While researching on blue ocean strategy, I came across an interview given by one of the authors, W. Chan Kim, to the Jakarta Post. Though the context is about Indonesia, much of what is Prof. Kim says is applicable to us in India also.
First, never try to imitate anybody, because as long as you benchmark with somebody, at the best you will be like them. Meanwhile, the person you benchmark is ahead of you. You will never close the gap.
My second suggestion is that rather than focusing energy on the red ocean, focus your energy on the blue ocean, on the positive and creative. Pay attention to what they are doing, and how they are doing it differently. You need to focus on positive moves not only in terms of focusing energy and emotions.
Third, you start to educate and train them in this knowledge, how to do it. For instance what is the blue ocean. How to create a blue ocean strategy? So they understand the fundamentals, they understand the differences. You create intellectual debates among people.
You should start from somewhere else, you cannot expect everybody to be aware. So you plant the seed to grow. What I understood from my meeting with the businessmen, there is a really hidden energy out there and as I said from the beginning, they are growing better, because there is the energy of business. There are many people who really think they should go to win in the market place, not based on political favor but based on economic strategy. Obviously, there are a lot of things to improve, a lot of political things to clean up. There are a lot of things to focus on.
The Blue Ocean strategy is about the conversation. The entire process in the blue ocean strategy is not about the answer to the issue, but it is about the process of solving the problems. It means that people need engaging conversations to produce a creative blue ocean. When you develop strategy, it means you need an architectural process to follow.
Blue Ocean means having conversations. It is a process of learning, how politicians are having conversations with the people, how the private sector is having a conversation with the public sector, how employees can have a conversation with the employers.
In India, entrepreneurs need to focus on creating blue ocean strategies. As incomes grow in India, there are numerous opportunities that are emerging. Take up any vertical, and one can start thinking about how it could be different given the emergence and availability of technology. For example, in the music industry, aggregate revenues from mobile phones (via ringtones and ringback tones) are now larger than the actual spend on cassettes and CDs. The mobile industry is a blue ocean for the music business. How can this same thinking be taken to other verticals? Therein lie tomorrows opportunities.
Tomorrow: Two Large Blue Oceans
TECH TALK Blue Ocean Strategy+T
