The Blue Ocean Strategy for Hydrogen Developers
“How can hydrogen developers build a blue-ocean strategy in a red-ocean world?”
In our last post, we talked about ‘zombie’ hydrogen projects, which was in part a strategy discussion we had regarding Dash Clean Energy’s zero-emissions peak-power plant approach to the hydrogen market. One of our favorite strategy books is called The Blue Ocean Strategy, by Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, where they describe industries as either ‘Red Oceans’ (existing markets) or ‘Blue Oceans’ (industries not in existence)
In a recent HBR article, Kim & Mauborgne further describe the six possible traps businesses can fall into while seeking a blue ocean strategy. We believe two of them are extremely important to the current state of play in the hydrogen industry:
Confusing technological innovations for new markets. Every time we hear about innovation, we assume there’s a market for it. We live in a society where technological innovation is considered a key driver of market expansion. But in reality, value innovation, not technology innovation, launches commercially compelling new markets.
Utilize low cost as a market creation strategy. When organizations see market-creating strategies as synonymous with low-cost methods alone, they focus on what to eliminate and reduce in current offerings, ignoring what they should improve or create to increase their value.
While creating a new market for the hydrogen industry, we need to consider differentiation and low pricing. If your product is not differentiated but priced lower, you will only succeed in starting a price war. The idea is to create pricing strategies against your immediate competitors and also against substitutes your non-customers are using across industries.
The ideal blue ocean strategy is achieved by aligning value, profit, and people.
How can hydrogen developers build a blue-ocean strategy in a red-ocean world?
Simply put, through value innovation:
Dash Clean Energy is swimming in the blue ocean with our Zero-Emission Peak Power solution.
We are creating a new market for zero-emission hydrogen-based peak power plants that can be as small as 1 MW and as large as 20 MW on an individual site.
There is plenty of value to be created, and Dash plans to lead the way. Our upcoming articles will cover this and more.
