altMBA - Strategy Canvas
A strategy canvas plots how you compete on the same factors as everyone else, then uses the four actions - eliminate, reduce, raise, create - to design a genuinely different curve.
Four labelled moves sit in a grid, each one bending your value curve away from the pack.
Reach for this when…
- You're competing head-on with rivals on every feature and losing on price.
- The team can't name what actually makes the business different.
- You want a proof-of-concept test for a repositioning, not just a slide.
How to run it
- Plot the current competitive factors and value curve.
- Compare your curve against competitors' on the same axes.
- Use eliminate, reduce, raise, create to design a new curve.
- Present the canvas and refine with input.
- Identify the first proof-of-concept action to test the new strategy.
A worked example
Situation. Nurul Aisyah ran Padi Analytics, an agritech SaaS business in Penang, Malaysia, competing against three bigger platforms on the same list of features: weather data, satellite imagery, yield prediction.
Applied. Her value curve tracked theirs almost exactly, just weaker on every factor. Running the four actions, she eliminated satellite imagery outright, since farmers rarely opened it, and raised local agronomist phone support, a factor none of the competitors offered.
Result. Churn dropped once support calls, not dashboards, became the reason farmers renewed each season.
The catch
The canvas describes a position; it doesn't generate one - the actual insight comes from the four actions, and teams often eliminate the easy things and leave the sacred cows untouched. It also assumes competitors are correctly mapped, which needs real customer research, not guesswork.
If your new curve still tracks the same shape as competitors', you've redecorated, not repositioned.
Origin: Dale Williams, adapting Kim & Mauborgne's Blue Ocean Strategy