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Identifying Game Winning Moves Our focus this week is on choosing
a strategic direction that will set your organization apart from
competitors in a way that enables you to stand out from everyone else.
Jack refers to this as “changing the game.” The textbook, Dogfight,
refers to it as “breaking away from the pack” (Chapter 11). Identify an organization (not
mentioned in any of your readings or videos this week and not Apple,
Amazon, Netflix, Tesla, or Uber) that has truly introduced a new
game-changing Winning Move in the last five years that created a
sustainable competitive advantage. A winning
strategy is a chosen direction that is executed with passion (1).
NetJets created the blue ocean of fractional jet ownership. Today,
NetJets is a multibillion-dollar business with the largest private jet
fleet in the world – over seven hundred aircraft, flying over one
hundred seventy countries. NetJets observed that business travellers,
the most lucrative mass of customers in the airline industry, had two
principal choices: They could fly business class or first class on a
commercial airline, or the company could purchase its own aircraft to
serve its corporate travel needs (2). Briefly summarize how the move
fundamentally shifted the playing field to the company’s advantage and
was a successful way to beat the competition. Commercial travel
avoids the high up-front, fixed-cost investment of a
multimillion-dollar jet aircraft. Also, a company purchases only the
number of corporate airline tickets needed per year, lowering variable
costs and reducing the possibility of unused aviation travel time that
often accompanies the ownership of corporate jets (2). On the other
hand, corporations buy private jets to dramatically cut total travel
time, to reduce the hassle of congested airports, to allow for
point-to-point travel, and to gain the benefit of having more productive
and energized executives who can hit the ground running upon arrival. To create a blue
ocean, NetJets built on these distinctive strengths. The result was the
new market space of fractional jet ownership. Here, cust

omers don’t buy a
jet outright. They only buy a small fraction of it. The result is that
buyers get the convenience of a private jet at the price of commercial
airline travel. NetJets’ smaller airplanes, the use of smaller regional
airports, and limited staff keep costs to a minimum. With point-to-point
service and an exponential increase in the number of airports to land
in, there are no flight transfers; trips that would otherwise require
overnight stays can be completed in a single day. The time from your car
to takeoff is measured in minutes instead of hours. Perhaps most
appealing, your jet is always available with only four hours’ notice. If
a jet is not available, NetJets will charter one for you. Last but not
least, NetJets dramatically reduces issues related to security threats
and offers client’s customized in-flight service (2). Explain which of the three
positioning categories described by Dogfight (breakout, Blue Ocean, and
disruptive technology) best describes the move and why. By offering the
best of commercial travel and private jets and eliminating and reducing
everything else, NetJets opened up a multibillion-dollar blue ocean
wherein customers get the convenience and speed of a private jet with a
low fixed cost and the lower variable cost of first- and business-class
commercial airline travel. Till now, NetJets share of the blue ocean it
unlocked still stands a staggering five times greater than that of its
nearest competitor. As the NetJets case study illustrates, insight into
new market space can be gained by shifting an organization’s focus from
competing within to looking across defined industry boundaries. Hence,
NetJets focused on two pathways to expand the strategic scope in
formulating Blue Ocean Strategies, which were different buyer groups and
industries (3). Best regards, Chioma Ogamba Reference JWMI 540 – Strategy. Week 7 Lecture Notes. 2021. Identifying Game Winning Moves. Blue Ocean Systems. 2017. Blue Ocean Strategy Examples. https://blueoceansys.com/blogs/blue-ocean-strategy-examples/ Sherman, L. If You’re in a Dogfight, Become a Cat! 2017.