Pininfarina: The winner’s circle expands beyond design

To break out of red oceans, companies must dismantle accepted boundaries that define how they compete. Instead of looking within these boundaries, managers need to look systematically across them to create Blue Oceans. To help this process of discovery, Blue Ocean Strategy offers 6 perspectives, such as looking across alternative industries, across strategic groups, across buyer groups, across complimentary product and service offerings, across the functional-emotional appeal of an industry, and even across time (Blue Ocean Strategy, p. 48).

In the past we have discussed how design and fashion ultimately affect lifestyles, and, thus, drive profits. As we have seen, by placing an emphasis on design companies such as Apple, Volkswagen and LG have managed to achieve Blue Ocean Strategy-like success.

Building on the design discussion, today we introduce a recent Fast Company article which highlights Italian car design firm Pininfarina’s “brand-building coup.” It seems that Pininfarina, looking across the six perspectives, may be driving itself towards a Blue Ocean Strategy success by expanding its design expertise to product and process-engineering:

Pininfarina may be fabled for its 77-year history of iconic silhouettes for the likes of Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Jaguar, Lancia, and other first-in-class marques, but it has come to see that sort of high-end work as a powerful marketing tool for its real business--engineering and assembling far more modest vehicles for giants such as Ford and Mitsubishi.

Pininfarina now offers a complete suite of services that can take an automaker's project from a blank sheet of paper to final delivery…. This year the company expects nearly 90% of its $1 billion--plus in revenues to come not from design, but from product-and-process engineering and the production of nearly 70,000 vehicles for Alfa Romeo, Ford, Mitsubishi, and Volvo.

The Perfect Calm Series: Text Message a Meal to a Hungry Kid

One of the most exciting spheres of application for Blue Ocean Strategy is the realm of Social Capitalism. This explosive market space is at the very intersection of successful business and lasting social impact. Traditionally these two spheres were considered separate, but the two can be pursued simultaneously via Blue Ocean Strategy. Periodically, we offer a feature from WorldChanging a repository site for stimulating ventures, ideas and concepts targeting this very intersection.

This week, we select the story: Text Message a Meal to a Hungry Kid.

Do you know of other companies, organizations or business visionaries sailing along the intersection of good business and social good? Share your ideas with the Creating Blue Oceans Community.

Source: http://blueoceanstrategy.typepad.com/

Defying Conventional Wisdom: Enterprising Snail

Blue Ocean Strategy is all about challenging conventional wisdom – questioning taken-for-granted assumptions, and overstepping industry boundaries. It’s a frame of mind of continuously questioning and searching for a different angle and fresh perspective. You can draw inspiration from everyday life, and train your mind to have a discerning view of the world around you. Consider the following bit of comic insight as an example of challenging conventional wisdom.

Enterprising snail

Snapshot from the animal kingdom: As snails grow they abandon their shells and seek bigger empty shells to move into. Going through the process repeatedly, could it ever occur to an enterprising snail that there is a real business opportunity in this? It could collect a selection of various size shells and lease them to fellow snails in exchange for food or protection, thereby creating a primitive barter system.

Source: http://blueoceanstrategy.typepad.com/