Too often those that attempt to do good, haven’t done well in economic terms. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We have seen countless instances of breakthrough technologies that have been created to solve major challenges in the developing world but never take off. We find that developers often get so excited about how what they were developing could solve some major problem, that they fail to address its commercially viability. Either their cost structure is too high, or the strategic price to recover costs is set well beyond what the market can bear, or there are local barriers to adoption, for example in distribution or financing that block the product from being successful in the market.

However, we do not believe that the gap between doing good and doing well need always persist.Blue ocean strategy specifically addresses this challenge through the Blue Ocean Idea (BOI) index. BOI index helps decision-makers assess whether a plan to do good can exist in a reality where it must also do well, providing a check to determine whether they are truly offering a leap in utility, setting a strategic price accessible to the target market, building a business model that can generate profit at that strategic price, and addressing potential adoption hurdles upfront. With blue ocean strategy, doing well and doing good can move in sync.