Blue Ocean Strategy: It's Work, but Worth It

I don't remember the names of many of my teachers, but one that stands out is a high-school teacher named Constance Holland. Ms. Holland was a civil rights activist that marched with Dr. Martin Luther King then turned teacher. After doing her best to explain something, then staring at the blank faces around the room, she stopped and roared the only quote I remember from any high-school teacher:

Wake Up! You're better than this .. this spaced-out indifference. Reach for the stars kids, and remember that anything else is beneath you.

I come across a lot of product and business developers; engineers and MBA's and people with degrees that end in "D." I feel like many US-doctors: people wait until their company is hurting then come looking for a pill to fix what ails them while they continue their same lousy health habits. They want the benefits of regular exercise and a good diet, but without the work.

Business leaders, entrepreneurs, students, workers, government officials ... everybody. Wake up. Listen to Ms. Holland: reach for the stars. Build great businesses. Jack Welsch famously used to say "Be #1 or 2 or get out." Come on Jack, you don't want to be #2: who wants to be #2? Art Rock, the early VC who funded Intel and Apple, once lectured something along the lines of "'A' people hire 'A' people and rarely 'B' people. They're happy when their hires pass them by, and they're quick to get rid of the 'B' people. 'B' people hire 'B' and 'C' people, on purpose. Run the process through a few hundred iterations to see it's so important to get the best and the brightest."

The US economy is going into the tank, largely on incompetence, indifference, indiscretion, and laziness. We have nobody else but ourselves to blame. But we also have the strongest entrepreneurial engine in world history: the right people and policies will fire it up and we'll eventually be fine. Other countries can keep cranking out low-cost labor, loosen their environmental and monetary regulations, or force workers to subsidize business through immoral tax structures. It doesn't matter: these commodities are inherently Red Ocean spasms. Some other country will come along that has even cheaper labor, is willing to pollute their water and air even more, or lets you run amok. It's like the hypothetical walk to the wall where the distance is always halved: we'll never quite get there, and even if we did who wants to walk into a wall?

Be Blue. Don't commoditize to compete in a Red Ocean but, rather, redefine the rules of the game; the boundaries of the market. Any company or country or individual can reach for the stars or slouch for the sewer: they can be Red or they can be Blue. But they can't be both. If they choose to go Blue they have to do the work; there's just no magic way to get there, but the results are worth it. The choice is entirely ours, and it's about time our business and government leaders started to take it more seriously.