Since the rise of Redbox, have you noticed how quickly your local video stores went out of business? And Redbox is just a recent upstart. Remember the days before DVDs, snowboards, and even cell phones? How could we live without them? How do we survive without a GPS on the tractor or check the irrigation system without remote telemetry? With the record cost of fertilizers, conventional farmers are trying to maximize profits by only spending money on areas that need fertilizer. How could they have done it without relying on precision agriculture? She took a new way of thinking; a new paradigm.

There is a growing need for new ways of thinking about our business. We can no longer afford to continue farming as we have done in the past. Albert Einstein once said: “The important problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that we were at when we created them.” In other words, we need a paradigm shift.

There are several driving forces behind the need to develop new ways of thinking about agriculture. Technological advances have accelerated in our industry. The result in many agricultural sectors is that supply exceeds demand. The problem is further complicated as trade barriers between the US and other nations are lowered and the global marketplace provides instant price information for most products.

The Internet has turned anyone who wants to connect to it into potential competitors. What used to be niche markets have now disappeared as global completion continues to build. Even with high commodity prices, farmers’ profit margins are shrinking. Our farm organizations are in a vicious cycle to develop better ways to compete against global competition, which increases quality and lowers costs. We can no longer rely on benchmarking with neighboring growers; now we have to compare ourselves with the “world class” competition.

In their book, Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne argue that tomorrow’s forward-thinking companies will succeed not by clashing head-on with competitors, but by creating “Blue Oceans” of new unopposed market space. If the red oceans represent all known markets that currently exist, the blue oceans represent all those that do not currently exist.

Redbox is a good example of a Blue Ocean market opportunity. Redbox’s automated kiosk concept is simple. Consumers simply use a touch screen to select their favorite movies, swipe a valid credit or debit card, and go. It was the brainchild of McDonald’s Ventures, LLC and didn’t even exist six years ago. Redbox first appeared in Denver, Colorado McDonald’s restaurants in 2004 as a test-market concept. Redbox recently passed the billionth DVD rental mark and celebrated with its “Thanks a Billion” event. In just a few short years, Redbox has made traditional competition irrelevant.

In Red Oceans, companies strive to outperform their competitors to capture more of the existing market demand. As those markets fill up, profits start to dwindle and cutthroat competition turns bloody.

The Redbox example demonstrates that Blue Ocean thinking uses a totally different paradigm from the old accepted Red Ocean standard. At Blue Oceans, competition is irrelevant, highly profitable growth opportunities prevail, and the rules of the game are waiting to be established.

Dr. Stephen Covey, one of the great management thinkers of our time, recounts one of the most profound learnings of his life. That is, if you want to make small improvements then work on your behavior or your attitude. But if you want to make big quantum improvements, then work on your paradigm. Your paradigm is your frame of reference, perception, or your view of the world. Work on changing your paradigm and your behavior and attitude will automatically change.

Blue Ocean opportunities evolve from shifting paradigms of the old Red Ocean worldview to an entirely new way of thinking. For the Red Ocean thinker, it will be a threat to learn a new mindset and a new set of skills. Those who have started sailing Blue Oceans have already realized this. They have recognized what it takes to be a player in this new era. Imagine what it would take from you and your organization to sail Blue Oceans.

We will always need to know how to navigate Red Oceans and successfully outperform our rivals because Red Oceans will always be a fact of our agribusiness life. But that will no longer be enough to sustain us. We will need to know how to create Blue Ocean opportunities if we plan to make the quantum leap into new prospects for profit and growth.

Next time you pick up your DVD, take a moment to reflect on what new ideas from Blue Ocean might be coming to your industry. Or, better yet, create your own Blue Ocean opportunity and make the competition irrelevant.