“Blue Ocean Strategy”

by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborge

I. Introduction
STRATEGY … is known to be the method or plan chosen to bring about a desired future,
such as achievement of a goal or solution to a problem. Also, it is the art and science of
planning and marshalling the resources for their most efficient and effective use.
Over the decade of years the business industries have been conceptualizing and grinding for
the best strategies to use in order transform growth and progress in a rapid manner. They
have exerted their efforts in finding a way to increase their efficiency and effectiveness to
achieve their goals and meet the market demands.
II. Summary
The article “Blue Ocean Strategy” by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne identifies the
strategic elements that were common to blue ocean creations in different industries in
different eras.
Blue ocean strategy is based on a decade long study of more than 150 strategic moves
spanning more than 30 industries over 100 years. Industries ranged from hotels, cinema,
retail, airlines, energy, computers, broadcasting, and construction to automobiles and steel.
Blue ocean is not about technology innovation and seldom result from technological
innovation. Often, the underlying technology exists and blue ocean creators link it to what
buyers value.
Blue ocean strategy is based on the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost. It is
an “and-and,” not an “either-or” strategy. Conventional wisdom holds that companies can
either create greater value for customers at a higher cost or create reasonable value at a
lower cost. Here strategy is seen as making a choice between differentiation and low cost. In
contrast, blue ocean strategy seeks to break the value-cost tradeoff by eliminating and
reducing factors an industry competes on and raising and creating factors the industry has
never offered. This is what we call value innovation.
Value innovation is distinctively different from the competitive strategic approach that takes
an industry structure as given and seeks to build a defensible position within the existing
industry order. The strategic logic of value innovation guides companies to identify what
buyers commonly value across the conventional boundaries of competition and reconstruct
key factors across market boundaries, thereby achieving both differentiation and low cost and
creating a leap in value for both buyers and the company.
Blue ocean strategy doesn’t aim to out-perform the competition. It aims to make the
competition irrelevant by reconstructing industry boundaries. Whereas conventional strategic
approaches drive companies to define their industry similarly and focus on being the best
within it, blue ocean strategy prompts them to break out of the accepted boundaries that
define how they compete. Instead of looking within these boundaries, managers need to look
systematically across them to create blue oceans – new and uncontested market space of
new demand and high profitable growth.

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 Blue ocean offers systematic tools and frameworks to break away from the competition and
create a blue ocean of uncontested market space. It is built on the common strategic patterns
behind the successful creation of blue oceans. Thus, the said patterns are the underlying
frameworks, tools and methodologies to systematically link innovation to value and
reconstruct industry boundaries. Consequently, it provides a clear four- step process to break
away from the competition and create a blue ocean of strong profitable growth.
Finally, the defining characteristics of blue ocean strategy are as follows: create uncontested
market space; make the competition irrelevant; create and capture new demand; break the
value / cost trade- off; and align the whole system of a company’s activities in pursuit of
differentiation and low cost.

III.Reflection
Reading the whole article made me realize one thing “that blue ocean is indeed a concrete
strategy” which has been adopted and used by different companies to maintain their market
space.

As a teacher, we are expected to plan and strategize our everyday lessons. We are expected
to anticipate any questions that may be raised by the students and craft learning activities
that will harness their skills and prepare them for a future that is unknown. Indeed different
strategies should be employed into different types / kinds of situations that may arise inside
the classroom. It is imperative that we foresee what our students would need before what we
are teaching becomes irrelevant to them. This is especially true as we move further into the
new millennium. The 21st Century classroom needs are very different from the ones in the
20th Century.

Nowadays, the use of technology in teaching and learning process is one the most used
strategies inside the classroom but it should not only be used as a tool instead learners shall
understand the value of using this kind of technologies in their everyday living to be a more
productive and responsible citizens of the country. The focus of the 21st Century classroom
is on students experiencing the environment they will enter as 21st Century workers.
Therefore, as 21st Century educators, we must be able to keep up with the demands of
providing learning activities that will develop higher order thinking skills, effective
communication skills, and digital literacy that students will need in the 21st Century
workplace.

As a future school leader, I believe that employing the blue ocean strategy, which are
inclusive, easy to understand and communicate, and visual is an effective way to achieve the
organization’s goals and objectives. The article made me reflect on this “blue ocean strategy
is a strategy that expressly joins analytics with the human dimension of the organization”. In
my point of view, it recognizes and pays respect to the importance of aligning people’s minds
and hearts with a new strategy so that at the level of the individual, people embrace it of their
own accord and willingly go beyond compulsory execution to voluntary cooperation in
carrying it out. A leader must touch the hearts and minds of the people with fair process such

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 as engagement, explanation and expectation clarity, which is the fundamental basis of action:
trust, commitment, and voluntary cooperation. Leaders must invest on the so-called
intangible capital so that there will be consistency in the execution and implementation of the
plans.

Keeping a school or any organization, for that matter, in good standing for many, many, many
years takes a lot of planning and strategizing. One cannot rely simply on luck or reputation
keeping it strong. There is a need to see the whole picture and work collaboratively to
maintain it.

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 Cavite State University
Bangcod, Indang Cavite
Graduate School- Open Learning College

Reflection No. 3
“Blue Ocean Strategy”
By Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

Submitted by:

ROSALIE P. LUJERO

Professor:

DR. ISAIAS BANAAG

October, 2017

4 | EMGT 305- Reflection Paper 3 Rosalie P. Lujero