At a recent Women for Economic and Leadership Development gathering in Columbus, I was asked to lead a presentation on Finding Your Blue Ocean Strategy.
It was based on a book that had a seismic impact on my business, which I read 10 years ago, “Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant.”
According to authors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, the definition of a blue ocean strategy is to “create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant.”
The book cites a remarkable example illustrated by Cirque du Soleil’s incredibly successful path to success.
Cirque du Soleil came to the market with a venue that combines the artistic richness of theater, acrobatics and circus 20 years ago. It created a new audience of spectators who were willing to pay several times the admission of a traditional circus to see their shows.
As a result, Cirque du Soleil generated a level of revenues in less than 20 years that took Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey more than 100 years to achieve.
Finding my own way
In my own life, I had entered the staffing industry — an industry with thousands of national and global competitors.
After understanding the need to create new market space, rather than compete with competitors, I deliberately branded our staffing company as a social enterprise that creates job opportunities for people with employment challenges, such as a disabled veterans, veterans, military spouses and people with disabilities.
The other discriminator that was incredibly relevant is that we are woman-owned — a highly-valued distinction among Fortune 1,000 companies, government agencies and government contractors that are held to compliance drivers to meet their women-owned business spending requirements.
Ten years after reading “Blue Ocean Strategy,” we’ve launched insurance and IT apprenticeship models. The strategy links education and job experience in order to provide the federal and insurance verticals with a workforce that has the experience and certifications to fill the unmet need of those verticals.
It is another path our company is taking inspired by the book.
You may be already there
For the WELD event, I was challenged with presenting blue ocean strategies to a mixed audience of women executives, managers and business owners.
I asked the audience to define what sets them apart in how they do their jobs and/or how they run their businesses. The variety of responses suggested that many women were creating these strategies both as leaders and business owners.
One respondent, an owner of a global IT firm, said her blue ocean strategy was this: “In a commodity IT industry, we lead with our mission of creating education and job opportunities for women interested in IT.”
Another participant expressed her blue ocean strategy as “seeing the disparate dots and connecting people with ideas and opportunities.”
Don’t underestimate the importance of your blue ocean strategy as a woman business owner and executive. It could have a seismic impact on you, too.
Merry Korn is the President and CEO of Pearl Interactive Network Inc., a staffing, sourcing and apprenticeship services company that places a hiring priority on a niche workforce of disabled veterans, veterans and people with disabilities.
