Summary of the articles: Blue Ocean Strategy Summary Marketing Myopia Theodore Levitt Marketing Success through Differentiation

of Anything: Theodore Levitt The Discipline of Innovation Peter F. Drucker

Prepared for: Dr. Syed Ferhat Anwar Professor Institute of Business Administration University of Dhaka Course Instructor: Marketing Management

Prepared by: Tahseen Zulfiquar, ZR 88 BBA 18th Batch

Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka April 01, 2012

The term Red Ocean stands for all the industries that are present in todays market space. On the contrary, Blue Oceans represents all the industries which are not in existence as of today. In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known. In blue oceans, marketers try to create demand rather than fighting over it. In a Red Ocean, the main aim of the companies is to outperform their rivals to grab a larger share of the consumers demand. Since the market space is crowded, it is really hard to make profit or growth. Here products turn into commodities or niche, and cutthroat competition turns the ocean bloody. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue Ocean is an analogy to describe the wider, deeper potential of market space that is not yet explored. Anything one does in a blue ocean makes him the pioneer. Blue Ocean is the tapping of the untapped market. Not necessarily it has to be through invention or innovation. It is about thinking out of the box. Talking about innovation, Peter F. Drucker has shown his mastery in subtlety that innovation is real work, and along with inspiration, innovation should and can be managed like any other corporate function. Often unlike other business activities, innovation is the work of knowing rather than doing. According to Drucker, most innovative business ideas come from methodically analyzing seven areas of opportunity: Unexpected occurrences, incongruities, process needs, industries and market changes, demographic changes, changes in perception and new knowledge. It is the duty of astute managers to maintain a clear focus on all seven. Once someone has identified an attractive opportunity, he still needs a leap of imagination to arrive at the right response Drucker calls it functional inspiration. Hence an industry is a customer-satisfying process, not a goods-producing process. Ultimately a business has to think of the three most important Ps: planet, people and profit. It is the marketing myopia that binds marketers to focus only on the last part only to suffer in the long run. Companies stop growing because of a failure in management, not because the market is saturated but because of MYOPIA. The term denotes a short-sighted and inward looking approach to marketing that focuses on the needs of the company instead of defining the company and its products in terms of the customers' needs and wants. It results in the failure to see and adjust to the rapid changes in their markets. And for the finale, it is really important for a marketer to differentiate his/her product from every other commodities in the market. Differentiate or Die must be the mantra of the new age marketers. Because it is vital for a product to be standalone in the consumers eyes. It is the marketers job to present his/her product to the consumer/customer in such a way so that it is distinguishable among several other products. Only then the marketers product will survive in the market and will let the marketer meet the consumers demands for a long period of time.