Finding Blue Oceans

Today I had lunch with a dashing young Can-Indian IT entrepreneur.  He picked my colleague and me up in his white Range Rover and talked about upgrading to a Karma Fisker to leave less of a carbon footprint and leave more in his pocketbook from the gas savings.  We talked business over lunch and planned tech projects to stabilize our company's manage and store IT services.  I anxiously peeked into my phone to find out if we had a response to a quote for a contract renewal I was expecting, apologizing for my rudeness and stating the reason for my anxiety.  Alex understood.  He talked about lost bids to cut throat margins, diminishing returns on existing contracts and companies waiting to snatch away his flagship customers.  I felt oddly comforted to hear him echo my sentiments.  This was the worst of times.  However, we both talked about moving out of bloody waters where we compete with sharks in gory price wars and finding blue oceans.  I reflected on that age old adage of adversity being the mother of invention and how with every setback has emerged the need to innovate.  So at our little firm we have moved from in-person training to online, from translation to transcription and trans-creation (creating ad copy from Enlish into Spanglish, for eg). Soon we  may launch our online language schools offering tutoring in all languages through our five thousand strong language professionals.  But these will bring in revenues in the future.  What about now?  To which the fortune cookie at the end of the meal said "hope is the stimulant of life".  Also smart companies like Qualcomm and IBM invested in new product and leadership development, and customer centric programs through their most difficult times rather than cut back.  When the going got better, they reaped in spades.  Sigh - we just need to stick with the program and keep looking for those blue oceans.  Oh through all the commiserating I also knew that in facing the pitfalls that I do every day, I can legimately call myself an entrepreneur now.