If you want to stand out from the crowd and make your competition irrelevant, you need to understand first where you are now compared to your competition. In this post, you will learn what the strategy canvas is, what benefits it has for your organization, and how to draw it using a template. Let’s get into it!
What is the Strategy Canvas?
The strategy canvas is a powerful one-page, visual tool that depicts the way a business configures its offering to buyers in relation to those of its competitors. It is both a diagnostic tool and an action framework for building a compelling blue ocean strategy. It captures the current state of play in the known market space.
In one simple picture, the strategy canvas shows how businesses are currently competing and investing to stay in the game; what buyers actually get when they patronize the industry; and importantly, it also shows the strategic profiles or value curves of your company or organization and other major players.
The strategy canvas was developed by professors Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.
Read the strategy canvas definition on the blue ocean tools pages.
The Strategy Canvas
(C) Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. All rights reserved.
The Benefits of Drawing a Strategy Canvas
Do you have one simple picture that captures your overall strategy, a picture that every manager understands and that puts everyone on the same page? Do you know what factors your industry or target industry competes on and invests in? Do you know what sets your product or service offering apart, and how it diverges from the competition? In short, do you and your team have an objective view of the current state of play in your industry?
Whether you are about to embark on a blue ocean shift, or simply want to make sure you truly understand your industry’s status quo, having a clear and shared picture of the current strategic landscape is critical.
First, it ensures that you have a strategy, not merely a collection of tactics that may make sense individually, but don’t add up and may even be contradictory. Second, it ensures that everyone is on the same page.
Only when people agree on what the current strategy and strategic landscape are, and see and agree on the clear need for change, will you create real alignment and inspire their willingness to act.
To learn more about the difference between strategy and tactics, read our post: Strategy vs Tactics: What is the Difference and Why it Matters.
How to Draw a Strategy Canvas
The strategy canvas has two axes. The horizontal axis shows the key factors of competition, starting with price. Here you list the key factors players in an industry compete on and invest in.
The vertical axis, by contrast, shows the offering level that buyers receive for a given factor. A higher level means that an industry player offers more, and hence buyers receive more.
By plotting the offering level delivered by the market leaders across each factor, and connecting the dots, you can draw – and see – the strategic profile or value curve of each player.
Step-by-step tutorial on how to draw a strategy canvas
1. Name the industry you are in.
2. For your selected businesses or chosen product/service offering, identify the key competitive factors your industry or target industry competes on.
3. Rate the relative offering level of each factor on the vertical axis using a 5-point scale. A relatively low offering level should be plotted lower on the axis, and a relatively high offering level should be plotted higher.
4. Connect the dots to create your as-is strategic profile or value curve.
5. Decide on the best player to plot your offering against and repeat the process. Select the industry leader or your strongest competitor.
The steps are simple. Doing them well is not. Most of the work sits in step 2: deciding which factors your industry really competes on and invests in. Then you have to place each player, your own company included, on every one of those factors. Get either wrong and the value curves look tidy but tell you little about the real state of play. That is what our interactive tool is built for: AI suggestions help you pick the competing factors and key players, and guide mode takes you through each step. Use it below, or start with the paper template.
Download Your Strategy Canvas Template
Rather than creating your strategy canvas in excel or making it in word doc, we prepared a strategy canvas template for you, which you can download from this page. The pdf template includes a table to list your key competing factors and a blank strategy canvas you can use for your industry.
Download this free strategy canvas template and create your as-is strategy canvas today to start the process of shifting from the red ocean to the blue ocean.
Free interactive tool
Skip the paper template. Draw your strategy canvas in our interactive tool.
See the current state of play in your industry in one picture: the factors your industry competes on, and your value curve against your competitors’. Guide mode takes you through each step, AI suggestions help you pick the competing factors and key players, and you can export your canvas as a PDF.
The As-Is Strategy Canvas is one of the interactive tools in the Blue Ocean Creation Program. Try it free on your company.
Enter your email and we’ll send you the link to the tool.
Feeling stuck? Get inspired by looking at powerful strategy canvas examples. Learn how CitizenM, Apple, [yellow tail], and more, stood out from the crowd.
5 Strategy Canvas Examples
Be sure to check out the Blue Ocean books for detailed guidance on how to draw the strategy canvas and use other blue ocean strategy tools and frameworks. The books will walk you through how to apply the tools to your situation, explain how to interpret the results, highlight the potential pitfalls in working with it, and discuss how to overcome those pitfalls to ensure your success.
Strategy canvas: frequently asked questions
What is a strategy canvas?
The strategy canvas is a one-page visual analytic that depicts the way an organization configures its offering to buyers in relation to those of its competitors. It is both a diagnostic tool and an action framework for building a compelling blue ocean strategy. Read the full definition.
How do I create a strategy canvas?
Name your industry, list the key factors it competes on, rate each player's offering level on every factor, and connect the dots to see each value curve. The five steps above walk through it. You can draw it on the free template or in our interactive tool.
What is the difference between an as-is and a to-be strategy canvas?
The as-is strategy canvas captures the current state of play in your industry. The to-be canvas shows the new value curve you aim to create, using the four actions framework and the ERRC grid: eliminate, reduce, raise and create.
Is the strategy canvas template free?
Yes. The PDF template is a free download on this page. The interactive As-Is Strategy Canvas tool is also free to try: enter your email and we'll send you the link.
Build a blue ocean strategy for your business
The Blue Ocean Creation Program is a self-directed workspace, online course and workbook that will help you learn and apply the tools, frameworks and processes to create a blue ocean.
