RTP) to deliver modern soft skills to professionals through Design Thinking, Business Strategy, and AI Innovation.
With over 15 years of experience in the financial and e-commerce tech industries- including key leadership roles at Lazada, NTUC Income, OCBC, and DBS- Daniel has led cross-regional design teams, built design functions from the ground up, and spearheaded large-scale transformation initiatives. But beyond industry success,
Daniel has reinvented himself as a “designer in a business suit”- equally fluent in creative strategy and commercial impact.
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