Filtering Blue Ocean Ideas: Strategic Overlays

Filtering Blue Ocean Ideas: Strategic Overlays

When developing Blue Ocean Strategies with organisations we find that some of the Blue Ocean ideas generated, while great ideas, do not fit with where the organisation is prepared to go.
For example, due to its exploration of non-customer insights, a bank might identify a great blue ocean opportunity in an otherwise unrelated business services sector (while exploring industry boundaries). But the Board and Management might decide it is not an area they wish to expand into or pursue due to limited resources or other constraints.
So we try to have clients establish a broad set of what we term "BOS Strategic Overlays" - typically seven to ten broad directional overlays that help the BOS team filter out ideas that might not otherwise make the grade. It becomes a larger part of our litmus testing of ideas.
So far we have not felt constrained by these overlays, and in fact they sometimes assist to identify potential rish veins of non-customers, although sometimes the overlays are refined and revised as we push the organisational boundaries.
Have others come across this issue? Any other comments?

		Mario Castaneda Strategy Consultant, United States
	Blue Ocean Ideas That do not Fit an Organization Andrew, I like your model of "Strategic Overlays." In my case, I recently worked with a client in the defense industry ...

		Andrew Nelson CEO, Australia
	Business Matching Opportunities @Mario Castaneda: Mario - that's a great story! As an interesting aside, I've also had some discussions with clients abo...

		C.L. Kappagomtula Professor, Malaysia
	Overlays for Blue Ocean Strategy Andrew's concern is somewhat unfounded, merely for the reason, that any BOS is subject to the condition of either entire...

		Gerardo Arroyo Jimenez Consultant, Mexico
	Castaneda´s Participation @Mario Castaneda: That's a great idea in order to retain not only employees, but also you retain ideas that other compet...

		Darenda Downing, USA
	BOS Strategic Overlays Indeed I have to agree that using overlays, theoretically, may be counterproductive to developing BOS in the purest sens...

		Andrew Nelson CEO, Australia
	Competition Irrelevant to Overlays Just responding to Dr K and D Downing - as Darenda says, putting purely theoretical considerations aside, when working w...

		C.L. Kappagomtula Professor, Malaysia
	Mere Idea Generation by itself is not a Sufficient Cause to Adopt BOS Allow me here to interlink the BOS with idea generation. Before any strategy is put to implementation, it is nece...

		Andrew Nelson CEO, Australia
	Strategic Filters by Any Other Name Dr K, I think we are in agreement on process and concept but maybe disagree on terminology. As you say, appraising init...

		C.L. Kappagomtula Professor, Malaysia
	Organizational Criteria for BOS Strategy Andrew, thanks for initiating an interesting discussion on BOS. Pragmatic evaluation of ideas by SWOT, and in-depth eval...

		Andrew Nelson CEO, Australia
	Confused About Terminology Dr K, I am a little confused. All these evaluations you mention must have criteria set by the organisation, and as you s...

		TAUQEER AHMED MUGHAL Manager, Pakistan
	Blue Ocean Strategy Assumes no Boundaries Blue Ocean Strategy, on the other hand is based on the views that market boundaries and industry structure are not given...

		C.L. Kappagomtula Professor, Malaysia
	Strategic Overlays in BOS The very definition of overlays in management jargon means, managing or trying to avoid the inefficiencies by harmonizat...

		Mohd Norfaizin Bin Hj. Md Salleh AFA (UK) Director, Malaysia
	There is a Case for Filtering Blue Ocean Strategy Whilst applying Blue Ocean Strategy, more often than not organisations tend to get over excited for applying the so call...