Blue Ocean Diving

I've been reading Blue Ocean Strategy. Its an interesting book. In a way, it has the same problem any management book has -- those earlier management books, they were on the right track, but they stopped too soon/made bad assumptions/were sadly mistaken -- but WE have the answer -- however, its worthwhile in spite of that.

Basically, the idea is that competitors exist within a generally accepted space of doing business. In this space, the assumptions are generally accepted, the goals and methods pretty uniform. You succeed by raising the bar, and your success is taken away from the other competitors shares -- and theirs from yours. Success is a matter of small increments. The book calls this 'the red ocean', sometimes 'the bloody red ocean'. By contrast, the 'blue ocean' is uncharted territory with few or no competitors, because the service/product that you provide is unique. They mention Southwest Airlines in the short haul/quick turnaround market; Cirque de Soleil in the circus/entertainment/theater market, [Yellowtail] in the wine/beverage market. Each applied in their own way the same technique - classification of the key points in the delivery of a service -- the things by which the customer or the company defined the service -- and then dropped the importance of some, increased the importance of others, and occasionally added new ones. Southwest dropped the idea of reserved seats and boosted the idea of cheap seats -- and oh by the way, onsite ticketing. Cirque dropped the animal acts and the headliners, not to mention vendors strolling the aisles selling high-priced snacks, and boosted the idea of artistry and grace in motion -- the circus as theater. [Yellowtail] dropped wine aficionado classifications and multiple variants of wine for two or three types, bold graphics, and simple statements about the wine. Each defined a new industry that took part of the existing, and part of others, sometimes grafting on whole new concepts not seen elsewhere.

Its very easy to get swept away by the book's authors' hyperbole -- and we alone knew the answer! -- and sometimes, I do. I make myself slow down then, asking myself what made this approach obvious to the people doing the analysis. Yes, its wonderful that they came up with their successful approach, but from where? How much of this analysis is backing into it -- these companies are successful, lets analyze them and extract common denominators --- and how much is something that anyone can do with their own business. I'm only about a fifth of the way into the book, so there's still hope. Perhaps this book really does have The Answer.

But I won't bet on it.