Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant

by W. Chan Kim

Over time, however, competitors jumped in to reap profits from the new market space of on-demand CRM automation that Salesforce.com created. Large players offered hybrid solutions, and an increasing number of small players entered the on-demand CRM market in an attempt to provide similar offerings. To break away from the competition, Salesforce.com made a new blue ocean strategic move to renew its initial value innovation offering. With the launch of Force.com, a cloud-based development tool for creating add-on applications, and AppExchange, a web-based applications marketplace, Salesforce.com allowed corporate clients to obtain a range of on-demand customized programs at low cost while still retaining the simplicity, convenience, reliability, and low risk of its original offering, achieving both differentiation and low cost.