When the whole category cracks

Salad and Go filed for bankruptcy and closed every location this week. A chain built on fast, cheap, healthy food ran the math long enough to prove the math does not always work. When a whole category of competitor collapses, the customers they served are still hungry. They are looking for somewhere to go.

W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne spent years studying why some companies escape brutal competition entirely. Their finding: the most dangerous place to build a business is inside a crowded market where everyone is fighting over the same customers with the same offer. They called it the red ocean. The alternative is to redraw the boundaries, serve a need in a way no existing competitor does, and the competition becomes beside the point. When a chain like Salad and Go disappears, a small owner who has built something distinct does not scramble. The displaced customers come looking, and there is no line.

Read Kim and Mauborgne's explanation of value innovation at blueoceanstrategy.com.

Learn from someone who's done it: W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne — What is Blue Ocean Strategy?