The subject matter of this essay emerged following a search
for an interesting article or two to tag in
del.icio.us as part of my
MSc
in e-Learning. I found myself on
elearningpost, a blog whose
espoused mission is to “provide quality e-learning and
knowledge management content that attracts a diverse
and emerging audience”. Whether I qualify as diverse
or emerging is a matter for debate, but elearningpost
pointed me towards
PebbleRoad a design consultancy
based in Singapore that was founded by
Maish Nichani, the editor of
elearningpost. To cut a long, online story short, I
noticed a
blog
entry about mapping your website redesign
strategy. What caught my eye was reference to a
strategic analysis tool called the “Eliminate, Reduce,
Raise, Create Framework”, developed by Professors
W. Chan Kim and
Renée Mauborgne at
Insead Business
School in France. They’ve written an entire book
about this technique called
Blue Ocean Strategy.
My business partner and I had been searching for a
strategy framework that we could recommend to a client
organisation, which was unsure about its future
strategic direction. And voilà – there it
was.
The question now bothering me is this: was this sheer
serendipity? On one level, I suspect the answer is yes, but
on another level the answer may also be no. Admittedly, I
wasn’t looking for a strategy development tool at the time,
but how did I find it? I suspect web surfing may have
something in common with free association, a technique used
by psychoanalysts. The technique assumes that all memories
are arranged in a single associative network, and that
sooner or later the patient will stumble across the crucial
memory. I hadn’t thought of this concept in relation to
browsing before, but it intrigued me enough to investigate
this hypothesis further.
