As shown in figure 2-2, to break the trade-off between differentiation and low cost and to create a new value curve, there are four key questions to … - Michael E. Porter

An Incoherent Strategy When a company’s value curve looks like a bowl of spaghetti — a zigzag with no rhyme or reason, where the offering can be described as “low-high-low-low-high-low-high” — it signals that the company doesn’t have a coherent strategy. Its strategy is likely based on independent substrategies. These may individually make sense and keep the business running and everyone busy, but collectively they do little to distinguish the company from the best competitor or to provide a clear strategic vision. This is often a reflection of an organization with divisional or functional silos.

Blue ocean shift is a systematic process to move your organization from cutthroat markets with bloody competition — what we think of as red oceans full of sharks — to wide-open blue oceans, or new markets devoid of competition, in a way that brings your people along.

We call this atomization after Einstein’s reflection that if you deconstruct any challenge into its basic components, or atoms, and focus on solving them one at a time, even the largest challenge shifts from being overwhelming to being intellectually and psychologically solvable.