Competitive Strategy and Blue Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy is a relatively new concept. The book “Blue Ocean Strategy”, was written by 2 professors at the INSEAD business school (W Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne), and was published in 2005. It rapidly became a best seller. The central aim of Blue Ocean Strategy is to avoid head-to-head competition that simply results in declining opportunities and constrained profits. Kim and Mauborgne argue that the key to success in the future is to avoid competition by creating highly differentiated “value innovations” that create uncontested space. It is substantially about “re-writing the rules” – changing our concepts of markets into value domains and by close linkages to the best quality customers achieving a level of profitable growth that head to head competitors in the “Red Ocean” space will not have.

The principal highlights of the training course are:

• Introduction to leading-edge “Blue Ocean” thinking and best practice in strategy building
• Focus on the business model as the basis of strategic differentiation
• DVD presentations by world-class scholars and practitioners
• Case studies for class work and discussion
• Case presentations based on the personal experience of the course leader

The central objectives of this training course are as follows:

• To ensure that participants understand the basic concepts of strategy
• To understand how “Blue Ocean” thinking differs from other approaches to strategy
• To understand the six basic principles of “Blue Ocean” thinking
• To understand the meaning of value innovation
• To ensure that strategy is changed and developed to create a sustained level of high performance
• To enable participants to understand how their specialist parts of the organisation contribute to strategy building and achieving sustainable differentiation

The training process is based on a carefully planned mix of highly focused input from the course leader - with practical illustration of tools and concepts; group work on small-scale case studies; interaction and group discussion; and group work on a major case study. The course manual will serve as a toolkit for subsequent everyday use. There will also be presentations on DVD given by acknowledged world-leading authorities on the subject. The principles and approaches to strategy and strategic management will be illustrated by real-life cases in which the course leader has been personally involved.