Creating Blue Oceans

The Perfect Calm Series: Evoke: A ten-week crash course in changing the world

One of the most exciting spheres of application for Blue Ocean Strategy is the realm of Social Capitalism. This explosive market space is at the intersection of successful business and lasting social impact. Traditionally these two spheres were considered separate, but the two can be pursued simultaneously via Blue Ocean Strategy. Periodically, we feature stories which illustrate stimulating ventures, ideas and concepts targeting this very market space.

This week we select the story:  Evoke: A ten-week crash course in changing the world.

The goal of the ten-week long Evoke social network game is to help empower young people all over the world, and especially young people in Africa, to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems.  It’s like extracting the good qualities of video games and using them to help with positive, social change.  Evoke is free to play and open to anyone, anywhere.

Do you know of other companies, organizations or business visionaries sailing along the intersection of good business and social good? Share your ideas with the Creating Blue Oceans Community.

[Video via VIMEO.]

Feminnovation: Enriching the lives of women through Blue Ocean Strategy-like thinking

Companies that understand that they are not in the business of selling certain products or services, but rather in the business of delivering lifestyle enrichment to customers, are the ones that create blue oceans.

See how the power of innovation, particularly that which enriches lifestyles and workstyles, can be used  further to empower Women.  From the Economist: 

Two recent innovations have garnered a lot of attention for the way they empower women. One is microcredit, a system of lending to very poor people, the majority of whom are female microentrepreneurs who are thus helped to climb out of poverty. The other is the mobile phone, which among other things has led to the emergence of an army of “telephone ladies” in countries such as Bangladesh, who earn a decent living by buying a phone and renting it out to other villagers.

What makes for a successful pro-women innovation? The report says it is usually the confluence of several positive factors. As with all innovation, a good idea is not enough in itself: it also needs a favourable context, including political, economic and social conditions that make the time right for its adoption, and an innovation system that excels at finding and testing good ideas and quickly scaling them up. But the invention must also have an inherent value that compels women to embrace it—such as the power the Pill gave women over the decision to become pregnant.

[Image via the Economist.]

TED Talks—We listen and watch

In the coming weeks, we will feature a selection of inspiring videos from past and present TED talks.  

This week we select the video “The surprising science of motivation” featuring Dan Pink.

Do you have a favorite TED talk which you think should be featured on Creating Blue Oceans?  Let us know via the 'email me' tab in the upper left-hand corner.

About Dan Pink: Daniel H. Pink is the author of several provocative, bestselling books about the changing world of work. His latest is Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, which uses 50 years of behavioral science to overturn the conventional wisdom about human motivation and offer a more effective path to high performance.  Drive reached every national bestseller list in its first month of publication and is now in its eighth week on the New York Times list. Over the next year, it will appear in Japanese, Korean, French, German, Spanish, and 17 other languages.

[Video via TED.]

SLINGSHOT of customer-driven innovation

How does what your product or service help to make the life of your customer more fun, more thrilling, more simple, more comfortable, more safe, more meaningful, more efficient?   These are all questions addressed in Gabor’s forthcoming book, SLINGSHOT.  We’ve noted before how companies like Nokia and Lego have tackled similar questions by tapping into the power of customer-driven innovation and Blue Ocean Strategy-like thinking.  

See how other companies are leading the path to customer-drive innovation to make their product or offering more meaningful.  From BusinessWeek:   

Now that manufacturing is borderless, electrons are free, and digital design tools are everywhere, the dream is coming true. Companies are inviting their customers to upload their own designs of toys, apparel, jewelry, and other objects onto their Web sites. The designs are produced to the customers' specifications, and the finished goods are delivered at prices that often undercut branded mass-producers.

So what did the forecasters get wrong? That bit about the Little devouring the Large. Giant Nike was one of the first to invite consumers onto its site to design their own footwear. Toymaker LEGO hands out design tools so kids both young and old can dream up the toys they would most like to assemble.

[Image via BusinesWeek.]

Re-engage your childhood creativity and sense of limitless possibilities

Check out this special sneak preview video of sample children illustrations and original music.  They will accompany Gabor’s forthcoming book, SLINGSHOT, in order to create a rousing, multi-sensory experience.

The premise of SLINGSHOT is that continuous innovation is both necessary and exhilarating, and we all possess the inner capacity for it.  Our capacity has simply been buried and lays dormant within us.

Designed as a guide for people to re-engage their childhood creativity for success in adult life and business, SLINGSHOT is a humorous, story-driven and inspirational framework.

Register your interest and stay close.

Blue Ocean Strategy: Building execution into strategy

Shifting to the next segment in our Blue Ocean Strategy Basics series, over the course of the next three weeks we will highlight building execution into strategy and the three E Principles of Fair Process.  Once featured, each  principle is made accessible through the Blue Ocean Strategy Basics archive of this site.  For our introduction, we turn to page 172 of the book Blue Ocean Strategy (co-authored by Professor W. Chan Kim and Professor Renée Mauborgne).

The more removed people are from the top and the less they have been involved in the creation of the strategy, the more trepidation builds. On the front line, at the very level at which a strategy must be executed day in and day out, people can resent having a strategy thrust upon them with little regard for what they think and feel. Just when you think you have done everything right, things can suddenly go very wrong in your front line.

This brings us to the sixth principle of blue ocean strategy: To build people’s trust and commitment deep in the ranks and inspire their voluntary cooperation, companies need to build execution into strategy from the start. That principle allows companies to minimize the management risk of distrust, noncooperation, and even sabotage. This management risk is relevant to strategy execution in both red and blue oceans, but it is greater for blue ocean strategy because its execution often requires significant change. Hence, minimizing such risk is essential as companies execute blue ocean strategy. Companies must reach beyond the usual suspects of carrots and sticks. They must reach to fair process in the making and executing of strategy.

Our research shows that fair process is a key variable that distinguishes successful blue ocean strategic moves from those that failed. The presence or absence of fair process can make or break a company’s best execution efforts.

Related links:

Buy the Blue Ocean Strategy book.

[Image via Layout Star.]

Departing from conventional wisdom: A breathtaking move

Companies today, facing an environment of great uncertainty, need to embrace the idea of challenging traditional industry assumptions.  This perspective of defying conventional wisdom goes hand-in-hand with the process of Blue Ocean Strategy, which is a systematic approach to turning unconventional ideas into winning strategies.   Today we spotlight a champion of unconventional wisdom, Shaun White, snowboarder and two-time Olympic gold medalist.  

From BusinesWeek:

In the recently concluded Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Shaun White's incredible snowboarding performance stands out. Shaun had already won the Gold Medal before he did his final jump. Even his coach told him: "Shaun, we have achieved what we came here for. You can take it easy now."

What did White do instead? He took a risk. Instead of being satisfied with the gold medal, he tried a breathtaking move, the Double McTwist 1260. Why? Because he wanted a perfect score. White is not about benchmarking against his competitors; he is interested in creating next practices.

There are parallels with corporations. Companies that have outperformed rivals—won the gold medal in the business world, so to speak—more often than not become complacent, even arrogant. Over time, they lose relevance. Business history is littered with "once-great performers"—Motorola (MOT), Blockbuster, and Microsoft (MSFT), to name a few.

Does your organization have the capacity to change when it doesn't have to?

If you find yourself inspired by Saun’s story, then you’ll definitely want to delve into Gabor’s forthcoming book entitled Slingshot.  Register your interest and stay close.

[Image via Yanis.]

April Fools’ Day: Fools are those who don’t partake

With the recent passage of April Fools’ Day, we couldn’t help but share a related excerpt from Gabor’s forthcoming book entitled Slingshot, whose premise is that continuous innovation is both necessary and exhilarating, and we all possess the inner capacity for it. Our capacity has simply been buried and lays dormant within us. 

From Slingshot:

The 1st of April is the one day each year when adults have license to be impish and playful.  The act of planning and executing a ruse helps to reconnect you with your inner child, so take advantage of it.  The best April Fools pranks are not unkind or nasty, are not designed to mock but rather to challenge someone’s perception of reality and bounds of conventionality.  What is absurd and what is sensible?  How can these artificial boundaries be overstepped or even reversed through a hoax?  You should partake in reality-bending April Fools activities and encourage those you work with to do the same.  It is liberating and opens up channels of unconventional thinking.

And further to this special treat, some of our most favorite corporate pranks from April Fools’ Day 2010, via Yahoo!: 

Google Goes Topeka
Topeka, Kansas renaming itself Google as part of a stunt to become part of Google's municipal broadband project. Google has decided to repay that tribute by renaming the company Topeka. "We had a fair amount of brand equity tied up in our old name," Topeka explained in a company blog post, "But the more we surfed around (the former) Topeka's municipal website, the more kinship we felt with this fine city at the edge of the Great Plains."  Topeka has even offered new phrases for the company name like "Before our blind date I Topeka'd him."

New sizes at Starbucks
Starbucks has two new sizes: Plenta and Micra. The Plenta is a 128-ounce drink for caffeine addicts who can't get enough coffee, and for those who need just a tiny sip, you can get the 2-ounce Micra. And don't worry about all that paper waste from the new Plenta sized-cup, Starbucks says you can reuse your gigantic Plenta cups in a number of useful ways including as a planter, lampshade or yoga block.

Google Translate...for animals
Google has been coming out with so many cool mobile applications like Google Goggles that uses an image as a search term. Now there's Google Translate for Animals from Google UK? Just open the new app on your Android device, select the animal language you need to translate, then record your dog's bark cat's meow or pig's oink. You device will then translate those sounds into something humans can understand. Google says the application can only translate into English right now, but more languages should be coming soon including Pig Latin.

[Image © 2010 Slingshot.]

Ideas worth spreading: Schools kill creativity

In the coming weeks, we will feature via our Perfect Calm Series a selection of inspiring videos from past and present TED talks.    
This week, to kick-off our series, we select the video “Schools kill creativity” featuring Sir Ken Robinson.

Do you have a favorite TED talk which you think should be featured on Creating Blue Oceans?  Let us know via the 'email me' tab in the upper left-hand corner.

About Sir Ken Robinson: Sir Ken Robinson, PhD is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources. He has worked with governments in Europe, Asia and the USA, with international agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and some of the world’s leading cultural organizations. In 1998, he led a national commission on creativity, education and the economy for the UK Government. ‘All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education’ (The Robinson Report) was published to wide acclaim in 1999. He was the central figure in developing a strategy for creative and economic development as part of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, working with the ministers for training, education enterprise and culture. He was one of four international advisors to the Singapore Government for its strategy to become the creative hub of South East Asia.

His new book, a New York Times Best Seller, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything (Penguin/Viking 2009) is being translated into sixteen languages.

[Video via TED.]