Blue Ocean Strategy: A Vehicle for Entrepreneurship Development and Economic Growth in Rural Areas

Introduction

This paper is proposing the role of entrepreneurship in economic development of the society with the perspective of blue ocean strategy, with special emphasis on the usage of the said strategy at the levels of the Rural Markets (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Entrepreneurship, rural markets, the blue ocean strategy and the economic development

Business strategies and marketing skills have been concentrating on fundamentals, especially on buying capacity. This paper argues on four major aspects:

• a)

  We should be looking at the ‘Size’ of the market and not at the buying capacity as a fundamental aspect in the case of highly populated developing and the underdeveloped nations.

• b)

  We should think of improving market conditions and should try to bring in ‘Freedom of Market Transaction’ (Sen, 2000) through providing better services to the rural and the poor masses.

• c)

  Better services and the market conditions are the human right of the masses and should also be seen as a social responsibility by the marketer along with being seen as a business opportunity.

• d)

  This paper also wishes to suggest that looking at the size of the market as an asset, we can compliment the same with strategic generation of buying power i.e. by ‘creating buying power’.Aptly suggested by Prahalad (2002):

Entrepreneurship A Perspective

The understanding of entrepreneurship owes much to the work of economist Joseph Schumpeter and the Austrian School of economics. According to Schumpeter (1950), an entrepreneur is a person who is willing and able to convert a new idea or invention into a successful innovation. Entrepreneurship forces “creative destruction” across markets and industries, simultaneously creating new products and business models. In this way, creative destruction is largely responsible for the dynamism of industries and long-run economic growth. The traditional microeconomic theory of economics has had little room for entrepreneurs in its theoretical frameworks (instead assuming that resources would find each other through a price system) (The Economist, 2006, p. 67; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneurship).