Comments on: Not Blue Oceans, Blue Planets!

By: David

David — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:02:07 +0000

I agree with alot that was said here. There is no on blueprint fits all. What a company needs to be innovative is a team that (mastermind group) that can sit down a strategize on a regular bases. The disney strategy in NLP gives a good outline for the creative process of not only developing but solving problems.

What bothers me the most of all the books that are constantly coming out. It is just a recycling business of the core books and concepts that were developed years ago. That’s why there are very few good movies anymore. Everything has been thought of now lets just keep repackaging it with different wrapping paper and bows.

By: TRU Group

TRU Group — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 22:01:43 +0000

Blue Ocean Strategy – Ocean Strategy, Red or Blue, belongs in the Dead Sea!

¥ The book titled “Blue Ocean Strategy” is not helpful to management – don’t buy it and if you already have it dump it

¥ Management can and should be visionary in formulating strategy. But, contrary to the approach of Ocean Strategy, should do so by thinking about market environment shifts, how these could impact customer sets, and whether those customer sets are the ones you wish to serve

¥ Also contrary to Ocean Strategy, production cost reduction is best seen as an operational or resource issue – a barrier to be overcome not an end in itself as a tool of strategy. Resources are easier to acquire than customers. Production methods should match volume to minimize costs

¥ In your strategizing do not take advice on strategy [or any other mission critical function] from management who are not qualified to give advice and do not treat strategy formulation as an exercise in management team compromise – contrary to the Ocean Strategy method

¥ This book should be at the bottom of the list for reading by strategy professionals for Ocean Strategy, Red or Blue, belongs in the Dead Sea!

¥ Harvard University professors should read it for they should wonder what they were thinking allowing Harvard University Press to publish it.

TRU Group Inc – Activating Your StrategicMindset

By: Grant

Grant — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 21:09:07 +0000

Mark, I am happy to hear this defense. If the theory works it works. Thanks. Grant

By: Mark Saunders

Mark Saunders — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 11:41:21 +0000

It seems that the comment about stumbling into a really successful strategy is the one that deserves further consideration. It is easy with the benefit of hindsight to identify a Blue Ocean and to envy those who found their way there. However the point is that having identified that operating in a Blue Ocean is a profitable exercise the task is to see whether potential Blue Oceans can be identified in advance and that potential then exploited. If the theory fits the historical facts then the theory should work again. I was very skeptical at first but then studied the book and identified successes in my own field where others had been successful and even where we had – without at the time realizing fully why. The trick now is to see if that can be replicated.

By: Grant

Grant — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 12:46:56 +0000

Ed, thanks, I have ordered it, and this is an interesting proposition, that Starbucks is restoring what was there before, it smacks a little of that “world we have lost” notion with which some people like to imagine an America before the corruption of the marketplace set in. To which I say, America has never not been a market society. But all grist for the mill. Thanks again, Grant

Arnie, this is very interesting, that the corporate culture is now trapped in a “call and response” obsession with its competitors, and that consumers and the innovations that serve are sometimes obscured. I think this may well be what is happening on some marketing teams. No one will ever fault you from shadowing the competition gesture by gesture. And of course this is a good thing, but not when it happens to the exclusion of a bigger picture approach. And if that’s what Blue Oceans brings to the party, then I stand corrected. Thanks, Grant

By: Arnie McKinnis

Arnie McKinnis — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:35:40 +0000

A little late to the party, but here’s my two cents — the best thing about the book is not some of the examples, but the fact that many companies only look at their competition – what’s so-n-so doing – and never look at he market. I belive it has more to do with no making a mistake. But interesting book, interesting rant about the book. BTW, it appears there are lots of average people out there that just don’t get it (the book).

By: Ed Batista

Ed Batista — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 04:02:36 +0000

Just a random comment, Grant: Your remark about Starbucks and “third places” reminds me of a wonderful book, Ray Oldenburg’s “The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community.” Originally written in the late ’80s, I think–pre-Starbucks, at any rate–he discusses the factors that led to the decline of all those wonderful traditional “third places” and created the void that Starbucks has filled very profitably, if not in precisely the same ways.

By: Grant

Grant — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:02:34 +0000

Auto, good questions, I guess that even if you wonder into a Blue Ocean you have to have wit enough to see it for what it is and initiative to make it your own. Thanks, Grant

Steve, hey! and yes, to continue, I guess some people need a whopping great metaphor! And that, as an act of innovation, doesn’t seem like a lot. But I guess these two people have demonstrated how renumerative it can really be. Thanks, Grant

By: steve

steve — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 19:52:28 +0000

One of my curmudgeonly colleagues made this exact point at a panel session on academics and consulting (BTW, the Blue Ocean guys are not famous as scholars). To paraphrase, he pointed out that strategy and econ scholars have a lot to say about innovation.

We know about networks and platforms and appropriability regimes and patent races and complementary assets and lots of interesting little concepts and mechanisms that are relevant to innovation. And what’s the message of the most successful management book? “Innovation is good!”

One wonders what elusive quality makes such banality hit it big in the marketplace–I would not underestimate the skill in selection, packaging, and timing needed to make a success out of such materials. Whatever these guys are doing to make everyone buy their book, it is way too subtle for me to grasp. I don’t think most academics have this knack for branding ideas to get them taken up by managers.

By: Auto

Auto — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 13:11:04 +0000

but aren’t blue oceans just what result from stumbling into a really really successful strategy, recognizing it and then working like hell to keep the competition out?

for instance, sloan’s “a car for every purse” was based on needing to find a way to compete against henry ford’s always cheaper model t.

did sloan know in, say, 1915, that the US car market would be saturated/mature by the mid-1920s, making ford’s commodity car strategy obsolete?

or did it just turn out that sloan was astute enough to see that he had been dealt a winning hand while henry was busy putting ford motor into a 20-year decline not reversed until mcnamara and whiz kids arrived?