The strategy canvas is an analytical tool for evaluating business strategies within a market or industry.

Strategy canvases are great at surfacing insight about which factors of competition a company (or group of companies) are focused on. It does this by presenting a line chart with the axes set up so that factors of competition (including price) are along the X axis and the emphasis a company places on those factors are along the Y axis.

Plotting a company on a strategy canvas creates a value curve.

Strategy canvases are used to help businesses identify blue ocean opportunities.

When an innovative company is plotted on the strategy canvas for a sector, it’s likely that new factors of competition) will need to be added. These factors are new because the existing competitors have no emphasis on them. This signals an opportunity to create a blue ocean. It’s common for innovators to drop the emphasis on some established factors of competition in their sector in favor of their unique new factors. Doing so makes it easier to escape the competition of a red ocean.