Innovation over Competition: Every Entrepreneur needs to Understand the "Blue Ocean Strategy"
Hello friends, I hope you had a great weekend. I pray that you have a successful week ahead. One of the beautiful news coming pour way in this part of the world is that there are indications that the Nigerian economy would be opening up after three months of lockdown due to corona virus. Today's broadcast y the Covid Taskforce had give green lights for resumption of schools and businesses across state boarders.
While getting excited with the news, it dawn on me that there's some work to be done and that is to re-strategise as business would not be as usual. WE all must come to terms with the reality that the post-covid life would be a "new normal" and every entrepreneur must be on his hills to shift his strategies to e relevant. As I brainstormed, I remember a term in the market universe called "Blue Ocean".
The term "Blue Ocean" and a sister term "Red Ocean" were coined by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in describing a product marketing strategy that can create a leap in value for a company/industry, its buyers, and its employees while unlocking new demand and making the competition irrelevant. - source
A blue ocean is said to exist when there is potential for higher profits, as tendencies for competition are relegated to the rear. Simply put, an entrepreneur who adopts this strategy is simply producing a product/service market for a product which has no competition or very less competition.
Like the name implies, blue ocean simply presents a market situation which are boundless, vast and deep in terms of opportunity and profitable growth.. Blue oceans denote all the industries not in existence today. It is the unknown market space, that is yet to be explored or untainted by competition.
We are in a world where imitation and piracy is the order of the day. People want to make money where they do not put in effort in thinking and incubating an idea. Many can simply use the google search tab to download business proposals and spin words in same for contracts and many more. Those who do such are never and can never be entrepreneurs.
It therefore becomes very crucial for every entrepreneur to understand the Blue Ocean Strategy and how to apply it to an existing business especially not that things would change in the marketplace drastically. It is a time for Innovation and a change in modules.
Innovation must not be Costly
Many people are afraid each time they hear of the word "innovation" because they think it must be something complex and costly. No! innovation must not be costly.
- A little inclusion in the value chain would constitute innovation.
- A concentration on a particular audience with definite changes patterned to suit the class is innovation.
- A replacement of a steel ball with a rubber type is innovation.
- Harnessing a new local raw material source is innovation.
We must learn to keep innovation simple and gradual, bearing in mind the effort it would require to have the masses adopt. We see the delayed adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology? It could be related to complex and multiple key usages, resource credits, layered operations and many more which is a drastic shift from the operations of Internet 2.0.
It's time for entrepreneurs to brace up our creative skills yet keep it simple in order to stay relevant in the market without competition.
I would be glad to share thoughts with you on this subject. Let's maximize the comments section of this blog post.
Estoy de acuerdo contigo, además este Covid nos acompañara por largo tiempo, es cierto tu comentario “ post-covid seria una nueva normalidad y que todo emprendedor debe estar en sus colinas para cambiar sus estrategias….” Tienes toda la razón.
@uyobong Innovative is the key to success.if you are inventing new things you will always ahead of the market and competitors cannot catches you easily it will take time to reach to you. So we need to have innovative idea in every field.
What kills several business the more is the idea of placing focus on the wrong thing, placing focus on competition rather than growth is not a smart idea.
Diversity inside a company is something super important. If you compete with your similar ones, you won't be helping anyone. But if you cooperate with different minds and ideas the path to success will be smooth.
This is especially true in industries where the old workers create obstacles to the newcomers and refuse to teach them the basics.