Thoughts

Red or Blue – Which Ocean are you swimming in?

The need for new ways of thinking about strategy is critical. With the rate of commoditisation increasing, even in highly innovative markets, companies need to be able to differentiate their products with something unique, that is not easily copied by competitors, and which is valued by customers.

Read a lot of strategy books and they tend to give you the same message: differentiate your service offering, beat the competition, segment your market more cleverly and choose between high customer value at an increased cost or low value at a lower cost. Either or, it’s a zero sum game.

entheo ran a three hour workshop in January, hosted by The NextWomen, a network for female entrepreneurs www.thenextwomen.com, to challenge and sharpen participants thinking and give them fresh frameworks and time generate ideas to think about their business strategy. See the experience above.

The pioneering work of Chan Kim and Renee Maurborgne, INSEAD Professors has challenged conventional ways of thinking in their research on Blue Ocean Strategy by giving practical frameworks that can put to immediate use for immediate results.

Their research, not just from recent history, has found discernable common patterns that have made businesses stand out from the crowd.  From Ford in the early 1900s to CNN in the 1980s to companies such as Starbucks, Circus Soleil and Casella [Yellow Tail] Australian wine company, the approach to creating blue oceans was consistent across time regardless of industry.  All experienced rapid growth regardless of commoditisation. Read the book:   Blue Ocean Strategy; W.Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne, Harvard Business School Press, 2005 http://tinyurl.com/ygwfje2