How lean times create smarter innovations
MANILA, Philippines - On March 12 at the Edsa Shangri-La Isla Ballroom, the author of the best-selling strategy book Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, Prof. W. Chan Kim, talked to key business strategists and leaders about creating Blue Ocean Strategies (BOS) during a time of crisis. Despite the pain, recessions are historically times of enormous creativity and breakthrough business launches. Microsoft, General Electric, Fed Ex, CNN and Apple are among the hundreds of companies that created blue oceans during an economic downturn.
Fortunately, good ideas are not expensive. As buyers are forced to make better choices within limited means, businesses must also make better strategic choices within their limited means. When times are lean, both consumers and companies must make smarter decisions. Real customers continue to face real problems. For companies this means they must find ways to create new value, while reducing costs.
And this is called Value Innovation, the cornerstone of Blue Ocean Strategy. To achieve it, it is the idea that matters, not your resources. Lean times create innovation that is smarter than the innovation that springs from fatter times. They are “smarter” because they are based on ideas — not big budgets, research and development, or technological breakthroughs.
Blue Ocean Strategy Philippines (BOS Philippines), in partnership with UCSI Blue Ocean Strategy Regional Centre, uses blue ocean strategy in a variety of contexts and conjunction with the set of tools and methodologies developed and refined by practitioners globally.
Its consulting engagements are designed to create a series of breakthrough strategic options that are risk-minimizing and profit-maximizing. It comes with years of experience working with companies to help them use the BOS process to systematically create and capture high-growth-potential opportunities across the spectrum from product development to business model innovation. The BOS approach is highly interactive and collaborative, integrating creativity, experience, and strategy development with proven proprietary tools and methodologies built around the BOS process. Its specialty is helping companies create new markets and recreating existing ones in a short period of time, at a lower cost, and with a high level of knowledge transfer and skill building.
