VIAGRA

With the creation of Viagra, Pfizer created a blue ocean in lifestyle drugs by going beyond the boundaries of the pharmaceutical industry at the time.

Pfizer’s wildly successful blue ocean strategic move that launched Viagra challenged the functional-emotional orientation of the pharmaceutical industry. It shifted its focus from the pharmaceutical industry’s largely functional orientation – medical treatment – to lifestyle enhancement, an emotional orientation.

Like Viagra, are you willing to challenge the functional-emotional orientation of your industry to create new market space, as path five of blue ocean strategy’s six paths framework suggests? When companies are willing to challenge the functional-emotional orientation of their industry, they can often create new market space. Emotionally oriented industries offer many extras that add price without enhancing functionality. Stripping away those extras may create a fundamentally simpler, lower-priced, lower-cost business model that customers would welcome. Conversely, functionally oriented industries can often infuse commodity products with new life by adding a dose of emotion and, in so doing, can stimulate new demand.

THE BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY PRACTITIONER PROGRAM