Creating Blue Oceans

Why Slingshot, why now?

A Slingshot is a powerful image of our childhood playfulness and lost, yet recoverable creativity. But why do we need to reclaim our dormant creativity now, what is the urgency?

An excerpt from Gabor’s upcoming book Slingshot answers this very question: 

There is growing recognition that creativity, or “resourcefulness” as I like to re-label it, 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” points out:

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.  

Think about this for a moment. Of all personal qualities, business leaders are picking creativity as the key foundation of future success, ahead of such traditional pillars as operational expertise, industry know-how, interpersonal skills or even innovation. How fascinating. There is clearly a mindset shift in motion, which leads to the question: if creativity is 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? 

The power of the Slingshot Framework is now at your fingertips. Order your copy of Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life. 

[Image © 2011 Slingshot]

The Indispensible Ingredient: Unconventional Thinking

Enjoy the latest contribution from Gabor, “The Indispensible Ingredient: Unconventional Thinking” via the CBS Radio Altitude Group blog. Our resident Blue Ocean Strategy expert has been called on by CBS Radio Altitude Group to explore how you can use your dormant youthful creativity to re-imagine your business and re-imagine your life in this featured series. 

From the CBS Radio Altitude Group blog:

Today, I’d like to look at unconventional thinking as it relates to market leadership.

It is unrestrained, unconventional thinking that we see in children when they are exercising their imaginations. It is this ability to challenge conventional wisdom, to think counter intuitively, that enables businesses to be market driving. Let’s explore the power of unconventional thinking more deeply….

[Image © 2011 Slingshot.]

 

Re-Imagining adventure travel and environmental conservation with Sebastian Copeland

TUNE IN today as we feature Gabor’s recent radio discussion with Sebastian Copeland, award-winning photographer and extreme athlete, and find out the answer to the question: 

How can you re-imagine exploring the world as a way of protecting its 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, 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. 

Business lessons from a traveler’s journal

In Gabor's inaugural article for American Express OPEN Forum he shares a couple of inspirational stories from his travels.  

From American Express OPEN Forum: 

Whenever you travel, your senses are treated to an abundance of new experiences and situations. They stimulate your thinking and have valuable lessons for your business. All you have to do is be sufficiently observant, and connect the dots. Here are a couple of lessons observed during my recent journeys. One highlights the flawed market strategy of simply copying others. The other serves as an inspirational reminder of the need to continuously renew and reinvent your business.

[Image © 2011 Slingshot.]

 

Re-Imagining art, music and entertainment with Ann Marie Calhoun

TUNE IN today as we feature Gabor’s recent radio discussion with Ann Marie Calhoun, internationally acclaimed rock violinist, actress, composer and singer, and find out the answer to the question: 

How can you re-imagine art, music and entertainment?

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, 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.

 

Steve Jobs: The “instinctive” Blue Ocean Strategist

The answer to this question and more appears in a recent interview with Professor Renée Mauborgne, the co-author of the international bestseller Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant.  Professor Mauborgne is the co-director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute and the INSEAD Distinguished Fellow of Strategy. Blue Ocean Strategy has sold more than two million copies across five continents and has been published in a record-breaking 42 languages.

From allAfrica.com: 

Q. Do you consider Steve Jobs a Blue Ocean Strategist? Why?

A. This question deserves a two-part response. First, yes, Steve Jobs is instinctively a blue ocean strategist.

He does not aim to benchmark the competition, but like blue ocean strategy he aims to make the competition irrelevant by offering a leap in value to buyers that changes the contours of the market.

While Apple's businesses all involve technology, he does not aim to create a technology innovation rather he aims to create value innovation that makes the technology disappear from buyers' perspective….

[Image via digital inspiration.]

Nintendo’s new journey: Setting sail for blue oceans or red oceans?

Here at CreatingBlueOceans.com we followed closely the Blue Ocean Strategy success of Nintendo’s mold-breaking Wii console. But now comes the next big question: Will Nintendo be able to replicate that Blue Ocean Strategy success with the launch of its newest console, the Wii U, or is it heading back into a red ocean?  

From ABC News: 

In offering new experiences through the Wii U, "not only do we want to bring back those people who have left Nintendo, we also want to create a new group of core users," said Katsuya Eguchi, manager and producer of software development at Nintendo.

"I think we can do that with the new controller, but it will be hard to bring back those people who've moved onto Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, unless we offer something a little bit different," he said in Japanese through a translator at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.

Some analysts worry that traditional video games have to compete for attention and dollars with smarter-than-ever phones, quick games such as "FarmVille" and tablet computers including the iPad.

[Image via Ubergizmo.]

Blue Ocean Strategy case study: Caribbean Maritime Institute

The Caribbean Maritime Institute in Jamaica places 92% of its graduates as opposed to a 38% placement rate at other tertiary institutions in the country. Demand by ship owners has increased over 300% for CMI graduates. Equally, the quality of its students is now ranked among the top 5% of graduates entering the industry worldwide, prompting a 400+% increase in scholarships offered to CMI students by global ship partners. These factors have served to differentiate CMI from all other tertiary institutions in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean region — because of its Blue Ocean Strategy.  

Email us via the link in the upper left-hand corner for the full, inspirational case study.

[Image via Google Images.]

 

Path to meaningful Innovation — Gabor speaks at TEDx - Grand Rapids

Challenging the status quo, Gabor is leading the discussion that is inspiring everyone — from business leaders and rock stars to Olympians and explorers — on the topic of re-imagining and overstepping self-imposed boundaries. Tune in tomorrow to enjoy Gabor's recent talk from TEDx - Grand Rapids in which he introduces the Slingshot Framework — as the path to meaningful innovation, and the basis of the much-anticipated book Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life. 

Could Atlantic City go the way of Pompeii?

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 current, woeful state of affairs in Atlantic City reminds us of the of the tragic outcome in Pompeii, and made us wonder if Atlantic City can re-imagine its future before it’s too late?  

From SFGate:

At the beginning of 2007, Atlantic City's 11 casinos were at the top of a wave of prosperity. Starting with the 1978 opening of Resorts, the nation's first casino outside Nevada, Atlantic City for years was the only place to play slots, cards, dice or roulette in the eastern half of the United States. The cash kept pouring in, the busloads of visitors kept coming and the revenue charts went one way: straight up.

And then, they didn't. Now, battered by competition from casinos all around it, Atlantic City is in a fight for its very survival….

Intoxicated by years of success, Atlantic City missed numerous opportunities to diversify its offerings, widen its customer base and fend off competition that clearly was on its way even 20 years ago.

[Image © 2011 Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life by Gabor George Burt]