The case explains how the French fintech Compte-Nickel found a blue ocean in the crowded French retail banking sector by identifying noncustomers and developing a strategy to attract them. Traditional banks focused on developing financial technology to make their offerings more appealing, whereas the fintech Compte-Nickel created a blue ocean by looking at the noncustomers the other banks ignored: low income earners and people facing financial exclusion.This case comes with a teaching note, lecture slides, and a two-part exclusive video interview with Hugues Le Bret, CEO of the fintech Compte-Nickel. Teaching materials can be downloaded from https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/teaching-materials/compte-nickel/.
This case is also available in Chinese.
1. Creating blue ocean businesses requires companies to look to noncustomers instead of concentrating on existing ones. This is at the core of value innovation. Rather than focus on customer differences, businesses break the cost-value tradeoff by increasing the value and reducing the cost for the buyer. This reorientation allows them to unlock a new mass of customers that did not exist in the existing market. 2. Participants will learn to use four blue ocean strategy analytic tools: . The Buyer Utility Map, which helps identifies blocks to buyer utility to increase demand . The Eliminate-Reduce-Raise-Create Grid, which analyzes which factors of competition to eliminate, reduce, raise, and create to unlock a blue ocean . The Strategy Canvas, the central diagnostic tool that graphically captures the current strategic landscape and a new blue ocean strategy . The Blue Ocean Idea Index, that analyzes whether the new strategy is commercially viable.
- Commercial banks
- Startup
- Finance
- Entrepreneurship
- Start-ups
- Blue Ocean Strategy
- Fintech
- France
- Banking
- Finance
- Entrepreneurship
- French retail bank