Front Office Box

The world’s full of management and business strategy books. Sometimes they really change the way people think e.g. Re-engineering the Corporation. Others just look impressive on shelves in the office.

One of the best guides to the best books is the Harvard Business Review. When a book’s based on a paper published in the review, it’s usually worth attention.  Blue Ocean Strategy is further proof of that statement.

Here’s review published by Amazon.

What is a BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY? The authors explain it by comparing it to a red ocean strategy (traditional strategic thinking):
1. DO NOT compete in existing market space. INSTEAD you should create uncontested market space.
2. DO NOT beat the competition. INSTEAD you should make the competition irrelevant.
3. DO NOT exploit existing demand. INSTEAD you should create and capture new demand.
4. DO NOT make the value/cost trade-off. INSTEAD you should break the value/cost trade-off.
5. DO NOT align the whole system of a company’s activities with its strategic choice of differentiation or low cost. INSTEAD you should align the whole system of a company’s activities in pursuit of both differentiation and low cost.

A red ocean strategy is based on traditional strategic thinking - e.g. Harvard’s strategy guru Michael Porter - and is what the authors believe you should not do.

A blue ocean is created in the region where a company’s actions favourably affect both its cost structure and it value proposition to buyers. Cost savings are made from eliminating and reducing the factors an industry competes on. Buyer value is lifted by raising and creating elements the industry has never offered. Over time, costs are reduced further as scale economies kick in, due to the high sales volumes that superior value generates.

Interesting, hopefully, but why’s it mentioned in the Front Office Box blog?

Because it describes exactly what we’re doing with Front Office Box!

Many thanks to Andrew Boddice for bringing it to our attention.

March 6th, 2008 - Posted in Our market, Web 2.0  |  Add a Comment