Moving from Blue Ocean Strategy to Blue Ocean Shift in Higher Education

Abstract

Colleges and universities spend considerable time and resources developing strategic plans, often using outside consultants. These efforts typically focus on identifying and replicating best practices of other institutions, rather than finding distinctive opportunities. This results in increasing conformity across similar colleges and universities and results in a commoditization of education. This article describes how colleges and universities can use blue ocean shift processes to develop value innovation, breaking the tradeoff between differentiation and cost minimization, and opportunities to use sensemaking to identify a distinctive and sustainable niche in their educational offerings. This involves a focus on creating programs that are attractive to students who would not otherwise be interested in the institution. We then provide a case study of how one institution used the blue ocean shift process to differentiate its educational programs and offerings. We provide evidence demonstrating the impact of the blue ocean shift and comparative enrollment increases for the institution.