Using social media for recruitment

The internet has come a long way from where it had started in 1969. It has evolved and has come to be an indispensable part of our daily lives today. India has close to 100 billion internet users today, and a research says that 4 out of 5 English speaking persons in urban India are hooked to the World Wide Web. The internet has penetrated all aspects of our lives, spurred by a rash of cheaper devices and affordable broadband plans, and is an indelible part of life today. Business today depends a lot on the internet in terms of marketing and reaching out to its customers. Every aspect of business has a virtual arm today, and it is only natural, that HR and recruitment have also found its place in the vast interlinked network of the internet.

Networking over the social media is considered to be important today, and it too has evolved from merely serving as a platform to find old friends, to making business connections and associations. Almost every internet literate person today has a social media presence and this is used as an opportunity by recruiters to do a background check on potential employees. A web presence today comes with equal boon and blessing. Whilst it gives a person the necessary and required presence and exposure to headhunters, it also can work against him if loose or banal information is provided on the person’s personal page.

Advantages of social media recruitment:

• Job candidates can be searched geographically and found with higher accuracy than before, narrowing the number of candidates and adding to recruiting effectiveness.
• Available jobs can get filled quicker, lowering vacancy rates because of social media's high usage rate and immediate response time.
• Social media recruitment has a low cost with high ROI.
• High number social media users are college students, creating a great way to attract fresh talent for entry level positions.
• Access to the top job candidates is faster, helping a company's ability to attract talent versus competitors.
• Increases the employer's brand visibility online and establishes a leading-edge image for the brand.
• Open positions will be seen and read by a larger number of qualified candidates.

Like everything, there are two sides to this coin too. A scouring of one’s social media page can throw up some details that one would like to keep away from the recruiter’s eye. Looking at recruitment over the social media from the candidate’s point of view, one might conclude that it is no more enough to create a web profile of your choice, which would cater to only friends and serve to increase your social network.

Today, one needs to be careful about the kind of matter that one adds into his profile, and the kind of comments that he makes online. One also needs to take care to choose communities and associates online carefully, as recruiters today are prone to do a background check on a potential employee to see whether the said person is on the same page as the organization’s culture.

                                                                                 

Employer Branding !!!

What defines an employer brand? First publicly introduced to a management audience in 1990, the term has come to be associated with a favorable perception that an organization succeeds in creating for its existing as well as potential employees. It has been defined as “the package of functional Economic and psychological benefits provided by employment, and identified with the employing company.”


Employer branding- creating an image of the organization
Every organization has to create something unique to attract and retain their main capital- the employees. It essentially constitutes what the employee gets out of the organization over and above the monetary compensation for providing his services.

Employer Branding- why is it necessary?
Every company needs to compete in today’s world to get the best manpower possible. It is not only about the job-seeker who needs the job, it is also about the organization capturing and retaining the right talent at the right time. Shortage of skilled manpower post-recession and rising costs have made employer branding a necessity among the HR personnel the world over. Building up a brand for your company and fulfilling the promises keeps the current employee happy and attracts new, talented ones.

Cost Cutting: Creating a brand gives the organization an edge over its competitors to bargain for lesser compensation packages. Employees want to work for a brand, irrespective of salary levels.

Hiring the right talent: People are the primary asset of a company and hiring and retaining top performers will only contribute to the organization’s growth and profitability.

Brand association: Professionals want to work for a company which has been able to create an image for itself in the market, as a responsible and honest employer. The employer brand intertwines with the consumer brand, as job-seekers increasingly try to associate themselves with a brand.

The key to business success: Creating a brand image separates an organization from the clutter of competition. Employees remain ever loyal to a power brand employer compared to its lesser counterparts.

How to become the employer of choice through effective branding?
The first step calls for research within and without the company amidst the target group. Research needs to be done on the following parameters:

• Know how the target group perceives the employer

• Learn what the target group wants and needs from the employer

• Discover where the employer is positioned in relation to its competition

• Ensure that the research is updated regularly

The next step is to zero in on a unique offer or the Employee Value Proposition (EVP). This helps the organization to differentiate itself from its competition. Every company should have something to offer which its competition doesn’t. This will help employers attract a premium talent pool and increase employee engagement, besides decreasing salary costs.

Communication channels are the next most important deciding factor in building up an effective employer brand. An effective medium of communication needs to be set up. Various media can be used; it could be the corporate website of the channel, a seminar in a college, a newspaper advertisement or taking part in an event- the medium needs to be determined in tune with the target group.

Existing employees are also an important medium for advertising one’s brand. An organization conscious of building its brand in the perspective of its employees needs to works on two parameters where it comes to the existing employees:

• What an employee knows about the organization and

• What he/she feels about it

Positivism on these parameters brings on an emotive engagement towards the organization, which makes the employees ambassadors of the employer brand. The organization thus succeeds in creating an impression of itself, when the top management is transparent in its ideas and actions.

The most important resource for a company is its employees, and if the company takes care of the employee, the employee will in turn take care of the company. Like Bill Marriott of Marriott Hotels says, "Take care of the associates, and they'll take good care of the guests, and the guests will come back."

Succession Planning !!!

The show must go on. Handing over the baton at the right time to the right person is a tightrope walk. India Inc. understands the importance of running the show without interruptions; hence companies like Tata Sons, HCL, Godrej group and RPG enterprises have succession plans in place and are in the process of working out names of successors who will take over the respective companies once the currents chiefs retire.

Succession Planning is essentially a process for identifying and developing internal people with the potential to fill key leadership positions in the company. Planning a replacement for a key role in an organization is the crux of succession planning. Needless to say then that the entire process requires that employees be recruited keeping a long term plan in mind and also adequate training provided for the future handling of responsibilities.

Besides providing a platform for the smooth running of the business, succession planning has some other advantages as well. They are as follows:

• It helps employees understand the long term goals and objectives of the organization
• A plan helps identify the developmental and training needs of future leaders
• It is beneficial for employees too, as it helps them understand what qualities the company is looking for in a person to fill in the leader’s shoes. It gives them an idea of what skills and talents are highly valued and what they need to work on to qualify themselves for future roles.

Succession Planning in family held businesses traditionally targeted only key leadership positions. But with the evolution of business and decentralization of departments in organizations, it has become imperative that top positions in all categories of jobs be considered for succession planning.

It is important to keep the motivation levels high and focus on retention of high-potential employees in an organization; especially so if the company is looking at a succession plan. A well placed retention plan creates a highly motivated workforce and a more productive work environment. This in turn enables the company to put in place a well-thought out succession plan for the future.

There are a few steps to creating an effective succession plan. Since this kind of strategy has to be thought out well in advance, it is important that the organization has a loyal workforce and can stem attrition, at least from the middle level up.

Identification of leadership qualities is the most important factor in a succession plan. Certain skills and managerial qualities need to be identified in employees to determine the competencies required for success at key positions.

An organization also needs to identify whether or not it has a pool of competent and qualified candidates ready to assume leadership positions when the need arises. Managers play a big role at this stage of a succession plan. They might have to identify top-performers on their teams, who can pick up the reins when required.

Training is important, as it enables employees to learn more and handle additional responsibilities which prepare them for future roles as leaders. Retention and hiring of high potential employees is also important in the etching of a succession plan.

The overall business plan of the organization needs to be kept in mind while designing a succession plan. A strong development program needs to be put in place that will ensure that the right people with the right qualifications are able to take up responsibilities at the right time. 

The Invisible Glass Ceiling !!!

Ever wondered why India Inc. is surging ahead riding on the brains of only the best men and so few women in the country? The corner offices and the top managerial levels are all filled with deserving men, but where are the women, whom we see at organizations handling important portfolios?

The answer lies in the deep-seated Indian mentality. Somewhere down the journey in their careers, women get lost midway, some giving up their careers after marriage or child birth and in some cases, both.

There is another reason for the severe paucity of women in the hot seats of organizations. Research shows that only a mere 4.5% of women directors sit on the boards of Indian companies, while male directors constitute the rest 95.5%. It is not that women do not deserve to be in decision-making positions of the companies that do India proud on the international platform. Instead, it is the invisible glass ceiling present at workplaces that keeps women from getting to the top.

They are often bypassed and overlooked when a top position is being considered. Women often have to handle the egos and expectations of male colleagues, and only a handful of women have managed to break the glass ceiling that keeps them from reaching the upper echelons of management.

True, that India Inc. threw its weight behind the Women’s Bill, which promises to give the fairer sex a bigger role in the political arena when it becomes law, but it is time to pause and think whether some amount of reservation is also needed to achieve the same gender balance in its boardrooms as well.

There are two factors that may help to contribute in achieving an equality of sexes in the boardrooms. One is to put in place a policy that encapsulates the spirit of gender equality amongst professionals, and the other is to gradually propel a cultural shift within an organization. Merely putting a policy in place might not help in changing the deep rooted mentality of people.

Some women, who have been able to break through the glass ceiling and have made it to the top are of the opinion that the work culture needs to be changed first, which involves a bottom-up approach; the mentality needs to be changed at the grass roots, which will drive diversity, and then a policy can be put in place to implement it.

At the same time, it has been proven that changes in policies first can bring about refreshing changes in a country’s work culture and introduce gender diversity in private institutions.

Norway serves as an unprecedented example of the same. In 2003, the government introduced a policy that required 40% of the boards of all publicly listed companies to be filled by women, as opposed to the prevailing rate of 7%.

Maybe it’s time that India took a chapter out of Norway’s policy and proceed to introduce something similar.

There isn’t a dearth of competent women out there who can take board seats, and once shareholders are forced to look beyond the ‘old boys’ club’, they will find enough women to fill them.

Reservation might not be the best way out, but the ball has to start rolling at some point. Sometimes extra efforts are needed to encourage and empower women, and quotas can serve as transitional means to overcome initial blockages.

The Pursuit of Brand Building: Is PR the answer

The advent of second generation economic reforms came with the mushrooming growth of several business enterprises, increasing consumer options. However emergence of innumerable brand created a clutter in the market. . Thus advertising and PR agency creates a market awareness. However, the horizons of PR are still unexplored and under-used. However PR raises the big debate whether it has more credence and reliability associated as compared to advertisement.

An effective media strategy strives to build strong brands to achieve expected returns. It has become an extremely challenging job for every individual and every company in present competitive environment. To achieve this goal marketing executives employ 'advertising strategy.' Though for most of the marketers or manufacturers, advertising is not turning out to be as productive to their expectation. It has been noticed in a survey that 83 percent of companies are not satisfied with the results they receives from their advertising campaigns. Advertising, most of the times, does not work well due to the scepticism, cluttering of products, high cost, when an organization is operating in a huge and open market.

On the other hand Public relations, is far better than advertising both in terms of spending as well as delivering the message. The reason for which PR is considered more effective in accomplishing the market goals as compared to advertising because it is driven by the 'third-party endorsement. Public relation has the element of credibility, clarity and cost effective.

THE BIG FIGHT – AD Vs PR

Advertising isn't working very well because advertising is self-promotion.  People are very skeptical of ads.  The source of all those nice things said about your company and its products is you, and people just don't believe it.  Another reason why advertising is not working very well these days is because of "clutter", which is the magnitude of commercial messages being delivered within a short period of time.  There are just too many messages to absorb, and clutter is getting worse every year.  In addition, advertising is very expensive, especially if you have a big market to cover.

If you were to find a marketing action that worked much better than advertising at a much lower cost, you would have a huge competitive advantage.

Prospects believe third-party endorsements, and in marketing "belief" is everything.  If prospects don't believe your message, you will waste huge amounts of time and money trying to get your message across.  Third-party endorsements are believed because the third party has nothing to gain.  They are only trying to help.  They are either an expert on the subject who has already investigated your product, or they own your product.  The advantage to you as the person who does not own the product, or who does not have time to investigate your product, is, with no cash outlay and no risk, you get the benefit of the experience of others.

PR agencies thereby have a definite and huge potential to cater the existing needs of Indian contemporary market in the coming times. PR agencies by and large are not only accountable for brand building but also depict a nice as well as the real image of brands. This accounts for the credibility and sustainability factor which the glitzy and glamorous world of advertisement fails to deliver. The future might also witness a progressive shift of legally binding protocols for every corporate house to tie-up with PRCI (Public Relations Council of India) certified agencies in order to ensure a credible corporate existence of the clients in the market.

Public Relations have a significant role to play as world trade, free market systems, trading blocks, and industrialized, industrializing, and subsistence economies attempt to reposition themselves regionally and internationally, a new energetic and vibrant ethos permeates world order. At the onset of the third millennium, PR promises actualize and propagate new visions, directions, and challenges of new products and services. With this has come an overwhelming responsibility on PR as a part of strategic communication in accomplishing the goals and dreams of nations and its peoples. 

Selling the invisible- marketing the intangible

Cash may be King, but Marketing is everything.

You might have invested in your business, set up a plush office, and may be offering world class products. But who’s buying? Where are your customers? What have you done to let people know that your product X is the best in your segment and that you are providing the best value for money?

The answer to these questions is the one magic word- Marketing. It is the strategy your firm devices to target the right audience at the right place at the right time, which in turn will maximize the return on investment and increase revenue.

While devising a strategy to target your consumer, marketing simultaneously also needs to be a process to create value for the customer. It is a set of activities to educate, communicate with and motivate the target customer about the firm’s services or the company’s products.

In this context, I may say that introducing a new refrigerator in the market with unprecedented features and marketing the USPs of the same will attract a flock of customers in this commodity driven economy. A new healthy soup, or a low-cost mobile phone with world-class features will be lapped by the consumers, if you market your product well. You set a price for your product, you place it in the right points of sale and you promote your product well, and voila! You have a raging success with your product.

Your consumer will see the product, test it and buy it. Your customer care and post-sales service will take care of the rest. A winning formula.

But what if you are selling the invisible? A service… it’s intangible, it is consumed as soon as it is produced and every service experience is different from the other. For example, a low cost airline like Indigo or Spice Jet- they provide you a service that suits a middle-class wallet, and yet they strive to give you world class customer service, so that you keep coming back to them.

Services can only be availed and not owned as in case of a product. This makes your consumer more demanding of excellence, as the duration of a service experience is much shorter compared to that of a product.

People are the most important element of any service or experience. Every service that is rendered is a different experience. Hence your employees are the most important part of your business if services are what you deal with. People buy from people that they like, so the attitude, skills and appearance of all staff need to be first class. Well trained and competent service personnel are your aces for success. Effective customer service is also vital, as the customer service associates are the face of your company. They make or break your brand.

Process is another element in your marketing strategy. The way you deal with your consumers and heighten their experience in sampling your service, creates a brand value for your service; this in turn contributes to the success of your business.

You need to deliver value through people and process when it is services that you are marketing. These physical factors will help you sell the invisible. Marketing the intangible is possible only when your marketing is not intangible.

HR- An integral part of business success

Long gone are the times, when the HR department performed only basic functions like hiring, employee record maintenance, and of course giving out the pink slip to people. HR has evolved in recent times to become an integral part of business today. Heading an HR Consultancy firm, and having spent my entire career in management consulting, I have witnessed this transition from close quarters. Today HR has become a mainstream business function and helps in formulating and implementing the company’s strategies through human resource activities.

In business the only thing constant is the change and to survive in this competitive world, organizations have to constantly keep innovating, introducing new strategies and implementing them to drive business. Innovating entails fresh ideas, new systems and processes- which can be introduced by the right people.

Manpower is one of the critical aspects of businesses. To get the best out of people and to motivate them, it is important to have out-of-box HR systems & processes to encourage and drive innovation. HR should indulge in smart hiring, provide R&R’s wherever applicable and work towards retaining talent.


Companies can promote innovation by hiring HR managers who would create networks of managers charged with encouraging new ideas. This kind of decentralized team can identify promising new concepts and prioritize them so that they receive the attention they deserve. This will also help in creating a culture that supports innovation. In addition; not having a widely understood system-wide process is also not conducive for innovation. To build sufficient diversity into the process it is important to have innovative suggestions from employees. It is also important to have a proper training and coaching program for innovations teams and an idea management system in place.

There are many "corporate events" or actions that can impact a company's culture, processes and ways of doing business. If HR is to help improve innovation in a corporation, it must identify the corporate events that are likely to have a negative impact on risk-taking and innovation driving activities. Some of the events that might have a negative effect are: New Hiring, New Managers, Failed Orientation programme, Mergers & acquisitions, Restructuring or layoffs, Outsourcing. In addition, success limits risk taking.

A string of successes can build up employee egos, drive groupthink and contribute to a sense of invincibility. The sense of invincibility in turn creates complacency as employees develop the perception that “innovations have always come along the past". HR has to work twice as hard in successful organizations to keep "egos" down and to “forget the successes of the past". After identifying these aspects, the HR must monitor and attempt to eliminate or moderate the negative effects.

The Human Factor- A Milestone Reached, But Miles To Go

It was one of those moments in life when you feel proud of the hard work that your team has done, and the due recognition comes your way. I am talking about the Asia Pacific HRM Congress 2010 held at Hotel Taj Residency in Bangalore, where The Human Factor magazine won the prestigious “Magazine of the year, 2010” award.

The conference was held on the 3rd and 4th of September, 2010, and was a melting pot of influential people from the world of HR across the private and public sectors. Eminent people like Mr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, Mr. Saugata Mitra, Dr. Y. V. Verma, Mr. Pramod Sadarjoshi, Mr. Neelmani Singh, Dr. Bhaskar Das, Mr. S. Hajara, Dr. Santrupt B Misra, and Ms. Leena Nair graced the occasion.

Amidst such eminent personalities, The Human Factor received the prestigious award. As I sat there, watching the award being announced for our magazine, my heart swelled with pride and joy. It has been two years, and I congratulate my team for all the hard work that every member put in to achieve this success.

Print was the first form of mass media, and till date it continues to be the medium of choice to reach out to people. It was only natural that we started a magazine that would bring the opinions, practices and thoughts of industry leaders within the pages of a consolidated cover. This helped us to stand on the shoulders of giants in the corporate world and leverage their experience and career paths. The magazine sought to provide inspiration to students and information to academicians and other professionals in the industry. It became a platform for sharing and knowledge gathering.

Consistent, dedicated and focused efforts throughout the past two years have finally reaped results. I am glad we have been recognized and our work acknowledged. This recognition just paves the way for greater things.

As the Chief Editorial Advisor of the magazine, I want to thank all those who made this success possible- especially our contributors and several thousand readers- without whose valuable inputs and unflinching support, this feat would have been impossible.

1. Businessandecenomy.com

2. Outlook Business

Intrapreneurship: A way to success

Innovation, I have always stressed is the only way for an organization to stay afloat and ahead of its competitors. It is important for an organization to encourage an atmosphere of innovation amongst its employees and continuously strive to find new ways of conducting business and developing products. It is infact, a key factor in ensuring the survival of a company.

I remember an idiom in this context, that we were taught as children, “united we stand, divided we fall”. Instead of one or two persons trying to find out the best practices to surge ahead of competition, it is better to let all the employees of the organization work independently on developing new ideas.

An entrepreneur is a person who has a new business idea and launches his own venture to give shape to the idea. An intrapreneur does pretty much the same, only within the confines of an organization. He/she thinks up new ideas for new products, and with the help of his employers, develops the idea and launches the product.

Intrapreneurship grows from the seeds of an atmosphere of innovation in a company. It is not only the research and development department’s job to contribute to new ideas. Rather, an organization needs to invite ideas from its employees and partners to help drive it forward. Engaged employees are most likely to contribute to those innovations.

There are three types of employees: a. Engaged, b. Not-engaged, c. Actively disengaged. It is the first category of employees that works with passion and feels a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization forward.

An intrapreneur, or corporate entrepreneur, needs to envision and create an idea and also create the right team within his company to successfully launch the new products. One of the best known stories of successful intrapreneurship is of the 3M Post-It Notes, discovered in 1974.

Post-It Notes till date continue to be one of 3M’s top-grossing products. 3M’s success story proved that intrapreneurs can provide a fantastic boost to your company’s bottom line. They increase motivation and empowerment among employees, fostering an atmosphere of engagement, besides adding to your revenue stream.

I believe in innovation and allowing an atmosphere of innovation to prosper. Being an intrapreneur myself, I understand its importance, and I would suggest businesses to encourage innovation within the organization for a wholesome growth.

Blue Ocean Strategy

When Google was launched in 1997 as a search engine, Reliance Communications in 2001, the services they offered were unprecedented. They had come up with business ideas which had never been heard of, and thus never had had a market for the same. But once the search engine caught the imagination of the people and the telecom giant made it possible for the common man to use mobile phones, it created a vast market, and untapped potential waiting to be captured all the while.

These companies used the Blue Ocean Strategy which focuses on making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for your customers. It is essentially a vast ocean of opportunities, with plenty of space to expand and sail where you want. There often is no competition, and even if there is any, your product is such that it makes the competition irrelevant, because it can’t touch you. Here demand, customers and growth are yours for the taking. There is no benchmark set for you as per the industry rules and you travel along a road and leave behind a trail which others can only follow. The BOS is about navigating your organization into a vast potential market where it can achieve rapid growth and dramatically increase profits.

Blue Ocean Strategy as we know it, is contradictory to the Red Ocean Strategy where industry boundaries are defined and accepted and the competitive rules of the game are known. Companies try to outperform each other in a cutthroat competition with the aim of grabbing a greater share of the existing demand. Prospects for profits and growth are reduced with the market space of red oceans getting crowded. As opposed to this the BOS creates demand in the market space for its products. Some blue oceans are created well beyond existing industry boundaries (for example Google), whereas most are created from within red oceans by expanding existing industry boundaries (for example Reliance).

Though the term Blue Ocean is an analogy to describe a wide, untapped potential market and seems like a promising idea for businesses, it always entails a risk of the idea being backfired since its untested waters that the business ventures in. let’s take the case of Google’s latest innovation Google Wave. The web application software for real-time communication and collaboration was hailed as a new wave (pun not intended) in online and real-time communications. But it backfired for the company, as it didn’t receive as much enthusiasm and support from Google fans as the company would have liked. It resulted in the company dumping the product only recently.

It is not always possible for companies to come up with new ideas to tap potential, untouched markets, and this is where the red ocean strategy is in action. Pepsi and Coke are the two largest players in the soft drink business, where each tries to grab the other’s customer base. It is a classic example of red ocean, where the rules are set and the competition is cut throat. It is about staying a step ahead of your competition, as opposed to making your competition irrelevant in BOS.

How did Apple know exactly when to launch the iPod, when we were all going around showing off our cumbrous CD players, carrying them around with a number of CD’s when we were going on a long trip, to listen to a wide range of songs? Apple came up with its mini music player, where you could feed hundreds of songs and which was also easy to carry around. Another example of the BOS would be Facebook, which changed the way the world looked at social networking.

As I said earlier in my post, it is not always possible to tap into an untouched market space, and often it is the red ocean way that companies have to follow. But to sustain themselves, companies spend huge amounts in R&D, to plan ahead into the future, by dint of which they can create new ideas and venture into the vast ocean of market space, and making competition irrelevant.

Change is Constant

It was a journey that started with trepidation and anticipation as an anxious MBA student. As I traversed the path of business management, touching lives and businesses over more than a decade, I have discerned the importance of recording my experiences of these valuable years. I have been a part of corporate India for most of my professional life, and I feel the need to reach out to people and connect with their thoughts and ideas. Besides this blog being a reflection of my thoughts and experiences, it will also help me harbor new thoughts and ideas from my readers.

As a Managing Partner of one of the leading HR Consulting firms of India, there have been many lives and businesses that I have consulted. My experiences in working as an intrapreneur, consulting nascent and mature organizations in both the private and the public sector across various fields of HR, have helped me contribute my bit in achieving turnaround results in growth and profitability for the company.

I have been with Planman HR since its very inception, and its growth into one of the leading HR Consulting firms of India has had me as a constant witness. After all these years, I can comfortably say that it has become an essential part of my existence as a professional in the business world. Innovation is what I seek constantly for Planman HR to grow, which already has its presence across various fields of HR- Search & Selection, Organizational Structuring, Manpower Consulting and Training and Development.

The horizon of business is changing fast in today’s world, and innovation is the only way to keep up with the changing times. Innovation necessitates change, and it is true that the natural instinct of human beings is to resist change. But we at Planman have constantly striven for change and betterment of my own organization, as well as that of our clients’. Change is like a blizzard or a sand storm- the more you move forward and try to adapt, the more are your chances of survival. Once you stop or resist the winds of change, you freeze and die.

All said and done, innovative ideas alone are not enough. They need to be implemented too. It is not only important to conceive an innovation, but it is more pertinent to adapt to it and implement it. Change always doesn’t mean sitting comfortably during easy times and thinking up grand ideas to innovate. It means planning for and adapting to difficult times. The recent economic crisis taught us a good lesson about how to adapt to changes during hard times. The results are there for everyone to see. Organizations which kept innovating in those stressful times and looked at innovation as a solution to the downturn, have survived the crash and have bounced back into business.

In this ever changing world, the only thing constant is change and innovation, and a blue ocean strategy will give companies competitive advantage over others.