Creating Blue Oceans

Blue Ocean Strategy solutions

Blue Ocean Strategy solutions work not only in the business sector, but in government, military and civil sectors too. Just ask Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, and a principal driver of Blue Ocean Strategy thinking for positive change in Malaysia, who recently announced a National Blue Ocean Strategy (NBOS) program to reduce crime, rehabilitate prison inmates at army camps, provide household assistance, ensure rural water supply and optimize vacant armed forces land for agriculture.  

From the New Straits Times: 

"Blue Ocean Strategy is a management tool which can be applied in the government's administrative context as it enables us to think out of the box with good results. 

"It will be expanded to other initiatives," he said while launching the Communitisation Rehabilitation Programme at the army's Mahkota Camp here yesterday.

The Blue Ocean Strategy is a business strategy book first published in 2005, and written by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.

Related links:

Buy the Blue Ocean Strategy book 

Blue Ocean Strategy Basics series

Pre-order Gabor’s book Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life

[Image via Google Images.] 

Coming soon: Catch Gabor’s presentation at TEDx

Although attendance is already over capacity for today’s TEDx Danubia event, we’re sure the fine folks at TEDx will make it available for online viewing afterwards. Once it’s available, we’ll let you know here and on Twitter. 

In the meantime, you can peruse the website of the appropriately themed “Power of Imagination” TEDx event for more information and a full roster of speakers.  

From TEDx Danubia:

We will explore and experience the power of imagination, try to understand what it is, how it works, why it matters so much... yet we cannot stop there. If we want to explore and experience its power, we need to venture beyond just these narrow confines and see it in action. We will look for the most intriguing examples in all corners of our lives. For without imagination there is no art, no science, no innovation. We cannot access the realms of the big, the small, or the hidden. Without imagination there can be no empathy. We need it to have an idea of any reality other than our own. We also need imagination to render anything new, to go beyond what and how our world already is. We need it to create visions and without it we cannot discover hitherto undetected connections and relationships. Without imagination there can be no hope, and finally, above all and simply put, we need imagination to lead a life worth living... The conference will take you on an adventure of the mind, an intellectual and emotional journey through five consecutive sessions.

[Image via TEDx Danubia.]

Your Inner Child is Ready to Lead

Our resident Blue Ocean Strategy expert, Gabor, is called on by CBS Radio Altitude Group to explore how you can use your dormant childhood creativity to re-imagine your business and re-imagine your life in this newly-launched blog series. 

Via CBS Radio Altitude Group blog:

It may be hard to believe, but all of us were once children who experienced a sense of elation and accomplishment from inventing our own games—making use of random props and terrain to choreograph a customized pastime that was a blast and knew no limits.  So what if we could re-ignite our childhood creativity, and de-construct our realm of acquired assumptions in the process?  It would not only be disarmingly fun, but deeply meaningful in guiding our strategic thinking.

CBS Radio Altitude Group is re-imaging the radio business and consumer engagement for both listeners and clients through its 130 powerhouse stations, distribution channels and customized content. More.

[Image © 2011 Slingshot]

What’s the best company to work for?

Companies with a propensity for Blue Ocean Strategy-like thinking top the list. 

For starters, every employee has his or her own office, onsite healthcare and high-quality daycare. No wonder SAS clenches Fortune’s best company to work for title for a second year in a row. But the big question is, how do they do it? 

According to SAS’ CEO Jim Goodnight, the philosophy is simple and effective: “Treat employees like they make a difference and they will.” More from the press release here. 

Meanwhile, what’s daily life at SAS really like? Listen to Gabor’s chat with Jonathan Hornby, SAS Director of Worldwide Marketing, Performance Management via Slingshot Living. 

And a special note of acknowledgement to our colleagues at Zappos, which leaped into the sixth position on the list of best companies to work for. Stay close for Gabor’s upcoming chat with Zappos founder Tony Hsieh.

[Image via Google Images.] 

 

Blue Ocean Strategy-like thinking gets cash registers ringing

A principal credo of Blue Ocean Strategy is to challenge taken-for-granted industry assumptions. While most businesses are stuck competing within boundaries and rules set by others, questioning such assumptions can lead to unprecedented value propositions for customers, and hence blue oceans.

Just look at what’s happening in one small Spanish town. In an effort to get consumers spending, the town of Mugardos has creatively reintroduced the former Spanish currency—the peseta—in order to entice those with forgotten stashes of the currency to come and spend it. 

From BBC News: 

More than 60 shops in Mugardos, a small fishing town in Galicia on Spain's northern coast, are accepting the peseta again for all purchases, alongside the euro.

It is an attempt to get cash registers ringing - and help lift the town out of a long and painful economic slump.

Shopkeepers were sceptical at first, but they now say the scheme is a great success.

People are travelling into Mugardos from outside just to spend the old currency they never got round to converting.

[Image via Google Images.]

 

How does Blue Ocean Strategy work?

To understand how Blue Ocean Strategy works let’s have a look using the example of Cirque du Soleil—credited with resuscitating the circus—which was becoming a dying dinosaur of live entertainment.  

Children are less and less interested in going to the circus compared to previous generations, as there are just too many other distractions competing for their attention. You know, facebook and such. So Cirque du Soleil did not try to revive traditional circus.  That would have been futile. 

Instead it rearranged its components to make it currently relevant. It eliminated elements which were highly costly and no longer held appeal (such as animal acts, star performers and multiple show surfaces) and replaced them with compelling elements borrowed from other types of live performances (such as a theme, storyline, original music, dance and rich pageantry). It is this type of reallocation of focus and resources from that of a traditional circus which oversteps conventional boundaries to create simultaneous differentiation and lower cost. And if you do this in a way that enriches consumer lifestyles, then you can attract a mass following and create your own blue ocean market space—even at a price point much higher than that of traditional circus.  

Related links:

Buy the Blue Ocean Strategy book

Blue Ocean Strategy Basics series

[Image via Google Images.]

Re-imagining the perfect blending of architecture and environment

TUNE IN today as we feature Gabor’s recent radio discussion with Barbara Kuit, co-architect of the newly opened Canton Tower, which now holds the unique distinction as the world's tallest tower, and find out the answer to the question: 

How can you re-imagine the perfect blending of architecture and environment?

What if you could re-imagine your business, and your life? SLINGSHOT is the first book-based journey addressing this very topic and to unfold on all media channels closest to you. With Gabor as your host, SLINGSHOT appears through national radio and online TV shows, downloadable text, live events, printed article series, accompanying illustrations and music. 

Watch, listen, play, join fascinating personalities that are re-imagining our world today.  Learn the Slingshot concepts yourself, see how they prime you for Blue Ocean Strategy application and for shaping the world through meaningful creativity and innovation. 

Re-Imagine your busines, re-imagine your life. Click on over to Slingshot Living for inspiration.  

 

Apple stakes claim to its next Blue Ocean Strategy marketspace

You can make your competition irrelevant by really understanding what target customers ultimately want.  If your offering is nothing more than an imitation or incremental improvement of your competition, then you are stuck treading water in a red ocean. But if you can clearly distinguish yourself and deliver superior lifestyle or workstyle enrichment, then your competition becomes irrelevant and you will be in an uncontested Blue Ocean.

Steve Jobs certainly gets it. What must the competitors have been thinking when he boldly laid claim to Apple’s future direction at the recent launch of the iPad 2? 

From Engadget: 

This week, Apple showed everyone where it was headed, challenged competitors on that direction, and made it clear that the company not only has staked a claim in that space, but is defining it.

This week, Apple stepped into the "post-PC" era of computing -- and there's no looking back, at least not for the folks in Cupertino.

By joining the company's ongoing vision of a "different" kind of computing with a soundbite friendly piece of marketing-speak, Apple has changed the rules of the game, and made the competition's efforts not just an uphill battle, but -- at least in the eyes of Steve Jobs and co. -- essentially moot. But what exactly is the "post-PC" world? And why is it significant? Let me explain. 

In this new world, Apple no longer has to compete on specs and features, nor does it want to.

[Image via Google Images.]

Blue Ocean Strategy in a nutshell

“You can not discover new oceans unless you have the courage to step away from the shore”  —Andre Gide, 1947 Nobel Prize winning writer

In a nutshell, Blue Ocean Strategy is a systematic framework for transforming unconventional ideas into successful strategies.  Its core premise is the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and lower cost in such a way that new demand is created.   The framework sets forth a complete management blueprint from strategy formation to rapid implementation and from change management to organizational leadership.  

Related links:

Blue Ocean Strategy Basics series.

Buy the Blue Ocean Strategy book.

[Image via Google Images.] 

Mickey Mouse and the Blue Ocean Strategy connection

Up until the Fastpass, everyone assumed that waiting in line was an immovable part of the overall experience of visiting a popular theme park like Disney World.  Even though people spent an overwhelming portion of their time waiting in line, and it was the subject of most visitor complaints.  For over forty years nothing was really done about it. Everyone operated within the traditional boundaries without challenging conventional wisdom. With the arrival of the Fastpass however, visitors’ waiting time was cut to a fraction, allowing them to have a profoundly more enjoyable experience (excerpt from the forthcoming book, Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life, by Gabor George Burt). 

And now the FastPass can even be used to meet with high-ranking officials at the Magic Kingdom, including Mickey himself! 

From Disney Dreaming:

One of the things we have noticed changing over the years at the Disney Parks is that the lines to meet our favorite Disney character Mickey Mouse get longer and longer every year. Whether you want a picture or an autograph, or you just want a hug from the Mouse himself, you could be stuck in line for an absurd amount of time. Thankfully though, Disney has realized the problem and has rolled out a new plan to fix it.

There will now be a Fastpass option at the park to meet Mickey Mouse at the Walt Disney World resort. The new program will role out this spring and guests will be able to reserve a one-hour window to come back to the meet-and-greet location to meet the popular star of Disney at the Magic Kingdom without having to wait in line.

[Image via Google Images.]