A business strategy is the means by which an organization sets out to achieve its desired objectives. It can simply be described as long-term business planning. Typically a business strategy will cover a period of about 3-5 years (sometimes even longer).

A business strategy is a set of guiding principles that, when communicated and adopted in the organization, generates a desired pattern of decision-making.
It is therefore about how people throughout the organization should make decisions and allocate resources in order to accomplish key objectives.

A good strategy provides a clear roadmap, consisting of a set of guiding principles or rules, that defines the actions people in the business should take (and not take) and the things they should prioritize (and not prioritize) to achieve desired goals.

Riccardo Cacelli specializes in Blue Ocean Strategy.

“Blue Ocean Strategy” is the metaphor of red and blue oceans describes the market universe.

Red oceans represent 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.
Here companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of product or service demand.
As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced.
Products become commodities or niche, and cutthroat competition turns the ocean bloody; hence, the term “red oceans”.

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.
There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue ocean is an analogy to describe the wider, deeper potential of market space that is not yet explored.

The cornerstone of blue ocean strategy is “value innovation”, a concept originally outlined in Kim & Mauborgne’s 1997 article “Value Innovation – The Strategic Logic of High Growth”.

Value innovation is the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost, creating value for both the buyer, the company, and its employees, thereby opening up new and uncontested market space.