W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy provides practical and strategic guidelines for companies to reposition themselves within an oversaturated market, many of which exist in the United States.

Takeaways include:

• Necessity for companies to identify the characteristics of the industry they are in, as well as the characteristics of an industry they may have the potential of entering, then stripping away unnecessary characteristics and combining them so you can create a new ‘blue ocean.’
• Focus must now be on the noncustomer.
• Fine tune your customer offering.
• Costs should not drive price.
• Net utility value = perceived value – price paid
• Externalities play a key role and must be dealt with (for example, knowledge replication currently happening with copying music, DVDs, blog articles, etc.).
• Tipping leadership is exploiting the disproportionate few who have the largest influence.
• Target Costing: Strategic price (best price for your market) – desired profit margin = target cost of production

As I was reading this book, I couldn’t help but think of the discouragement when I hear individuals say no creative, innovative ideas are occurring in our society. They argue that money runs the world, and in the last several hundred years we’ve had life changing inventions, such as the light bulb and the printing press, however, nothing today.

First of all, I would like to argue that recent technology developments are changing our world faster than we could ever imagine. The internet is changing how we obtain and manipulate our information, and this is just the beginning stages of the internet. Start-up companies are developing right and left, and with hierarchies breaking down, the individual is gaining more and more power by the day. Unfortunately, I also think there is a common structure and regurgitation of information that occurs that is stifling our push to think creatively, to create ‘blue oceans’ and think outside the norm. I am taking a Creative Thinking & Problem Solving class next semester at Emerson, and I am very much looking forward to it. While we may not be inventing the printing press, innovative and creative individuals are discovering new ways of solving problems…we just need to take the time to stop and think.