Blue Ocean Strategy – Patagonia Environmental Sustainability at the core of business

Patagonia is a popular outdoor clothes brand with many styles and products made in Fair Trade Certified™ factories around the world that promote and sustainable fair labour practices, safe working conditions and environmental responsibility. Company aims to  build highly durable and efficient products that last long and can be easily repaired if required and used for long period rather than throwing away with short term use. Patagonia is a socially conscious brand with a demonstrated their commitment to change the world that is their core belief that caring for our planet is not in conflict with running a successful business. The company is passionate about reducing their manufacturing footprint and is a member of 1% for the planet whereby they commit 1 percent of their annual net sales to grassroots environmental groups. 

Patagonia’s Worn Wear initiative – which was launched in 2013 is composed of 4 ‘R’s.”  Reduce, Repair, Reuse and at the end of a product’s life when all usable value has been exhausted – Recycle. Patagonia invites its conservationist shoppers to buy second hand outdoor wear and trade in their old gear. The experience aligns with Patagonia’s focus on resource conservation and makes customers feel like their personal actions have a positive impact on the world.

Blue Ocean strategy of Patagonia in terms or ERRC grid is eliminating CO2 emissions, waste output, and water usage by extending the life of garments, through proper care and repair, which has in important sustainable impact on the  planet and reduces the need to buy more over time. Raised the consumer awareness towards environmental sustainability and preservation which is one of the most important issue today as climate change is drastically effecting the world. Reduced carbon, waste and water footprints by 20-30 percent   by extending the life of  clothing by nine extra months. Created a new business that not only provides good products t consumers but also reduces the environmental effects that typical manufacturing companies cause to the environment. Patagonia was recognized for its “long track record of sustainable innovation in the industry,” including its ongoing campaign to encourage consumers to repair their worn items instead of tossing them and buying new.

Patagonia value proposition is increasing the buyer utility through the fact that their buying clothes have significantly low impact on environment, reduce the cost and impact on environment and created a new market for environmentally sustainable clothing which consumers are buying and the company is earning good profits. Various initiatives by the company towards environmental sustainability has created an uncontested market space for the company. Company adopted digitization technologies to communicate with consumers there by reducing the usage of printing and paper materials. Patagonia is considered the best socially conscious innovative company and blue ocean strategy adopter.

Blue Ocean Strategy @ IBM – Customer Experience Lab Social Business & Analytics focus

IBM had been aggressively investing in social business initiatives since 2007 when company set up a separate unit for selling social business software under the brand name Connections and has built a significant customer base for this business. The company further boosted these initiatives with the launching of IBM Customer Experience Lab headquartered at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and supported by researchers at IBM's 12 global labs, including Africa, Brazil, California, China, India, Israel, Japan, Switzerland and Texas. The lab merges skills across disciplines, including service science, industries research, mathematics and business optimization, social, mobile, Smarter Commerce, data mining, cloud computing, security and privacy, cognitive computing and systems management. IBM had realized the fact that growing social networks not only impact people’s lives but also significantly impact the business organizations and how they run their operations across the globe. People of all ages are aggressively engaging on various social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. and also actively seeking to use those platforms even in their professional careers within the organizations. More and more employees are bringing in their own devices to the work place and this Bring Your Own device scenario is presenting a big challenge for business organizations. "Customers across the world are using innumerable channels—from social networks to online product review sites—to express their individual experience with products and services. This is fueling an explosion of data and driving a radical shift in how companies must engage with their customers to thrive and stay competitive," Ramesh Gopinath, director of IBM Research India, said in a statement.

Organizations too are significantly impacted by the digitization of media, documents and communications and have to equip their organizations with the suitable technology infrastructure that suits these trends. IBM had been betting big on the social business and analytics as essential for its future growth strategy and accordingly it is offering products like IBM Connections which is their social business platform offering. IBM has introduced a new suite of social, mobile and big data offerings to help businesses gain deeper insight into their customers' needs and desires. IBM Customer Lab since its inception through IBM Research scientists and business consultants have worked with more than 100 global clients and co-created a range of new technologies and services transformed and revolutionized the way companies interact and engage with customers. Digitization and digital customers had forced the organizations assess their brand loyalty initiatives and increase business growth by not looking at customers as mass audiences  but putting more emphasis increasing the value of personalized customer relationships. IBM is considered to be the market leader in the Social business software segment and as companies across the globe realizing the need to integrate the social networking platforms within the organization for both employee and customer engagement By focusing on the social business segment before the competition it is able to create dominant position in the initial stages of uncontested market place and the value innovation proposition it is offering is also is attractive for the clients as the clients are seeing significant return on investment.