Free Calls for life - Applying the Blue Ocean Strategy

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Was reading one of the new blogs that I stumbled upon, I read upon a posting which introduced me to what they call the Blue Ocean Strategy.

One of the standard approaches that companies have long engaged in head-to-head competition in search of sustained, profitable growth. They have fought for competitive advantage, battled over market share, and struggled for differentiation.

"Yet in today’s overcrowded industries, competing head-on results in nothing but a bloody “red ocean” of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. In a book that challenges everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne contend that while most companies compete within such red oceans, this strategy is increasingly unlikely to create profitable growth in the future. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves spanning more than a hundred years and thirty industries, Kim and Mauborgne argue that tomorrow’s leading companies will succeed not by battling competitors, but by creating “blue oceans” of uncontested market space ripe for growth . Such strategic moves—termed “value innovation”—create powerful leaps in value for both the firm and its buyers, rendering rivals obsolete and unleashing new demand.

BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY provides a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant. In this frame-changing book, Kim and Mauborgne present a proven analytical framework and the tools for successfully creating and capturing blue oceans. Examining a wide range of strategic moves across a host of industries, BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY highlights the six principles that every company can use to successfully formulate and execute blue ocean strategies. The six principles show how to reconstruct market boundaries, focus on the big picture, reach beyond existing demand, get the strategic sequence right, overcome organizational hurdles, and build execution into strategy."

In summary the central idea is to create a new uncontested space in which to compete, rather than simply trying to “leverage” competitive advantage to compete against existing players.At least the first time I read this, it appeared to be a great concept to me. I have not yet read the book (adding to my list though) but tried looking at some examples of what companies might / can do to go this route

1. Can companies actively employ "Corporate Blogging" as a KM tool - Rather than a red ocean approach of fighting with competition to retain the knowledge of the highly mobile resources they can deploy a "blue ocean" strategy where users are allowed (even mandated possibly) to blog. A resource belongs to a company but the blog for the period the employee spends in a company A belongs to company A and so on. - Don't even know if this sounds silly - but just thinking aloud
2. Keep a common bench across all the Indian Software Vendors simply separated by Technology / Domain. Anybody can draw from that bench rather than everybody having a bench of there own.

If you are interested to read a more 'professional' application of the Blue Ocean Strategy read the posting titled "Gold from straw: profiting from “low-value” customers"

Tags: telecom, outsourcing, telco 2.0, blue ocean strategy