Creating Blue Oceans

Blue Ocean Strategy: Englightment through enrichment

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, sportswear pioneer Lululemon that originally started out as a “yoga-inspired” grassroots company in Vancouver to an international retail phenomenon.” 

From Canadian Business: 

Selling an emotion, as well as an actual product, is a strategy that has worked for decades. 'People don't really buy a product or a service. They buy a solution to a problem," says Ken Wong, a professor of marketing at the Queen's School of Business. Charles Revson knew this well. As the founder of the Revlon cosmetic company once said, 'In the factory we make cosmetics; in the drugstore we sell hope." The Lululemon logo now represents an impulse to exercise and be healthier; wearing it announces your membership in an elite club of enlightened people. The company may have been founded on yoga principles, but Lululemon's real genius lies in what some analysts call the 'Blue Ocean" strategy — the ability to foster new demand in an uncontested market instead of competing for pre-existing customers.

[Image via Google Images.]

The fine art of infatuation

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. 

Enjoy the latest installment from Gabor, entitled “The Fine Art of Infatuation,” via the CBS Radio Altitude Group blog:

I’ll come right out and say it: There’s no such thing as a perfectly and continuously satisfied consumer. Go ahead, test this on yourself. Think of your favorite products and services. Ask yourself this:  Is it absolutely perfect just the way it is, or could it somehow be even better?….

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.]

Gabor to present his "Re-Imagine" talk at TEDx - Grand Rapids

After the runaway success of his recent TEDx talk, Gabor has been invited to present a variation of his "Re-Imagine" talk at the upcoming TEDx - Grand Rapids. The event will bring 16 Innovators from diverse fields and from all over the world to share their personal stories of innovation with over 500 local shakers and movers on May 12th at the Civic Theatre.

Visit the official TEDx - Grand Rapids website.

From mlive: 

Gabor George Burt, author of “Slingshot,” and an expert on strategy, innovation, creativity and business development, will punctuate the day with a talk on innovation itself....

[Image via TEDx - Grand Rapids.]

Assassination of a lifestyle pioneer

Despite its status as the best-selling camcorder on Amazon since the day of its debut—capturing about 13 percent of the camcorder market and accounting for 36 percent of all camcorders sold during the 2009 holiday season—Cisco is pulling the plug on its lifestyle-enriching point-and-shoot video recorder. 

See Gabor’s previous articles on Blue Ocean Strategy and the Flip here and here. 

Why did Cisco assassinate the Flip? Interesting perspective from David Pogue at the New York Times: 

I’ve spoken to a bunch of people in the industry, trying, in my human way, to figure out the logic here. It seems clear that Cisco, whose primary focus is making networking equipment for businesses, was all excited about getting into the consumer electronics game; that’s why it spent $590 million on Flip. But then, as John Chambers, Cisco’s chief executive, put it, the company decided to make “key, targeted moves as we align operations in support of our network-centric platform strategy.”

Which, in English, means, “We had no clue what we were doing.”

[Image Google Images.]

 

Why you should stop obsessing over your competitors

Blue Ocean Strategy is a systematic framework for transforming unconventional ideas into successful strategies. Rather than enduring a marketspace fraught with cutthroat competition and looming dangers, it allows companies to create a marketplace full of limitless possibilities.

See Gabor’s article “Why You Should Stop Obsessing Over Your Competitors” on Mashable:

Steve Jobs certainly gets it. The unveiling of the iPad (and subsequently, the iPad 2) was not merely a product launch, but a defining moment in which Apple shared its grand vision for the consumer electronics marketplace. The company symbolically stepped away from….

Continue to article.

[Image © 2011 Slingshot.] 

 

Gabor re-ignites imaginations at TEDx - Danubia

The wait is almost over. Starting tomorrow you can watch Gabor’s inspiring “Re-Imagine” talk from TEDx - Danubia, which went hand in hand with the overall theme of the the event based around the “Power of the Imagination.” 

WATCH THE VIDEO. 

And when you go to watch the presentation, be sure to register for your free sample chapter from Gabor’s forthcoming book Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life. 

About this year’s program at 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.

 

Can you let your imagination take over?

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. 

Enjoy the latest installment from Gabor, entitled “Can You Let Your Imagination Take Over,” via the CBS Radio Altitude Group blog:

In my previous post, “Your Inner Child is Ready to Lead,” I discussed the growing recognition of creativity as a vital component for successfully managing in a rapidly changing environment. How is it that you can tap into your dormant childhood creativity in order to re-imagine your business and your life? Try the following challenge….

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.]

 

Looking for Blue Ocean Strategy thinkers

With so many unpredictable elements in today’s business and economic environment, companies—including major players like HCL—are looking for Blue Ocean Strategy-like thinkers for their management and leadership training programs. 

Via live mint & WSJ:

“We aim at identifying those who have uncommon approaches to common situations; individuals who are able to think out-of-the-box in normal, ordinary circumstances are the disrupters and blue ocean thinkers. We have different levels of developmental agenda for employees and we follow a segmented approach to nurture and bring out leadership traits in employees. Hence, we create different offerings for leaders at different segments that meet these objectives. At HCL, it is a long and strongly held belief that you cannot ask a fish to fly.”

[Image via Google Images.]

 

These Two Words Will Open The Floodgates To Unlimited Growth For Your Company

Blue Ocean Strategy provides a structure for it, but find out just exactly what are these two words and what it means for your business in Gabor’s inaugural feature at Business Insider: 

How is that now? Just how might it be possible to open the floodgates to unlimited growth? The alluring answer can be distilled down to two words.

They are two words whose powerful combination companies like Apple, Virgin, Zappos, Amazon and MTV all get and use to fuel their growth. Here they are….

If this article resonated with you, then the inspiring content in Gabor’s forthcoming book Slingshot surely will. Now available for pre-order.

[Image  © 2011 Slingshot.]

 

If you don’t partake, the joke is on you

April Fools’ Day. What a great concept. The first of April is the one day every year when adults have full 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, nor are they designed to mock but rather to challenge your perception of reality and the limits 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.

The process of coming up with the appropriate setting and choreography for a prank that tests people’s reality frontiers is in itself therapeutic. 

In the meantime, TechCrunch has put together a great list of pranks in celebration of April Fools' Day 2011. What kind of ruse are you planning? Share your April Fools’ Day pranks with us on Twitter [ @slingshotliving ].