Blue Ocean is a strategic framework popularized by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in their 2005 book "Blue Ocean Strategy," describing the practice of creating uncontested market space (the "blue ocean") rather than competing in existing markets (the "red ocean") characterized by direct competition, narrow margins, and customer-driven price erosion, with the central thesis being that companies should create new demand by combining differentiation and low cost rather than choosing between them in existing markets, with the framework being widely cited and often misapplied because most claimed "blue oceans" turn out to be small niches in existing red oceans rather than genuinely new market spaces. It is one of the most-popular str...