Sailinnovation : Sailing into a Blue Ocean

Abstract The Luxury Sailing Yacht industry has been severely affected by the global economic crisis since several Luxury Sailing Yacht companies have experienced significant downturn. There is an increasing number of companies, which are moving the world into a more innovationbased economy since it offers more opportunities. Therefore, there is a growing interest for innovation since it can be used for keeping a strong position in the fast growing Luxury Sailing Yacht market. This Master’s thesis explores how Luxury Sailing Yacht producers within the Luxury Sailing Yacht industry can create, reach, and sustain the position of innovation leadership in order to gain further growth and success. Furthermore, it shows to the Luxury Sailing Yacht industry how value innovations can be used to open up new growth opportunities in new-found markets. In specific, this thesis explores the creation of new market within the LSY industry through the usage of value innovation. Therefore, an understanding of the Luxury Sailing Yacht market’s perception of innovation is necessary, which shows differences and similarities between Luxury Sailing Yacht producers and users. The theoretical basis for the research is constituted by developing new markets through value innovation and the blue ocean strategy. Thereafter, the research empirical findings are collected in numerous steps. First the perception of innovation on both the users and producers is collected through a survey so as to compare their opinions and create value curves. Based on the user survey the most innovative Luxury Sailing Yacht producers are selected for our multiple-case study in order to get their various views on how innovation can be used in the Luxury Sailing Yacht industry. Key Words : blue ocean strategy, customers-as-innovators, first mover, growth through innovation, innovation network, lead-users, networking, new product development, perception of innovation, value curves, value innovation, value networ