Sometimes games can be very serious business, in that the strategies we think of in terms of playing games are often of a much more serious relevance. For example, a couple of days ago, after discussing a game strategy of building up islands and then selling them to others who are too lazy to do the initial preparation,one of my friends discussed with me the intent to work on various entrepreneurial efforts for several years at a time before selling them and switching to new ones. In this sense, what my friend wanted to do was to engage in a strategy of business that matches the game–enjoying the thrill and excitement of building up a company, developing a good reputation, and building a strong company culture, and then passing that on to someone else when business changed from exciting and new to humdrum and familiar. This is not an unusual strategy, but it is not very common to hear people discuss such plans openly and honestly as their goal, since most people at least tend to conceptualize what they want to do as a profession rather than a habit.
It was more than a little bit ironic, given that my friend planned on studying marine biology, that this sort of strategy is known as a blue ocean strategy, an essentially entrepreneurial decision to seek after unusual and unknown territory. On its face, this sort of strategy is immensely appealing. Finding entirely new ground to explore, where there are no competitors, means a lot more profits, a lot more excitement, and a sense of adventure. Yet few companies truly manage to find blue oceans to enjoy, where first mover advantages allow someone to carve out space for themselves and build the rules of operation and the infrastructure for future use of that territory. These few companies, and the people who lead them, are considered to be innovators and immensely creative thinkers, and yet the task of finding and claiming uncharted territory in business or art or anything else in life is a difficult one.
Why is this the case? What is it that makes it so difficult to claim blue ocean for oneself? For one, before one can claim blue ocean for oneself, one has to conceive of it. It is an easy task to see what is, and yet that is hard enough for us to manage through the fog of our fears and longings, our self-deception and our perception. To stake a claim to uncharted waters, one has to be aware that there is more than meets the eye, that there is something yet to discover. To know what is unknown, at least dimly, is to have a sense for absence as well as presence. It is a sort of intuition, something that not everyone has, but which can be immensely useful in giving us the realization that our present existence, that our current situation is not all that could possibly be brought into existence. We are too quick to believe that we have seen it all and done it all before, too incurious to expand our knowledge and our frontiers beyond what we have known.
Once we are able to conceive of new frontiers and new possibilities, there are still other barriers to surmount before we are able to enjoy the free space we have conceived. Once we have imagined a new space that we can fill, we still have to take courage and step into that space, to walk into the unknown, to explore that territory where the maps have dragons labeled if they are labeled at all. It takes courage to step into the unknown, to go off into new lands, to brave the unknown, whether this space is physical or conceptual. Such explorers are rightly celebrated [1], and such space, even if it is frightening, still means opportunity and potential. The question is, are we courageous enough to step beyond what we know to seek after more than we have ever seen. There are blue oceans all around us, after all, but do we have the vision to see them, and the bravery to step forward and to explore them?
[1] See, for example:
Edge Induced Cohesion 