I have been on the bleeding edge of innovation many times throughout my 25+ year career. Which is why I have found the thesis of Kim & Mauborgne's Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant to be wrong. Simply wrong. As a frequent critic of Blue Ocean Strategy my primary issue is in the title premise of creating "uncontested" markets and making the competition "irrelevant".
I have made money off of innovation and lost money. My first real brush with innovation was back in 1982 when I co-founded an early artificial intelligence pioneer in partnership with a University of Illinois computer scientist. This early experience dealing with the vagaries of Carnegie Mellon AI experts and the realities of cash flow from a venture funded start-up was to later be replicated many times over. My experience taught me two things about innovation: 1) execution trumps innovation and, 2) Innovation is fleeting.
Most ironically I learned that the best way to attract competition was through innovation. And I have learned that the most potent weapon in my competitive arsenal is innovation... but it is a fleeting advantage, and I have to execute like a banshee in order to develop it, launch it, extend it and better it. Which is why I approach Blue Ocean with a healthy dose of skepticism and caution.
Business Week several weeks back had a good article on the essence of competition and some good comments on innovation and the Blue Ocean Strategy. The article concludes with an observation by Joe Kraus, founder and chief executive of Web collaboration software startup JotSpot:
The truth is, there's no final winner in the global game of corporate competition. "All winning does is let you compete against a whole new set of better-funded competitors," ... "Competition never ends."
We've written extensively on Blue Ocean. You can click here to read our collection of postings/articles.
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