by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“Blue Ocean Strategy challenges companies to break out of bloody competition – Red Ocean – by creating uncontested market space that makes competitors irrelevant.” From book ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.

 Sounds like a good idea? You bet!  But Blue Ocean is a largely uncharted concept from an organizational point of view.  That brings us back to a crunch view by 18^th century philosopher, Sir Joshua Reynolds, or his later disciple Thomas Edison, who both agreed that: “There’s no expedient that man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.” So how are we going to get our minds around this profound Blue Ocean thought and start exploring its promise? Where’s our starting point?

Having started with the important point about our reluctance to think: Based upon this writers more recent experience, he believes there’s much more hope. Insomuch that it’s become increasingly evident to him that, if you approach people in the right way, you can stir them into thinking quite productively. Bear in mind also that we often shut-down our offspring at young ages before 5, when they’re asking all sorts of curiosity questions. Then it’s hardly surprising that we ultimately have such limited amounts of deep thought among adults around us. We inadvertently shut our kindergarten thinkers down very early on.

At those young ages, it’s often such a busy period for parents as they try to hold down a career, pursue some hobbies, and meet family chores. They frequently find it impossible to answer all those questions; notwithstanding that they don’t know answers to half of them anyway. Such behavior has been reinforced by the certainty that their own parents shut their questions down, as well. So that, by the time they reached their late teens, notwithstanding that so many teachers run one-way rather than two-way classes, our grown kids ask virtually no deep questions at all. It’ll happen to their kids, too.

Building on that notion, your writer made an assumption that everyone, to a greater or lesser extent, still has an inherent curiosity that just needs to be resurfaced. Subsequently, it encouraged him to take a different tack toward his client meetings, be that as an individual or a group. So now he’s more inclined to ask questions or pose some ideas and then turn it over to small groups of participants to discover likely solutions. He calls these two-way meetings rather than our traditional one-way ones, where audiences are just required listen to all the “sages on the stage.”  As he’s moved forward in this mode, he’s been pleasantly surprised at gaining a more engaged reaction. Maybe there’s hope yet!

So coming back to our earlier question, ‘Where’s our starting point?’ Perhaps we can borrow a little more from Chan and Mauborgne’s book, where they tabulated the key differences between Red and Blue Ocean. These were as follows, with some modification:

Red Ocean Strategy                                     Blue Ocean Strategy

» Compete in existing markets                    » Create uncontested markets

» Surpass the competition                           » View competition as somewhat irrelevant

» Exploit current demand                            » Build and seize new demand

» Make value-cost trade-offs                       » Crack open existing value-cost trade-offs

» Decide on product/service                        » Pursue both product/service

differentiation OR low cost                            differentiation AND low cost.

When these book authors listed the six principles of pursuing Blue Ocean Strategy, the two which leapt out as counting the most were:

» Focus on the big picture, not the numbers

 » Get your strategic phases right (where this author uses phases as a leadership oriented word, as well as to convey seamlessness rather than a conventional management step-by-step mode).

The biggest challenge in finding Blue Ocean is breaking out of our normal thinking box. Perhaps not? An even bigger issue seems to be in setting time aside for thinking in the first place. That could mean isolating ourselves for a while: stepping away from family, friends, neighbors, workplace colleagues and so on. That’s easier said than done, especially as they may think you’ve turned your back on them for a while. Perhaps you need to explain:  “I need some time to think. I need some space. I’ve got nothing against you, but I have to discover some Blue Ocean.”

Similarly your team has to find that quiet space, too. Preferably a place with windows, so that participants can daydream a little beyond four walls, or even an open air venue…so they can see “blue-sky.” There’s something to be said for using outside facilitators at times, so that colleagues feel safe enough to throw out half-baked ideas: ideas that might grow into whole big ideas. This includes asking key questions like:

» What are our existing competitive markets and where do we envisage other markets adjacent to    or extensions of our current markets?

» What is the current market demand that we are pursuing and where do we envisage new                   demand?

   One other trick, similar to when digging out your organization’s value proposition, is to challenge the right team within your organization to think outside the box with the following questions on behalf of your current customers:

      » What headaches can we reduce in their lives?

      » What issues can we eliminate in their world?

      » What is it that they could be doing with us that would raise their performance to a whole new              level?

      » Where could we be collaborating with them to create significant greater value within their                    world?

You don’t believe this? Just look at what some well-known entities did:

Company               Reduced             Eliminated     Raised        Created

Cirque du Soliel          Concurrent perform-rings    Animals              Artistry                      Theater

Southwest Airlines         Hub connectivity            Cabin classes     Customer friendly     Compete w/cars

Net Jet                            First class price tag      Manage own aircraft   Ease of travel      Flexible-reliable

Not only would you be helping customers by asking the above questions; you would also be aiding yourselves by finding Blue Ocean. Projecting onto other people’s challenges is often a great way to see your own. Just think about how some of those long surviving companies have hung-in there? They took their initial products-services and exploited their know-how in many different ways. Consider that the biggest concrete pipe maker in the world today – from Australia – started out making small, mud-straw irrigation pipes more than 100 years ago.

Former world cell phone player Nokia started out making rubber and plastic products 70+ years ago and ended-up not only making plastic housing for telephone products but also making the complete cell phone themselves. Somewhere along the line they lost it. They became stuck as part of Red Ocean and never recovered. But that’s another story.

To find out more about evolving a Blue Ocean approach, talk with: