The Blue Ocean Strategy set of tools can be divided into three groups:

• The first one involves all the frameworks through which an organization analyses:
  • the current state of an industry, visualising the factors existent players compete on, and their performances across factors, according to customer perception (AS-IS Strategy Canvas; Value-Curve)
  • its portfolio, separating the me-too products/services, from those that excel in their market, and those that represent blue oceans (Pioneers-Migrators-Settlers Map)
• The second set relates to the frameworks that help expand the strategic focus, by looking beyond existing demand (Non-Customer Framework), and reconstructing market boundaries to create blue oceans (Six paths Framework).
• The third refers to the creation of a value-innovation to attract NON-customers, by deciding which factors should be eliminated, which ones should be created, and which should be raised/reduced above/below the industry’s standard (Four-actions Framework; TO-BE Strategy Canvas).

The Human-Centred Design tools help the team visualize problems, ideas and solutions.

• The investigation into customers and NON-customers’ lives is conducted using interviews and contextual inquiries, where people are asked questions while performing their activities in the context.
• The understanding phase encompasses tecniques that help:
  • map all the actors that have a stake in a specific product/service/business and their mutual relationships (Stakeholder Mapping)
  • draw fictional characters that represent the most important characteristics of customer or non-customer targets (Persona Profile)
  • represent each step of a customer-journey, and identify “pain points” (Buyer-experience Cycle; Storyboarding)
  • analyse product/service usability assuming the end-user perspective (Usability test; Heuristic Review)
• The idea-generation occurs in a structured way, giving teamworkers some constrains within which generate solutions (Creative Matrix), and asking them represent visually the final concepts (Concept Posters).
• The prototyping step is preceded by selection of the solution to implement, according to available resources (Importance/Difficulty Matrix) and definition of priorities (Bull’s Eye Diagramming)

NLP tools can help develop powerful business relationships and successful teams, redirect unproductive behaviours and become persuasive leaders.

Some principles and techniques associated with NLP include:

• Internal maps of the world: everyone has his/her own perception of the world, that determines  behaviours and emotions. Established patterns can be reprogrammed to achieve better results.
• Representational Systems: we consciously or unconsciously process experience using sounds, pictures, feelings, tastes. Our preferred representational systems influence our actions and performances. Communication should always keep that into account.
• Filters of the mind: how distortion, generalisation and deletion limit our experience.
• Meta-programming: in the everyday life we usually apply patterns related to verbal, non-verbal, and para-verbal communication, personal attitudes, thinking style and so on. Understanding and shaping our meta-programs can be useful to reprogram our lives and our interactions with other people.
• Anchoring: connections we deliberately or unintentionally create between physical stimuli and emotions, can help access specific emotional states within important business situations.
• Reframing: we can change the way we perceive situations, people, locations, by bleaching related memories that influence our current behaviour.
• Future Pacing: a useful method to embrace change by visualizing a future situation dealing positively with it, and anchoring those positive feelings