Four Actions Framework

What is four actions framework? 

Four Action Framework

4 Actions Framework is one of Blue Ocean Strategy  tools, used by managers to reconstruct values offered to customers, in a new way that breaks the differentiation/low cost trade-off. It forces the organization to ask the following four questions:

1. Which of the factors that the industry takes for granted should be eliminated? 

• This question  considers elimination of factors that may have made sense in the past, but do not make sense or create value now.

2. Which factors should be reduced well below the industry's standard?

•   This question forces the business planners to consider reducing factors that may have been over-designed in the race to beat the competition.

3. Which factors should be raised well above the industry's standard? 

• The third question forces managers to uncover and eliminate the compromises that the industry has forced buyers to make.

4. Which factors should be created that the industry has never offered?

• The fourth question is about discovering new sources of value for buyers.

The first  two questions address the low cost and last two questions are designed to create differentiation.

You can use the following table for answering the questions. This helps you to consider all four forces simultaneously.

Eliminate	Raise
Reduce	Create

Blue Ocean Strategy

What is Blue Ocean Strategy?

Blue Ocean Strategy

Yet there are many managers who believe that for wining a the game of business your service or products souled be either Cheap or Different. By Different I mean some features that customers won't find in competitor's offers. Michel Porter in his ground braking work Competitive Advantage 1985 defines his generic sources of competitive advantages, and defines that a company cannot get both.
However, Kim and Mauborgne in their well known work Blue Ocean Strategy tell abother story, Authors suggest that instead of competing in red oceans on price and differentiation, instead of bleeding in marginalized markets, lets sail to blue oceans and make competition irrelevant. blue ocean strategy has two famous frameworks ' Strategy Canvas ' and ' 4 actions framework '. Blue Ocean Strategy suggest to have a successful business you should create value and offer a new product or service.

I am going to introduce ' Strategy Canvas ' and ' 4 actions framework ' in next posts.