Ramkumar R S-
You might have heard about “boiling the ocean strategy” which means trying to do the impossible and burning a lot of money in that process.
You might have also read about “Blue Ocean Strategy” which talks about creating your own game and playbook in a new area, instead of fighting in the blood bath (Red Ocean) that is happening elsewhere.
The world of money and finance is such a big ocean. To even say that it can be disrupted, is like…what?? howw?? and whyyy? (Disclaimer : This article is not about Crypto or Web3)
Disruption we understand. What is Churning?
So before I proceed further, let me first explain why I used the phrase “churning the ocean” instead of “boiling the ocean”?
You might have read my earlier articles published by Yourstory. Lets reconnect to some of them here as they talk about attitude, nonlinear time and perseverance, all very important attributes to the churning process.
In Zen and the Art of Entrepreneurship, I used the analogy of “Art” vs “Science”. How “the inner place” from which you operate – whether you are a fighter pilot in a dog-fight combat, a sculptor finishing up your masterpiece or a cook making yourself a break-fast – is as important as the action. And in that process we also saw how time plays such a non-linear role. A sculptor finishing up his piece, will probably take days and weeks before he is done, even though the first 90% of the statue was done in a jiffy. On the other hand, a pilot spends a lot of time in training and practice but while in combat, a split-second delay could make a difference of life and death.
In Kuthalingam model of marketing, we saw how one could leverage the inertia of the customer (and the market) to our advantage, by playing the long nurturing game, focused on profit share instead of market share, while the rest of the competitors are sitting in Ferraris, stepping on their gas pedals and navigating city traffic.
In Labor of love… I ended with a poem, whose last lines were:
Break their walls, my Lord by all means
But why are you hitting me on my head?
The Lord said,
Bear with me. You are my Chisel.
Now in this article, I am going to introduce one more aspect of entrepreneurship, that is very important for churning.
Stoic
If you want to create something sustainable and valuable for the society, if you want to create a large impact and leave a legacy, you need a stoic attitude towards your mission.
Stoic is often defined by its opposites: excitable. agitated. frantic. jittery.
Stoic folds within itself, being centered, patience, perseverance and a deep appreciation of non-linear time.
A Stoic sees the world clearly…but also sees clearly what the world can be. And they are brave, and strategic enough, to help bring it into reality.
A Stoic is not devoid of emotions. To the contrary, they are actually full of passion and conviction and are driven by a future calling. It is just that they operate on a different, slower time scale than the average person. And they are not easily perturbed. And they have a unique knack of demodulating and extracting ultra low frequency data and insights from high-frequency signals all around them.
The strategic part of the stoicness does not come from knowledge. Nor does it come from experience. It comes from being open to cross pollination of ideas and values across domains – from engineering and technology to marketing and management; from philosophy, literature and sociology to the arts like music and dance.
If stoic is about who you are, churning is about what you do.
Churning
Churning butter milk (Yogurt) produces butter. But the effort-to-result graph during the initial stages is not very attractive. Actually nothing much happens. And you keep churning. You can’t stop. If you stop for a while and re-start, you would lose all the invisible gains you have made.
You keep churning till you reach a threshold. Even after the threshold, the output is not linear. First you see glimpses of it. It starts slowly. And then suddenly there is a phase shift. And then a lot of butter. For most entrepreneurs, the early part of their journey flows exactly like this.
In Indian mythology, continuous churning of the ocean by the Gods (a great collaborative effort involving thousands of devas), produced Amrut, the boon of immortality. In evolutionary science, continuous churning of the ocean over millions of years, produced life. Life that made itself immortal, by reproduction and evolution; towards more and more sophisticated forms.
So “stoic strategic churning” is a deadly combination. The disruption and impact that you can create is worth the long process. I would even say that it is the only way to create transformative change at a social or planet scale.
But yes, You may choose a small pot with a rope and a wooden paddle. Or a Big centrifuge on an industrial scale.
But can you churn the entire ocean? (Like in business terms – an entire sector?). Yes, you can. Provided you have a large number of partners churning the ocean together. When I say partners, I am not saying partners who are in it for the money. I mean ecosystem partners who are equally invested in the vision and mission for a disruptive transformation. Who will churn it together and share the amrut of that process. To give birth to a new order.
You already know the difference between Red Ocean Strategy and Blue Ocean Strategy. So choose a sector (The Ocean) that can create the impact you want. Choose a blue ocean area, where no one is drilling or fishing, or fighting for. Bring your strategic stoicness and start churning.
Sell your vision and mission to the ecosystem who will join hands with you. Imagine thousands of devas churning the ocean to produce life. Larger the ocean, the more partners you need churning it in sync with each other.
And that is Churning the Blue Ocean Strategy.
Disrupting the world of Money and Finance
Now let us apply this approach to one sample sector – the world of Money and Finance.
I believe the world of finance and financial products is currently driven either by fear and helplessness or by greed. And I see that as a great disruption opportunity.
I hear some of you thinking: “Let’s replace money with Crypto currencies and change the whole world”. Do you think the world of crypto is not driven by fear and greed? Is it inclusive and egalitarian? Will it reduce inequality? Did we not take an open democratic technology and repurpose it to suit our own needs?
It does not matter what technology is used or how it is issued or who is issuing it. Replacing one form of money with another is not going to help.
We have to collectively transform our relationship with money. That will change the world and the way human societies operate. It is an ocean that touches all aspects of human civilization.
There you have. The opportunity for large social impact with a legacy that might last a millenium.
But to “collectively transform our relationship with money”, adopting a few people is not sufficient. At Least 90% if not the 99% have to be involved.
The Red Ocean and the Blue Ocean
Now what is the Red Ocean here? We have incumbents. Who are complacently resting behind their “regulatory moats” and “compliance-first-orgs”. Then we have the Challengers who are proud of their zero friction transactions, super convenient processes, customer-focused designs and smart hacks that exploit our unconscious levers.
Is there any Blue Ocean left here?
What is the emotional connection and relationship these incumbents and challengers have with their customers and their families? All relationships are transactional. Recommendations are often driven by freebies, discounts, rewards, cashback, better rates, etc. In some cases there are hidden charges and half-truth agendas. And retention often happens because of customers’ inertia.
How many times have you seen a friend or relative strongly recommend a movie or music to you? Lot of times, right?
How many Nike and Apple users buy their products for their features, and how many buy it for what the brand stands for?
Now, how many times have you seen a friend or relative behave like a “Fan” or an “Ambassador” or “Missionary” promoting the values and philosophies of a Financial Brand (not its product), expecting nothing in return?
(If you said LIC, look closer. LIC took a large % of our savings and gave it to their agents. So it wasn’t truly the brand that was speaking. It was the commissions.)
So I see a blue ocean opportunity here. Building a brand that emotionally connects to the 99% instead of the 1%. A brand that is inclusive and egalitarian. Only an authentic brand with an emotional connection with the masses can help us collectively transform our society’s relationship with money. A relationship driven by love and freedom.
But it is not easy to build any brand, let alone an authentic brand. Driving a social movement. In a category that is currently driven by fear and greed. In an environment that has so much inequality, jobless growth and climate change. In a world where there is popular mistrust of institutions and corporations.
This is why the “stoic strategic churning” is needed
But Why bother?
You may think, there is no need. Let’s focus on the top 1%. Or the top 5% or 10%. It is easy. Why waste 20 years building a brand for the remaining 90%?
The answer is simple and scary. In this ocean, there are so many forces and currents, socio-political and socio-economic, moving so very slowly that you can’t see them – like tectonic shifts and Tsunamis. I can’t see them either. But I can feel the reverberations.
You can focus on the top 10% and pretend all is well. And be overwhelmed by the disruption that will happen under your feet. (Remember the Titanic). Or You can focus on the bottom 20% and struggle to make any difference at all.
But I see a Blue Ocean here too. Use the large mass x slow momentum of the middle 70%, to churn the whole ocean along with your partners. The bottom 20% will churn along. The butter or Amrut that we can produce from this churning, could transform human societies across the world.
So where should you start?
A brand first philosophy. A mission to collectively transform our relationship with money. Authenticity and transparency are the only moats. A social vision for 100 years. A financial vision for 20 years. A focus on profit share instead of market share. And a partnership model that is more closer to VISA and UPI and INTERNET. And a collaborative churning that works non-stop.
[Ramkumar R S, founded RSR Innovations, a strategic consulting firm in 2000 and has been working with start-ups and early revenue companies. He is a mentor at the Founders Institute and a venture partner at Life Boat Ventures. He is also the founder and CEO at milliGOLD. A published poet and a student of Bharatanatyam, he writes frequently for Yourstory and Goodmenproject.]
