Creating Blue Oceans

Burn calories alongside your pet

In order to stay relevant in a fast and continuously changing environment, you need to be market driving rather than market driven. Market driven, no matter how responsive, is a reactionary stance. In contrast, market driving is proactive, creating spaces of lifestyle enrichment that did not exist before. Take, for example, the world’s biggest food group Nestle, which has launched an online program inviting pet owners to team up with their furry friends to lose weight.  

Via Reuters:  

Nestle's pet and people weight management units Purina and Jenny Craig worked together on "Project: Pet Slim Down," an online program available in the United States, the Swiss-based company said in a statement on Monday. Pet owners who sign up can obtain tips for exercising with their pet, record exercise taken, track weight loss and share photos with other users, Nestle said. On the website, users can follow five overweight cats and three dogs on their weight-loss journey via small movies and before-and-after pictures.

[Image via associatevets.]

 

What can sports teach us about business strategy?

Enjoy Gabor’s latest article over at the American Express OPEN Forum.

One arena with rich parallels to business strategy is the world of sports. Here is one example. The game of American football is a furious game of strategy. In fact it is so strategy-intensive, that the game is paused for half a minute between each play to allow both teams to formulate or select the best strategy for the next one. There are actual headsets inside players’ helmets, through which coaches can communicate strategic commands between plays from the sidelines. For the uninitiated the game can look downright disjointed or ridiculously drawn out, but in fact it is designed to allow for the right balance of thinking, planning and action. What fans are treated to in each game is the repeated combination of rapid strategy formation and execution.

Continue reading at American Express OPEN Forum.

[Image © 2011 Slingshot by Gabor George Burt.]

BlackBerry's waning Infatuation Interval™

The writing has been written on the wall for quite some time now. In fact, back in June Gabor wrote an article for Mashable entitled “Blackberry: how our infatuation waned,” which issued warnings for BlackBerry and its waning Infatuation Interval™. Now, looking for a blue ocean strategy-like solution—and one that reminds us of pages from the Kodak playbook—some investors now believe that the best way forward for BlackBerry just might be to jettison its core business.  

Via Reuters:

It might seem like corporate heresy but an increasing number of technology investors and experts are asking whether Research in Motion needs to ditch its BlackBerry handset business to survive.

The idea that is gaining favor, albeit only among a minority of shareholders, would see the Canadian company fully open its secure and highly respected network to rival smartphone providers and concentrate on that business while getting out of the hardware game altogether through a sale.

[Image via brothersoft.]

Creative disrupters

There is a growing recognition that creativity is a vital component for successfully handling unexpected, unprecedented and rapidly changing surroundings. As an example, the Bloomberg Businessweek article “What Chief Executives Really Want,” in May 2010, noted: “According to a new survey of 1,500 chief executives conducted by IBM’s Institute for Business Value, CEOs identify ‘creativity’ as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future.” 

In its How to Lead a Creative Life series, Fast Company shares the thought-provoking, inspiring stories of bold business leaders like Maryam Banikarim, SVP and CMO, Gannet, who are defying conventional wisdom in order to realize their creative visions.  You can access the recent article entitled “The Disruptors” here.

With creativity now thrust to the forefront of vital leadership qualities, how can you fully embrace it? How can you tap into your personal reservoir of resourceful thinking? It’s all at your fingertips in Gabor’s book Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life. 

[Image via Do Good Lab.]

When infatuation tips towards fanaticism

While there is no such thing as a perfectly and continuously satisfied customer, there is such a thing as an infatuated one. But what happens when one’s infatuation goes overboard and tips towards fanaticism? A story from the recent USA post-Thanksgiving popular shopping day, Black Friday, gives us some insight.

Via Yahoo!:

A woman trying to improve her chance to buy cheap electronics at a Walmart in a wealthy suburb spewed pepper spray on a crowd of shoppers and 20 people suffered minor injuries, police said Friday. 

The attack took place about 10:20 p.m. Thursday shortly after doors opened for the sale at the Walmart in Porter Ranch in the San Fernando Valley.

The store had brought out a crate of discounted Xbox video game players, and a crowd had formed to wait for the unwrapping, when the woman began spraying people "in order to get an advantage," police Sgt. Jose Valle said.

Besides a business sparking infatuation, can an infatuation give birth to a substantial business? Find out in Gabor’s book Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life.

[Image via Google Images.]

The world is a playground: Dr. Stuart L. Brown chats with Gabor

Play. It shapes the brain, opens the imagination and invigorates the soul. Tune in today to Gabor’s exciting conversation with Dr. Stuart L Brown, who is dedicated to uncovering and enabling the essential contributions of play to human development. Author of the recently released book PLAY, Dr. Brown has accumulated the play histories of 6000 individuals from all walks of life and varied cultures, which has affirmed the importance and need for healthy play throughout the human life cycle. 

How do you incorporate play into your business and personal life? Share your story with us via Twitter (@SlingshotLiving).

The time for wireless to re-imagine is now

In the first century AD, the city of Pompeii in Italy was covered in ash from the massive eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius. The resulting solidified volcanic debris left behind hollow molds from which casts of victims caught in various poses by the eruption were recreated. They provide fascinating and vivid details of a day gone horribly wrong, as the eruption caught the city’s residents completely by surprise. 

The body casts of Pompeii are poignant reminders of just how unexpectedly your environment can change and how quickly you can be blindsided by seemingly inescapable dangers (excerpt from Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life). 

A recent news story describing the threat to wireless carriers against their highly lucrative text messaging offerings reminds us of the tragic outcome in Pompeii, and made us wonder which carrier will be the first to begin re-imagining the wireless landscape and escape the impending doom?

From New York Times:

At a time when e-mail and many other forms of electronic communication are essentially free, wireless carriers are still charging as much as 20 cents to send a text message to a phone, and another 20 cents to receive it.

Paying so much to transmit a handful of words is starting to look as antiquated as buying stamps.

There are now a growing number of ways to bypass text-message charges using an Internet connection — much as Skype allows people to make calls without relying on a traditional telephone line. If these services catch on in a big way, analysts say, they could take a big bite out of the profits that text messages generate for wireless carriers.

[Image via Google Images.] 

Slingshot Stories: inspiring customer infatuation

For Fortune 500 heavyweights as well as small and medium enterprises, Gabor’s book Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life offers the framework and inspiration to drive continuous innovation and lifestyle enrichment. Here is a short excerpt from one of the latest Slingshot application success stories:

Slingshot by Gabor George Burt has been an amazing inspiration for us and our various businesses. One business in particular is a student housing complex   whose management I oversee called Meadows Crossing. It provides housing for over 2,000 of the 25,000 students who attend Grand Valley State University, in Allendale, Michigan.          

We were particularly challenged because of the surplus of student housing space in the region, which requires housing providers to find new ways to attract students. However, Meadows Crossing is already over 200% ahead of last year's leasing pace. We attribute this incredible success rate to the principles that we have gleaned from the Slingshot Framework.   

Glenn A Turek, CCIM

Sperry Van Ness/Silveri Company 

 

What’s your Slingshot success story? Share it with us via Twitter (@SlingshotLiving).

Blue Ocean Strategy co-authors voted world’s most influential thinkers

In conjunction with McGraw Hill, the Crainer-Dearlove annual list of the World’s Top 50 Thinkers has been published. As a testament to the continued power and relevance of Blue Ocean Strategy, Professor W. Chan Kim and Professor Renée Mauborgne again appear in the Top 10, this time making the leap to second place. 

Via Forbes:

The top runners-up, sharing the No. 2 spot: W. Chan Kim and Renée Maborgne, two professors at INSEAD business school whose book Blue Ocean Strategy lays out a system for developing and executing large-scale plans that has been adopted by businesses, nonprofits, and governments worldwide.

Since its initial publication in 2005, Blue Ocean Strategy remains a global, perennial bestseller, having been published in a record-breaking 42 languages.

Get truthful, unleash your creativity: Danielle LaPorte chats with Gabor

Interested in liberating truth, raw reality and grace? Then you won’t want to miss Gabor’s chat with Danielle LaPorte, agente-de-change, beacon of creative inspiration, coming up tomorrow. Danielle is the creator of WhiteHotTruth.com, which has been called "the best place on-line for kick-ass spirituality." She is the author of The Spark Kit: A Digital Experience for Entrepreneurs, an inspirational speaker, and a former think tank executive. Her next book, The Fire Starter Sessions: A Guide to Blazing Your Own Trail in Life & Work, launches in April 2012 from Random House.

You can listen in here.