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.
SCAMPER Model
Works best for:
Ideation, Operations, Brainstorming
Is your team in a rut? Have you had a lingering problem that can’t seem to be solved? First introduced in 1972, SCAMPER. is a brainstorming method developed by Bob Eberle, an author of creativity books for young people. This clever, easy-to-use method helps teams overcome creative roadblocks. SCAMPER walks you through seven questions that are meant to encourage your team to approach a problem through seven unique filters. By asking your team to think through a problem using this framework, you’ll unlock fresh, innovative ways to understand the problem you’re trying to solve.
Prototype Template
Works best for:
UX Design, Design Thinking
A prototype is a live mockup of your product that defines the product’s structure, user flow, and navigational details (such as buttons and menus) without committing to final details like visual design. Prototyping allows you to simulate how a user might experience your product or service, map out user contexts and task flows, create scenarios to understand personas, and collect feedback on your product. Using a prototype helps you save money by locating roadblocks early in the process. Prototypes can vary, but they generally contain a series of screens or artboards connected by arrows or links.
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.
UX Research Plan Template
Works best for:
Market Research, Desk Research, User Experience
A research plan communicates the fundamental information that stakeholders need to understand about a user experience research project: who, what, why, and when. The plan ensures everyone is aligned and knows what they must do to make the UX research project a success. Use the research plan to communicate background information about your project; objectives; research methods; the scope of the project, and profiles of the participants. By using a UX research plan, you can achieve stakeholder buy-in, stay on track, and set yourself up for success.
Cost-Benefit Analysis Template
Works best for:
Leadership, Decision Making, Strategic Planning
With so many day-to-day decisions to make—and each one feeling high-stakes—it’s easy for all the choices to weigh a business or organization down. You need a systematic way to analyze the risks and rewards. A cost benefit analysis gives you the clarity you need to make smart decisions. This template will let you conduct a CBA to help your team assess the pros and cons of new projects or business proposals—and ultimately help your company preserve your precious time, money, and social capital.
Kaizen Report Template
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, Operations, Documentation
What makes a great company great? They know that greatness needs to be fostered and maintained — meaning they never stop working to improve. If you’re one of those companies (or aspire to be), a kaizen report is an ideal tool. It creates a simple visual guide to continuous improvement activities on a team, departmental, and organizational level. Using a kaizen report approach, every employee in an organization audits their own processes and understands what they might have overlooked, making this a powerful tool for increasing accountability at all levels.