practitioner application identifying red and blue oceans

Identifying Red and Blue Oceans

Your M2 Practitioner Application will require devoted inquiry, assimilation, reflection, and refinement in order to achieve the highest possible score. Specifically, you are to take the scenario listed below, address it in full, and submit your work in accordance with the instructions contained herein. Importantly, this is an independent assignment to be completed by you and you alone. Sharing work with fellow students, supplying advice to your student peers, gaining assistance from outside parties, and similar actions will constitute violations of the academic code of conduct and will carry significant penalties in accordance with University policy.

The Challenge

M2 focuses significant attention on blue ocean strategy, defining both blue and red oceans and explaining the properties associated with each. Specifically, I’d like for you to examine the healthcare offerings of your local marketplace and work to identify red oceans and potential blue oceans. This will require achieving a deep understanding of red and blue oceans, coupled with an intensive understanding of the selected market. Research beyond that supplied by your readings, notably including field research, will be most helpful in this endeavor.

The Submission Requirement

Your submission in its entirety must be between 1500-1800 words. It is to be typed (or pasted) directly into the Moodle posting window, after which you will submit your work. Attachments of any kind are prohibited and will carry no points value. Given the length of the submission, it is advised that students prepare it in a word processing program, and when finalized, copy and paste the text into the Moodle posting window. Moodle can be very finicky and often will distort formatting, so care must be taken in preparing your submission. If problems persist, consider using Windows Notepad or another general text editor, as these are very effective for transferring distortion-free text into the Moodle posting window, after which you can add formatting directly in Moodle.

Your submission must be supported by 4 (minimum) to 10 (maximum) references, with at least 3 being from scholarly academic journals. (If you cannot ascertain whether a journal does or does not qualify as scholarly academic, contact the Noel Library and request assistance.) References may be prepared using the style guide of your choice (e.g., APA, MLA); just be sure to consistently use the selected style.

In presenting your work, identify the title, your name and student ID number, and submission date at the top of your submission and supply the following sections, exactly as they appear below, placing each heading in bold text:

Introduction
Red Oceans
Blue Oceans
Conclusions
References

Additional Resources:

Blue Ocean Strategy

Kim and Mauborgne created the biggest strategic management wave of recent memory in their presentation and description of blue ocean strategy. At the strategic level, as an executive, you really are leaving behind many of the tactical issues of organizational operation, turning those over to lower-level employees who are tasked with “tending the fire” of the organization, while you are going out to “collect more firewood” to burn—–a pretty good analogy! At this level, you must think differently; strategic management requires visionary thought processes that don’t come easy to many but are nevertheless essential for the best outcomes, including marketplace dominance.

Blue ocean strategy has taken the strategic management world by storm and clearly illustrates how commonsense ideas can be tied together with a memorable and meaningful identity to create a model that fosters institutional excellence (and immortalizes the model’s developers). Interestingly, nothing communicated in their work is especially novel. Speaking primarily of academicians, we have long known that markets saturated with competitors offer limited prospects for growth and that emerging markets offer tremendous upside potential. Further, we have well understood virtually every characteristic noted for both red oceans and blue oceans that constitute the totality of Kim and Mauborgne’s work. BUT no one took the opportunity to tie things together as nicely as these authors. It was an opportunity hiding in plain sight and Kim and Mauborgne took advantage of this and scored a major, strategic management homerun. Conduct a simple Google search on Blue Ocean Strategy and look at the results!

As for practitioner implications of Kim and Mauborgne’s work, these are profound, as the notions that I indicated to be very well known, typically were known primarily to the academic audience. The practitioner crowd, certainly before blue ocean strategy, often didn’t possess the most detailed understanding of the concepts and contexts illustrated in Kim and Mauborgne’s work. This perhaps could be said to be the authors’ greatest accomplishment, as now these audiences are enlightened. Academics in the administrative sciences ultimately should be endeavoring to educate and enlighten those in practice and the authors accomplished just that!

In practice, there’s significant value in blue ocean strategy as it communicates factual details about the nature of markets and the implications of various pursuits in these markets. Not long ago, I was communicating to industry colleagues the various realities associated with the growth prospects of the Shreveport-Bossier healthcare marketplace and the blue ocean and red ocean analogies proved to be especially helpful in conveying my associated points. Further, to those with whom I discussed the matters, they retained the analogies, referencing them in later conversations. That’s a great thing to see and one that illustrates that a very sensible model actually works well in practice, thanks to its commonsense underpinnings and memorability.

Now, I could have communicated the exact same thing using the traditional approach, language, etc. of 600-page strategic management textbooks, but that approach would have been forgotten by my audience as quickly as it was communicated. This further illustrates a recurring point that I make in all of my coursesâ€¦â€¦The necessity to select the right tool or tools for the job at hand!

I look forward to viewing your efforts on the topic of blue oceans. Blue oceans are elusive; not every organization is capable of identifying and pursuing them.

The Local Hospital I would like you chose is Willis Knighton. If you see a better choice please feel free to use them.

Local Hospitals:

Willis-Knighton

Christus Health

Oschner LSU Health Urgent Care.