What's Up with Blue Ocean Buzz?

Several times in our roundtable conversation, participants referred to Blue Ocean Strategy. “What the heck is that?,” I wondered, not for the first time. I had heard Blue Ocean Strategy cited as a driving factor behind the reorganization of Meeting Professionals International earlier this year. Obviously, it was time for me to get to the bottom of this ocean.

When Googled, the term yield more than 8 million hits. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant, by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, was published by Harvard Business School Press last year and has since become an international best seller — and a new guiding light for seemingly everyone from football coaches to Nintendo game makers.

The gist of the book's premise: There are a lot of red oceans out there. These are the bloody waters where competitors fight it out for market share. As the waters get more crowded, chances for growth and profit are reduced. Blue oceans, on the other hand, are new, untapped market spaces. Organizations will always need to be able to fight it out in the red seas, but if they are to seize new profit and growth opportunities, they've got to be able to find/create blue ocean space.

The trouble is red-ocean strategy has predominated in the business world for decades, say business pundits, so there aren't a lot of practical guidelines for finding or creating blue ocean space and for managing the associated risks. That is, until Blue Ocean Strategy. The authors hit blue waters when they published this book.
— Regina McGee

2006 Roundtable Participants

A. Renée Battle, CMP

Director, Meetings and Conventions,
American Public Transportation Association
Washington, D.C.

Joan Eisenstodt

Chief Strategist,
Eisenstodt Associates, LLC
Washington, D.C.

Jonathan Howe, Esq.

Founding Partner and President,
Howe & Hutton Ltd.
Chicago, Ill.

Amy L. Phillips

Director, Meetings and Industry Relations,
American Academy of Physician Assistants
Alexandria, Va.

Dale Karen Silverman, CAE, SPHR

Executive Vice President,
Association of Woodworking & Furnishings Suppliers
Commerce, Calif.

Victoria Smith

Director, Conference Development,
American Council of Life Insurers
Washington, D.C.

Lauren Kramer-Whelan, CMP

Director of Meetings,
American Academy of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery Foundation
Alexandria, Va.

Brad Weaber, CMP

Executive Vice President & Chief Customer Officer,
Experient Inc. (formerly Conferon)
Arlington, Va.

Be a Big-Picture Planner

Regina McGee: There's been so much rhetoric in recent years about how meeting planners need to be strategic players. Is there really a strategic role for planners, or is meeting planning fundamentally about logistics?

[Chorus of “No's!” from around the room]

Lauren Kramer-Whelan: I do think there is strategic role to play. I am moving into a development role and that's a logical way to go and a very strategic role. It depends on how you play it.

Amy Phillips: A planner who skips a board meeting is totally behind on the issues. You have to have a seat at that table.

A. Renée Battle: When I go to a board meeting the board is asking me questions like what to do about professional development.…They are not asking me to serve them coffee.

Jonathan Howe: Not to bash the CMP exam, but that's all about counting coffee cups and knowing formulas. We need to teach strategic thinking.

Dale Silverman: I think it's very interesting that people who are responsible for so much revenue generation often aren't given respect within the association.

Joan Eisenstodt: The association world tends to be very stuck.…People get too boxed in by labels. Really, everyone should have a strategic role, everyone should be looking at the bigger picture.

Back to October 2006 Issue