The Blue Ocean Strategy

The blue ocean strategy is one that seeks to promote a market for a product that has little or no competition. It seeks to encourage businesses to undertake those operations where there is little competition or create new markets that have yet to be explored by other businesses. Under such circumstances, it becomes possible for the business not to operate under immense pressure, especially pressure concerning pricing and cost of operations because in the end, they will make up for any deficiency. The blue ocean strategy is one that is quite critical in the modern world because it encourages to seek new niches in which they can be able to advance themselves in such a way that makes them dominant within the specific market. The discovery of new markets enables organizations to make sure that they adapt to the new environment and gain the customers that they need in order to attain as much profit as possible. Furthermore, it is necessary to ensure that there is the promotion of means through which to improve their product rather than focusing on rivals. Without rivals in the market, it is likely that the major focus of the organization would be to develop new products to fit into its niche instead of taking on competition that might eventually gain a lead and perhaps push the organization out of business.

The blue ocean strategy can be applied in a diversity of businesses and sectors. Because of the relative flexibility that it provides businesses, it is not limited to only one business and can instead be applied to a diversity of areas where it becomes possible to promote the interests of the organization involved. This strategy is essential because in the current highly competitive world, it is common for organization to exist in a state of constant competition. Therefore, the blue ocean strategy encourages organizations to seek out markets that do not have a lot of competition of rivals and cultivate these markets to provide a considerable advantage to the organization involved. Through the use of this strategy, it becomes possible to make sure that there is the creation of a system where there is the development of new products and services which can be sold to consumers. Furthermore, the organization has the advantage of being able to develop effective strategies aimed at bringing about the development of new products that can attract consumers. The latter process is essential in bringing about the achievement of market dominance because with few or no rivals, the organization involved can take on the lead in product development that will later only be imitated by rivals once they enter the market. A consequence is that the consumers are more likely to place their trust in the organization’s products because it was the first one to enter the market and it has had the time to research and develop new innovations that cannot be easily beaten by new entrants.

The current market environment is one that involves organizations operating under intense pressure to gain a market share while at the same time competing against their rivals. This environment often creates intense pressure for the organization, especially when it comes to pricing. When an organization comes under such pressure in pricing because of the intense competition with its rivals, it is most likely that its operations also come under threat. This is especially considering that the organization is operating within a highly saturated market where it is necessary to make sure that there is the promotion of the business interests within a difficult environment. This type of market, because of the high saturation that it has, is known as a red ocean, and it is the direct opposite of the blue ocean because while in the former, the organization is often at constant risk of having its operations interrupted, in the latter, the market is still quite new and there are numerous opportunities to be pursued. The blue ocean strategy seeks to encourage organizations to develop new markets and products which they can be better able to advance with as little competition as possible thus opening themselves up to innovation and research that can help establish and strengthen their position within the market. It also allows the organization involved to promote the achievement of a massive market share when compared to a red ocean.

The blue ocean strategy comes about because of the limited room to grow that organizations encounter within the red ocean. It encourages organizations to look for avenues through which they can achieve the goal of gaining an uncontested market share. This process is highly significant because it involves a situation where the organization has to develop a new market on its own in such a way that it not only has dominance over the product, but also the pricing. Under such circumstances, it becomes possible to make sure that there is the promotion of a scenario where because of its market dominance, the organization has the ability to conduct its operations with as little pressure as possible as long as its major focus is to achieve success while at the same time making a profit. The lack of intense competition within the blue ocean is highly critical to the growth of the organization to such an extent that it becomes possible to bring about high levels of performance. It also ensures that the organization focuses more on the advancement of the quality of its products without worrying about the pricing since because it is dominant in the market, it has the advantage of being able to set the trend that its rivals are most likely to follow once they gain entry. Therefore, by the time that other firms gain entry into the market, the organization involved will have achieved dominance and cannot be easily dislodged from its position.

The Onset of the Yugoslav War of 1991

The war in Yugoslavia took place starting in the early 1990s between the Yugoslav government in Belgrade and the various constituent states within this nation which wanted to gain their independence. The Yugoslav government was determined to ensure that these states did not break away from its authority and gain independence and if it came to these states becoming independent, then the government wanted to keep as many swaths of their territory under its control as possible. The constituent states of Yugoslavia on the other hand were determined to ensure that they pursued their own nationalist agenda through the acquisition of complete independence from Belgrade. Many of the individuals in these states felt that they were marginalized in the Serb dominated Yugoslavia and wanted to ensure that their own interests were protected and to achieve this, they all wished to have their own independence. The war which developed as a result, especially after the coming to power of Slobodan Milosevic as the Yugoslav president, was extremely complex with many of those involved included the members of various ethnic groups either making alliances or fighting against each other to ensure that they achieved their aims and objectives, however obscure they were. When these wars finally came to an end in the late 1990s, they left the successor states of Yugoslavia in dire economic hardships from which it took them years to recover. There is wide agreement, however, that the cause of the Yugoslav war was as a result of the development of Serbian nationalism in a state which was ethnically diverse hence the wars of self-determination that resulted.

One would suggest that it was the Serbian religious mythology, extreme nationalism, and racist theories which contributed to the occurrence of the war in Yugoslavia. The events which led to this genocide were put into motion with the death of the Yugoslav president Josip Tito in 1980 who had managed to hold the Yugoslav federation together with an iron grip which ensured that there were no ethnic conflicts. After his death, however, the Croatian and Bosnian nationalists started to agitate for their independence and as a response, the Yugoslav government in Belgrade, chose to take a hostile stance against these nationalists. The Serbians were the dominant people within the Yugoslav federation and if this state were to collapse, then they would be the biggest losers since their influence over the other ethnic groups in the federation. After Slobodan Milosevic became the Serb leader and by default the leader of the Yugoslav federation in 1987 after a difficult struggle against more powerful member of his party, he encouraged Serb nationalism not only in Serbia but also in the other states in which large Serb communities lived (Vladisavljevic 183). When Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 these three states came to be recognized at the international level and this did not sit well with the government in Belgrade. In the same year as these states declared their independence, there followed fierce fighting between the mainly Serb Yugoslavian army and Croatia in Belgrade’s attempt to hang on to some of the territories in Croatia and when this was not successful, it turned its attention to territory in Bosnia. A sign of the escalation of war took place in 1992 when the Serb army started shelling the National Library of Bosnia-Herzegovina in Sarajevo and in the process, over a million books, more than a hundred thousand manuscripts and rare books, and centuries of historical records were destroyed. Many historians who have studied this period consider this move to have been a systematic campaign of cultural eradication. In one of the events that took place during the war, Serb troops and paramilitary units descended on the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and began shelling it besieging civilians within it.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the town which consisted of French and Dutch soldiers, could do little to help the civilian population and had to agree to a vague promise by the Serb commanders, that everyone would be allowed to cross out of Serb territory but only after the screening of the men so that ‘war criminals’ could be detected. This promise proved to be false as witnessed when the men were separated from the women and children and the latter were forced into trucks and buses and deported. The men on the other hand were all killed and this process of large scale murder and deportation continued for the next four days. Thousands of Muslim civilians were killed during the Bosnian genocide and thousands more died from starvation and a lack of medical care and in addition to this, tens of thousands of Muslim women were raped. It is a fact that rape happens wherever insecurity and fear are joined with power and immunity from prosecution in a sexist social system and it can further be said that such instances tend to take place when there is a system of dominance and subjugation that allows the occurrence of various violent crimes which are perpetrated as a way of maintaining the status quo. This is exactly what happened during the Yugoslav wars because the Serb political establishment which was dominant within the federation did all that it could to ensure that its dominance of this union was maintained and that the other ethnic groups remained marginalized (Gagnon 118).

Some scholars have argued that the Yugoslav war was inevitable and that at best, it has been stated that many Serbs, due to past victimization and trauma had a psychological predisposition to fear for their safety during the period of political and social uncertainty that emerged after the breakup of Yugoslavia. There are some, however, who disagree with this assessment because the oppressors of the Serbs in the past had been Croats and the fact that the Serb establishment not only fought against the latter but also against other ethnic groups within. Instead, it can be said that the Yugoslav war took place more or less a preemptive strike against the potential nationalist forces that the Serbs expected to emerge in the largely multi-ethnic states that had emerged from Yugoslavia. One would state that the Yugoslav war can be viewed as having been senseless because the Serb military aggression was performed in the name of extremist nationalist mythos but without the foundation of even a nation state (Gagnon 119). The belief by the Serbian nationalist leaders of there being a Greater Serbia was based on pure fantasy and this idea does not seem to have had any basis in reality. It is a possibility that the various Serb nationalist leaders, who were behind the start of the war, did not have any real intentions of ever unifying their respective territories after the war into a single.

In conclusion, The Yugoslav war had numerous consequences some of which were immediate and others which took longer to emerge. Some of the more immediate consequences were: the loss of family members who were killed by the armies on both sides of the war as well as the forced deportation that took place among the members of the various ethnic groups in the conflict, for example, Croatians from Serb areas and Serbs from Croatian areas. This conflict ended up being one of the worst wars in modern history because it led to the deaths of many individuals as well as the disruption of the lives of those who were left behind. However, while this conflict proved to be disastrous, it enabled many of the ethnic groups within Yugoslavia to realize their sense of self-determination and this culminated in the securing of their independence.

A Brief History of Starbucks

Starbucks is a business which was established by three friends in 1971 and has grown to become the largest business of its kind on the planet. It is one of the most recognizable brands globally and this has contributed significantly to its success in the market as well as facilitating its swift expansion all over the world. This company is can be found in about sixty two countries and has more than 20,000 stores all over the world, and in fact, in most of the developed world, it is one of the most recognizable brands and this has made it extremely popular with the consumers in these countries. Starbucks is a company which has throughout its history, displayed a high capacity for being able to manage the workforce within it, and the competent management of its staff in its different stores has enabled the company to become highly successful, as those who work for it are motivated by its management ability (Fitzgerald, 2013, p.2). The wide range of coffee and other products which this company has put at it customers’ disposal means that it has to hire and maintain a large workforce in order to be able to function effectively. Unlike other companies in the same industry, Starbucks tends to be very careful and selective with the management of its staff because of the need to continuously make a profit. As a result of the competence that has been shown when dealing with its multi-cultural workforce, and also being able to venture into countries which speak different languages, Starbucks has come to achieve success on the international scene where other companies take years to achieve the same.

The use of technological innovations have been found to be very important aspects when running a company such as Starbucks because it is these innovations which have enabled this company to get customers and to make them remain loyal for many decades. It was realized early by the Starbucks management that it has to be innovative in order to survive the very competitive market that is predominant in the world today. It has been found that the key to Starbucks’ worldwide success is that people everywhere know what to expect when they go to the stores that it owns but this does not mean that this company has made any resistance to any changes or that it has refused to adapt when local customs require flexibility (Day, G., & Moorman, 2013, p.18). In addition, it is a fact that this company has come to establish internal social networks to give its employees the opportunity to connect with the management and to support each other. This network has come to provide a space for the company’s stores to share ideas, best practices, as well as customer stories and there is also a forum section that is currently being used to encourage dialogue between Starbucks’ management and its employees as well as discussions between employees from the different stores within the chain. The use of such technology has been proven to be successful in getting the employees more involved with both the company’s management as well as fellow employees.

The introduction of new technology to aid its employees in their work is one of the most important policies that Starbucks has taken in hand. While in many other companies in the market it has been often been found that resistance to change is often related to the introduction of new technology in place of the old ones which many employees are used to, this has not been the case with Starbucks. In fact, the opposite is true because the introduction of new technology at Starbucks has become immensely attractive to the younger generation of workers, who are often quick to adjust to its use, and the older employees have surprisingly not been left out since they have embraced the new technology without offering any resistance to its use, as would have been expected. In order to encourage its employees have come to adapt to the new technological changes within their stores, the management of Starbucks organizes training in the use of the new technology annually for those who do not know how to use it. As the employees come to learn how to use this technology, and they find how much easier it is to use in place of the older system, the employees who have undergone training come to accept it as a fundamental part of their working environment (Crompton, 2013, p.20). With this acceptance the desired technological changes in the company tends to be done swiftly, ensuring that the employees retain their high capacity of production and efficiency. The efficient use of technology at Starbucks has come to enable its employees to feel well accommodated at work and this has created an environment where they are able to work without any need for close supervision, hence enhancing their creativity. The fact that the employees of this company are in a good working environment helps in the increase of their productivity and this can be used as a sign of its global success

One of the ideals of a company that works within a cross-cultural environment such as Starbucks is the empowerment of its customers and one of the ways to achieve this has been giving them forums to air their views concerning what they feel about the different products that are given by this company. The best strategy that Starbucks can adopt is ensuring that it places a lot of value in the consumers of its products and this can be achieved through the development of an empowerment program which ensures that the pool of its customers is maintained through the adoption of marketing strategies that appeal to their vanity (Simon 2008, p.193). Starbucks should work towards ensuring that its marketing staff have sufficient knowledge concerning how the market works and what the public wishes to consume so that they do not take a lot of time to make adjustments to marketing strategies. It can be said that the experience of its customers, after consuming its products, will work in the company’s favor when conducting its activities and it is very likely that Starbucks, through its efficient marketing strategy will be able to get to a global audience faster than rival companies.

It is necessary for Starbucks to work towards the acquisition of enough competent managers to manage its far-flung stores since this is one of the reasons why many companies in the world today have become successful and have been able to retain their success. Starbucks will continue to need competent managers because it is through the employing of such managers that the company will be able to ensure that it does not face any damaging issues because of the mismanagement of any of its stores. Despite the fact that previously it was a subject which was not taken based on merit, the selection of the most competent managers at Starbucks should now become a massive undertaking (Venkatraman, 2008, p.1010). This will increase the need for the company to have people of competence to working in its stores, since not doing so would likely bring about its failure. In addition, the store managers at Starbucks should adopt a strategy that is so well done it touches the emotions of its customers, both old and new so that as long as more people continue to appreciate and enjoy this company’s products, which come from the use of technology by its employees, then it is more likely than not that this company will continue to be a success story all over the world.