Question

Develop a strategy for your selected company based on the following 6 business functions to shift from red ocean to a Blue Ocean strategy .

HR, Sales, Operation, Accounting, Finance, Marketing .

You can choose any company.

Answer 1

• Blue ocean strategy in HR

The “Blue Ocean Strategy” is a concept that has been around for more than a decade. The book was first published in 2004 by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne and have since sold more than 3.6 million copies globally.

Blue Ocean Strategy is a business strategy that involves looking beyond the norm of doing business. Businesses are advised to look away from the competition, and find a “blue ocean”. By creating your business in an uncontested market space, it allows you to create a new demand in the new market. This is usually done by launching new products or services, making the existing competition irrelevant and the organisation can grow uncontested, at least in the beginning.

A good example is the Cirque du Soleil circus show. Instead of the usual performing animals, the show borrowed ideas from Broadway, combining theatrical, musical and acrobatic elements. By creating a show in an uncontested market space, Cirque du Soleil managed to reinvent the circus industry and be successful in it.

Ideally, every organisation wants to be in the blue ocean but most of us are currently in the “red ocean”. The red ocean is quite the opposite of the blue ocean. It is where the industry and market are well-defined, saturated with tough competition between organisations and a standard way of doing business.

Having said that, being in the red ocean is not always a bad thing. Red oceans tend to be more predictable (done and tested) and you know for certain what your customers/consumers want, compared to the unchartered waters of the blue ocean.

Are Blue Ocean Strategies relevant to the HR world today?

So, are these strategies still relevant today, particularly for HR? The answer is definitely yes! This is because organisations will move between both red and blue oceans over time. This is further fuelled by the introduction of new technology. Technology constantly changes the way we work, therefore it is essential for organisations to keep generating competitive strategies within the red ocean. Businesses need to innovate themselves and go beyond their comfort zone to have that blue ocean shift.

Applying Blue Ocean Strategies to HR

Forward-thinking HR professionals are always actively looking for strategic moves to compete in finding top talents. Some of the blue ocean strategies can be adopted here:

1. Start reaching out to candidates out of your usual hiring circle

Stop fishing at the same spot in the ocean as your competitors. Hiring talent from the same education-background and industry experience will not only caused you to face stiff competition among your competitors but could also lead to a stagnant workforce due to the fact that hiring the same type of people tend to produce the same results. Instead, consider hiring talents outside your industry. This drives innovation, as a top talent from a different industry brings in fresh approaches and can potentially diversify the worldview of your workforce.

2. Don’t try to outperform the competition

While it is important for you to analyse the competition and identify their weaknesses, if you are constantly watching and benchmarking yourself with the competition, then you are nowhere near in finding your blue ocean. You want to be unique and special, not looking more like your competitors. Start reconstructing your employer brand and identify what makes your brand standout. Look for ways to differentiate yourself from the competition by creating a value that can truly relate to your candidates and employees; try to look at things through their lens to find out what is important to them.

3. Adopt the latest technology

HR is notoriously known to be rather slow in adapting to new technology and a significant proportion continues to rely on manual processes. Finding a blue ocean means not allowing yourself to be bound by work routine and standard operations but look for ways in creating new ways. Differentiation and low cost strategy can be put in place by leveraging on new technologies. Remember, you want to secure those talents even before they start applying and one of the fastest way in doing so is to fully utilise the various forms of new technological advances out there.

To stay ahead in today’s modern workplace, HR needs to embrace and constantly promote innovation. This include finding ways to create better candidate experience and improve on employee engagement. It is worth noting that this cycle of change is never-ending.

As organisations compete fiercely within a red ocean, eventually one of them will emerge as a pioneer. The pioneer will then introduce new offerings, creating a new blue ocean and becoming a leader in innovation. This successful trail-blazing organisation will slowly attract competition, until one day the market becomes yet again, another red ocean.