Modern Ideas for Modern Business: Blue Ocean Strategy

 In today's business world, the increased dynamism of consumer needs and desires demands similar levels of innovation and dynamism from businesses. Consumers are doing things differently, and so businesses have had to change how they do things too. To do this, they have shifted their approach to planning and strategy.  

 

In their 2004 book Blue Ocean Strategy, professors Renee Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim of leading business school INSEAD have analysed this change in thinking. They have laid down fundamental principles which business can use not only to move with the change, but to benefit from it too.  

 

The book contrasts traditional crowded competitive markets - red oceans - with new, untouched markets - blue oceans. These blue oceans can be created by businesses that are willing to innovate to find and serve new demands. This approach to strategy allows businesses to utilise their innovative potential to the full.  

 

Nilesh Waghela is a retired independent business advisor whose wealth of business experience gives him a deep understanding of the modern business world. He understands that shifting focus away from competitiveness and toward delivering great value is a key step on the path toward applying blue ocean strategy to a business.  

 

A Practical Model 

 

Many innovative ideas about strategy remain largely theoretical, but such is not the case with the ideas in Blue Ocean Strategy. To write the book, the professors analysed 150 strategic moves across a wide range of industries to demonstrate practical application of the strategy.  

In the first section of the book, the authors go over the core principles of the approach. This part of the book lays out the key terms and concepts necessary for a full understanding of the strategy going forward. In the second section, the Six Paths Framework is introduced, showing how companies can change their thinking to create new, untapped market spaces.  

 

The final part of the book looks at how the new strategy can be practically implemented and includes discussion about the different difficulties a business may encounter when attempting to introduce such an innovative new approach. The authors cover the different categories into which these hurdles fall, and the approaches which can be taken to overcome them.  

 

As the book is the product of a decade of careful and wide-ranging study, the result is a detailed and practical system for bringing businesses into the modern era.