Sea of Troubles Vs. Blue Ocean: A Strategic Choice

Red oceans represent all the industries in existence today - the known market space.  In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known.  Here companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of product or service demand.  As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced.  Products become commodities or niche, cutthroat competition turns the ocean bloody; hence, the red oceans.

That sounds a bit like the shrinking waterhole of our current political landscape, isn't it?  Parties are more or less on side in the broad strokes; where the Conservatives North or South of the border differ from liberal Parties, it tend to be in the vein of throwing chums into the water, sacrificing a bit of red meat to appease the sharks.

Blue oceans, in contrast, denote all the industries not in existence today - the unknown market space, untainted by competition.  In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set.  Blue ocean is an analogy to describe the wider, deeper potential of the market space that is not yet explored.

If the landscape is not to your advantage, you change venues.  Why die atop a hill when you can turn around and fight down a valley?  This is the politics of value add - creating new things and building a track-record that establishes trust in your ability to keep bringing the people the something new they crave.

Threatening your populace by hanging "there be monsters beyond" signage on your firewalls implies the world is finite; it makes people hunker down, store their goods and dig out their pitchforks.  It's not a good strategy for long-term sustainability, social or economic.

When you throw down the walls, establish some common ground as a starting point and highlight the blue skies beyond, all it does is take a bit of encouragement and a lot of example setting to encourage the people to fly.

Never saw the sun shining so bright

Never saw things going so right

Noticing the days hurrying by

When you're in love, my how they fly