Gabor George Burt is an internationally recognized expert on strategy, innovation, creativity and business development. A leading proponent of Value Innovation and Blue Ocean Strategy for over a decade, Gabor has also gained recognition as a thought-leader on the creative perspective of Defying Conventional Wisdom. Taken together, his spheres of expertise are highly relevant in helping organizations to re-think their business and to carve out successful growth strategies.

An engaging presenter, Gabor aims to provoke his audiences to overstep perceived limitations and mental boundaries that limit the growth of their business. Gabor is the chief architect and original host of the Immersive Executive Experience series, an exclusive experiential learning forum for business and cultural leaders. He is actively involved in shaping strategy with a diverse group of international clients spanning from top multinationals to successful start-ups, as well as through his own initiatives.

Gabor has been featured in the book 'Radical Action for Radical Times' and his website was selected as one of the top online resources on innovation. His forthcoming book 'SLINGSHOT' presents an entertaining and practical framework on re-engaging our childhood creativity for success in business and adulthood, while simultaneously establishing the foundation for a first of its kind, cross-disciplinary discussion platform.

In addition to a BA degree in psychology from Amherst College, Gabor holds an MBA degree from INSEAD in France.

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant (Value Innovation).

Keynote presentations (60-75 min.)

Provide an entertaining, stimulating overview of Blue Ocean Strategy and Value Innovation, using a combination of colorful examples, provocative anecdotes, questions and stories. The presentation topics include a justification for the existence of continuous Blue Oceans, the need for a new strategic mindset in today's business environment, the commonalities in all Blue Ocean companies, the Value Innovation Methodology (Value Curves, Six Path and Four Actions Frameworks, Tiers of Non-Customers, Strategic Canvas), results of BOS in action, and what it takes to become a BOS company.

Half-day engagements consist of 90 min. presentation (same as above but a bit more detail) plus a 90 min. interactive exercise, in which participants are broken into small teams and get to experience the application of BOS to a fun, meaningful scenario. At the end of the exercise groups present their results, followed by an overall wrap-up.

2-day workshop, which naturally follow either of the previous two, allow a company to apply BOS directly to its own strategic position. This is an intensive session, typically attended by the top management team of a company or business unit. It's goal is to come up with the BOS blueprint for the company.

Blue Ocean Strategy
1-day Top Executive Workshop

Why all the fuss surrounding Blue Ocean Strategy? What makes it such a powerful concept? How can it enable your business to breakaway from cutthroat (red ocean) competition and create uncontested (blue ocean) market space?

The first part of this accelerated session is an interactive presentation that uncovers the core essence of Blue Ocean Strategy. Through a series of revealing examples, the intuitive principles and visual mapping tools of Blue Ocean Strategy are demonstrated. Participants absorb the framework to begin mapping their own strategy canvases and the inspiration to seek out blue ocean market spaces.

For the hands-on segments that follow, participants are broken into small teams and get to experience the application of BOS to their own strategic issues (specific topics determined in advance with client, based on responses to preliminary questions). Each team will go through the BOS visual mapping process to examine current strategic positioning vis-à-vis the most relevant competitors and then apply its ideation tools to uncover and express ideas that simultaneously target high differentiation AND lower costs. It is this dual pursuit (which we call 'Value Innovation') that allows companies to discover uncontested market space.

In between team discussions/exercises, participants reassemble to review and critique each others' results. During the entire session, the Blue Ocean Strategy facilitator takes on the role of an objective outsider, who continuously provokes and challenges participants to step out of their habitual ways of thinking. His role is critical in getting participants to distill the complicated strategic landscape into its most simple, core elements. The facilitator will push participants to lock in on such questions as:

• What are the six most important competition criteria of your business today and how can you challenge them?
• How can you become market driving (creating demand) rather than market driven (responding to demand)?
• Can you identify sources of new value to customers, where you actually takeaway or eliminate dimensions of your current offering?
• To what extent are you currently in the blue ocean, or in the red ocean?

Expected outcome of the workshop:

• Portfolio of strategic ideas and directives generated - easily comparable via the visual mapping of strategy canvases
• Convergence of ideas into common strategic intent ? via the selection of the most compelling strategy canvas
• Strong foundation for participants on the concept and application of Blue Ocean Strategy, for continued use in aligning and guiding strategy formation within the company

Read Gabor George Burt's blog on business.

Read article, Nintendo's Blue Ocean Unaffected by Global Crisis

Read this article on BOS