Blue Ocean Strategy

me d ia b i t e s

Business reconsidered

Changing people and growth strategies

By Robert Colman and Patrick Buckley, CMA

Blue Ocean Strategy

Competition is fierce in most industries right now. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to By W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. Published by Harvard Business School Press. For create uncontested market space and make more information visit www.HBSPress.org. the competition irrelevant new book ,a from Harvard Business School Press, suggests that, instead of competing for a Behavioural profiling is a useful aid for share in a shrinking profit pool of overdescribing kinds of people — as shown in crowded industries, strategically agile popular books like Roberta Cava’s companies have to create “blue oceans” Dealing With Difficult People Horn . Art of uncontested market space through what the authors call defines behavioural profiles of six types of “value innovation.” business people who have hidden fears in Through the book, the authors explain that innovation must his book Face It: Recognizing and conquer expand a company beyond the current confines of its industry. ing the hidden fear that drives all conflict at Rather than fighting for market share, companies have to crework These personality types are worrier, . ate new market space. For instance, Cirque du Soleil redefined controller, fake, attention-seeker, victim, the concept of the circus as a combination of circus and theatre. and prisoner. This book includes examInstead of competing with standard circuses head-on, it created ples of individuals of each business type who the author helped a completely new market instead. break out of endless loops of behaviour that were driven by Although such a move, performed once, can create a valuable anxiety and fear and were causing unnecessary conflict. The examples are excerpts from case studies that the author recorded in his work as an executive coach in Toronto. The single quality that leaders universally Horn’s method of...