Strategies for the Blue Ocean - Chan Kim

It is excellent book written by Chan Kim explaining about the best businesses in the world and how they have been able to create blue oceans in existing red oceans.

The strategy is simple and guidlines are very clear.The blue ocean characteristics includes a focus, divergence and compelling tag line.

Four action frameworks for blue ocean strategy are
eliminate,
reduce,
raise
and create.

His case studies on cement selling mexico (tandas and supertandas) and haircut ( QB house) in japan and ciso network devices for the interent and HBO's Sex and city and NTT DocoMo and Netjets and curves and US municipal bus industry and CNN and apple itunes are all very exciting.
He explains the six paths framework
Look across alternatives industries
Look across strategies groups within industries
Look across the chain of buyers
Look across complementary product and service offerings
Look across functional or emotional appeal to buyers
Look across time

Then the question of competing on functional and emotional grounds is very nice when it comes to innovation.
The explanation and usage of PMS (Poineer- Migrator-Settler) Map for visualising the strategy if eyeopener and its balancing is also very crucial for blue ocean strategy.
He explains about the 3 tiers of non customers one should look for when studying blue ocean opportunities.
Soon-to-be noncustomers - he explains about Pret A manager who does a turnaround stratgey simliar like the dabbawallahs in Europe
Refusing nonCustomers
Unexplored non customers


Fifth Principal of Blue ocean strategy
Overcoming key organisational Hurdles

• Waking employees for the strategic shift-Cognitive
• Limited resources
• Motivation
• Politics

Bratton strategy and NYPD turnaround is good story of showing the practicalities rather driving home the numbers.

The idea to jump the resource hurdle by identifying the cold spots (high resource input and low performance impact), hot spots (low resource input and high performance impact) and horse trading ( trading of resources based on demand and supply)

The 3 focus factors in motivating employees

• kingpins- the key influencers in the organisation
• fishbowl management-placing the kingpins in a fishbowl so that their actions and inaction are made transparent to others
• atomization- framing of the strategic challenge

Chan clearly showcases how Bratton went about using all these factors in bringing down the crime rate in New York.

To knock over the political hurdle he professes to leverages the angels ( thsoe who gain the most from stategic shift) and silence the devils ( those who los the most from this shift and securing the consigliere (who is politically adept and highly respected insider who knows who fight for you and who will support you and also knows all the landmines)

Tipping point leadership explains that for changing the mass it must focus on transforming the extremes:people, acts, activities that excercise a disproportionate influence on peformance. This a major shift from conventional wisdom which believes in organisational change in trasnforming the mass.

How flat is the World

World is flat by Thomas Friedman

Truely a very fabulous book and great entertainer nonetheless.
Coming to the unflat world where the poor are trying to forge into the Midddle Class he is is very apt but one need to wait and watch and see if they can really make it. One of the most important things that are pulling them down is that there is a lot of distraction that one finds in the local environment that one finds. This is one of the most important things that is to be bridged. Distraction and lack of focus and diversions in India and developing countries is something that each one of us need to work on. So this distraction is also affecting peace of mind of all the underpriviledged people. Also a lot of comparison between people the welathy and poor does not in any way help it.

I happened to see Mohandas Pai CFO infosys make one very important point, it was regarding the legal system in India. In the USA there 70+ judges per Million of people and in India there are 3 judges per million. So the country's legal system must ramp up completely if there is any justice or any momentum or any motivation for the people of the country. He was mentioning of the harshad Mehta case, u cant have a country where a case drags on for such a long time.What will happened to the rest of the millions of people who are suffering at the hands of the criminals.

Freidman is quick and fast in his anaylsis and yes he has a lot stories for us in his book.Well he has picked the humiliation part to the humna side very well and its effects the other world is very well portrayed, in showcasing the unflat world. His research is really fabulous on the stats of the IPs being filed by each country and company.
The digital divide is really shaking the world and one needs to catch on to this bus and all need to take this ride and the governments of each country needs only to be an enabler rather than being a hurdle.
His real life stories are impeccable and drive home the point very well. His portrayal about America being the country of hope and optimism need not get cocooned in its shell is very important to the world.

Blink dont Think

We all think a lot about our past and our future, good times and bad times and what not. Well i was reading this book BLINK by Malcolm Gladwell, i think it is an excellent one. I was working on my self and i was monitoring my mind.So i wanted to get a lot of fundas about life becasue i wanted to know what life is. Just what the hell is life?
We all live life in different ways.So i came to the conclusion that every one has got his/ her own way of interpreting life and living life. And the beauty in life is we want something and when asked we say something and hence a huge gap exists between what we want and the words we use to express the things we want.I rememeber one of the lines sent by sister, saying that one man's poison is another man's meat. Well rightly said.
Well all tend to think a lot in our day to day life. Well some may say no but they still think. Well i dont want to dispute this as it not what i want to contest.Well as the research stats goes about more than 60% ( i dont remember the exact figure, it may be higher) of our thinking is the same everyday and we keep thinking the same thing again and again. So my question was how do u stop thinking and start living.

Easier said than done that is when i started reading these books and started working on myself as to why is that i think the same thing over and over again. I was basically experimenting with my self.

BLINK was instrumental in deriving my own theory.

BLINK dont THINK.
It is a technique where i was controlling my mind like a switch. I was putting it on and off.The derivative of this was complete focus which i wanted to achieve and absolute control of my mind.

The basic idea was to stop thinking the routine 60% and focussing that towards innovative thinking.I started programing my mind not think about any topic which i considered repetitive under the sun for not more than 2 mins and i had to decide within these 2 mins with the available data or send it to the recycle bin.When i did this, i was able to stop my thinking which was repetetive in nature. In turn dedicated that time towards reading and constructive action.
I was able to decipher the repetitive ones and trained my mind not to think about them and added an incentive for not thinking repetitive things.

So when we talk about innovative work it means execution of the thought. So why think unnecesaarily when one is not executing a thought.

The reason for me to work on this was i wanted to know as to how much of time i was able to save in day and convert into productive action.
The reason for me to Blink and not think is that i believe most results are because of action and solutions to all problems are very simple and we human beings have made it very complex. All complex solutions are problems.
We still love the same simple things but our thinking as become complex and we fail to recognise the simple things in life, that is our own existence.