Four Actions Framework
Four questions for redesigning an offering against its industry: which factors to eliminate, which to reduce, which to raise and which to create that nobody offers.
What it’s for
It helps you stop competing by doing the same thing slightly better and find a different offering.
Key elements
Eliminate
Factors the industry takes for granted that no longer add value.
Reduce
What is offered well beyond what is needed.
Raise
What is worth taking well above the usual.
Create
What the industry has never offered.
How it’s done
Draw the strategy canvas: the industry’s factors and the level of each offering.
Ask the four actions about each factor.
Redraw the new value curve and compare it.
Applications in design
When to use it
To rethink a product, a space or a service against the competition.
Avoid
Only adding: without eliminating or reducing, the offering gets more expensive.
Don’t fall for it
The factors come from what customers value, not from the team’s feature list.
Connections
Builds on
Authors and works
- 2005
W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
Proposed the strategy canvas, on which each offering draws a value curve, and the four actions for plotting a different curve.
- 2004
W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
Proposed creating new market spaces instead of competing in existing ones.
Sources
Original sources
- Kim, W. C., & Mauborgne, R. (2005). Blue ocean strategy: How to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant. Harvard Business School Press.
- Kim, W. C., & Mauborgne, R. (2004). Blue ocean strategy. Harvard Business Review, 82(10). View source: Kim, W. C., & Mauborgne, R. (2004)
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