Flying high with Blue Ocean Strategy

Flying high with Blue Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy: hallenging an industry’s conventional wisdom about which buyer group to target can lead to the discovery of new blue oceans. By looking across buyer groups, companies can gain new insights into how to redesign their value curves to focus on a previously overlooked set of buyers (Blue Ocean Strategy, p. 61).

In a recent appearance on Talk Asia, Tony Fernandez, CEO of Air Asia, discusses how he’s defying conventional wisdom: In partnership with Richard Branson, Fernandez is basing Air Asia’s long haul flight model on one used successfully by short-haul, budget airlines such as Southwest and EasyJet. This move allows Air Asia to serve previously overlooked customer segments, including first-time flyers.

I think airlines have been very much parrots. They'll just follow what everyone else is doing. Why change a model that they're happy in? And it takes someone like myself or Richard Branson who comes from outside the industry to say, hey, let's try something new. Why didn't anyone do iPod? So innovation... Business is all about innovation and this blue ocean strategy.