Country’s first Blue Ocean Strategy Centre launched

Acclaimed filmmaker Shekhar Kapur endorsed the first Blue Ocean Strategy Research Centre in the country, which launched in the city on Saturday, by saying that he was a practitioner of the strategy that is about moving away from traditional approaches of tackling competition and creating market.

“I live it,” he said, about how he uses the strategy in his filmmaking, he quipped, “I put myself in absolute chaos and then pray hard.”

Speaking at the launch, Kapur simplified the relevance of the strategy citing quantum physics. “You cannot judge the universe because then you pause it and that would change everything because the universe is constantly evolving.”

The market is similar, he said, emphasising how traditional approaches aren’t enough to tackle the dynamics of a rapidly changing market. Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS) is about making competition irrelevant by creating new market spaces through simultaneous achievement of differentiation and low cost.

Value innovation is the key to the strategy. Its principles help to reconstruct market boundaries, focus on the big picture – to reach beyond existing demand, to get the strategic sequence right and overcome organisational hurdles to build execution into strategy through education, research and consultancy. This strategy was propounded by W Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne of INSEAD, France in 2005 through their book, Blue Ocean Strategy.

The research centre launched by the TA Pai Management Institute (TAPMI) would train Indian corporates, students and faculty to strategise and develop competition-free market system. It would undertake empirical and case study research to build a strong body of knowledge in the area of BOS in India. Dr Robert Bong, Vice Chancellor and Chief Executive of UCSI University,
explained that the importance of this centre is to make
sure that in India the strategy is focussed upon in a structured way.

Dr Bong said working with the BOSRC, Malaysia, showed him that the strategy is pervasive. “The Malaysian government has adopted it as a strategic programme to transform governance,” he said. TAPMI has reoriented their faculty to adopt BOS and be equipped to train students and collaborate with practitioners in the industry.
Dr Saji Gopinath, Director of TAPMI, said that they plan to conduct a nation-wide faculty reorientation programme. “We believe it will help the Indian industry, student community and faculty immensely as we are living in an era where market dynamics are changing rapidly and continuously.”

He said the research centre is a move by TAPMI towards constant innovation. When asked if BOS would create equal opportunities, Shekar Kapur said that India is still struggling to come out of its feudal structure in many ways, and definitions like masses and classes where just differentiations set as people tend to act as prohibitors. “Instead we have to strive to become facilitators. We lean towards definitions and then we become slaves to definitions,” he said. “We have to cut ourselves off from the
relevancy of a point in future and focus on acting now,”
he added.