Ella King – 2023
Isaac Bear Early College High School
“I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities that the Blue Ocean Competition gave me! I loved learning new entrepreneurial concepts and interacting with a like-minded community. This was an experience like no other, and I highly recommend it to students across the globe.”
Below is an interview with the Blue Ocean Student Entrepreneur Pitch Competition second-place winner for 2022. This young woman pitched the idea of safe, self-charging and mobile battery that would last for 28,000 years. Hopefully this pitch inspires other students to compete and offer solutions to current problems.
Why did you enter the contest? What did you hope to accomplish or learn?
I entered this competition with the goal of strengthening my critical thinking while learning about new entrepreneurial concepts. With Blue Ocean Strategy, I have gained invaluable insight into how to share and market my ideas.
How did you learn about the competition (school or teacher, Internet, recommendation from a friend…)?
I learned about this competition online while searching for free educational resources for high school students. When I found the Blue Ocean Competition, and with it the Blue Ocean Strategy Mini-Course that allows students to learn the fundamentals of the leading strategy method in the business world today, I was elated!
If you learned about this from the Internet, did you find this through Instagram, Facebook, web search…?
After searching the web for educational resources to better students in entrepreneurial concepts, I came across the Blue Ocean Competition.
Why this contest and not another one? What appealed to you about this competition?
I was deeply drawn to the emphasis on learning new entrepreneurial concepts in this competition. Additionally, the Blue Ocean Competition allowed me to interact with a like-minded community that is committed to bettering themselves through educational rigor! Furthermore, due to the international nature of this competition, a vast array of ideas were able to be presented from across the globe, which I found to be very interesting.
How or why did you pick your topic?
My idea, the Millennia Battery, uses nuclear waste as a self-generating power source. Nuclear waste, if stored safely and innovatively, has the potential to be an excellent source of self-sustaining energy. I picked this topic to further discussion about this potential source of energy and its possibilities for profit over time.
Is this a real business that you plan on pursuing?
While I am unsure of what career path I will choose to take in the future, it would be quite exciting to be a leader in such a novel field!
Do you plan on being an entrepreneur?
I am not certain of what career I will have in the future, as I have a wide array of interests that I am currently exploring. However, entrepreneurship is an incredibly exciting field, and I look forward to further pursuing it!
What were your favorite learnings from the Blue Ocean concepts?
My favorite Blue Ocean concepts are most certainly the Strategy Canvas and ERRC Grid. The Strategy Canvas is an excellent tool for visually articulating a product’s strengths and weaknesses in comparison to competitors, which allows for the demonstration of blue ocean markets. Additionally, the ERRC Grid helps entrepreneurs to move past red ocean markets and into blue ocean markets by reducing factors that have been over-served to the customer, raising factors well above industry standards, eliminating factors that have long been competed on, and creating factors that allow for the formation of a new blue ocean market.
How much time did you spend creating your pitch?
I first started researching the “pain points” of the global market in November of 2021. From there, I recognized an opportunity for profit with the new global push for clean, self-generating energy, which led me to ponder financially feasible and innovative routes to achieving this. Not long after, I began the educational course that the Blue Ocean Competition offers to students. Soon after, I constructed my pitch. In total, I spent about three months working through the process of designing my pitch and learning how to best present it.
What was easy?
The educational course on Blue Ocean Strategy was fairly easy to learn because of the excellent work of W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in developing these strategies. I am very grateful for the effort they put into making Blue Ocean Concepts very valuable to learn and easy to understand.
What was hard?
During the process of researching red ocean markets and finding potential areas for divergence into a blue ocean market, I constructed many ideas that I wanted to develop pitches for. Choosing just one idea to strengthen and develop was quite difficult. Additionally, applying the knowledge from the Blue Ocean Strategy course was fairly difficult because I had never worked with it before.
Did you have fun?
Absolutely! I have enjoyed this competition immensely! I have learned a number of invaluable lessons.
Did you find the fact that this is a virtual and global competition appealing?
I most certainly found the fact that this is a virtual and global competition appealing! It was so exciting to compete with students internationally, and I highly recommend this competition to anyone who is looking for a similar experience.
Did your school or teacher encourage you or did you pursue this on your own?
I am the first individual from my school to participate in the Blue Ocean Competition. I am extremely grateful for the lessons that this competition has taught me, and I hope to increase my school’s participation in years to come!
What would you do differently?
In retrospect, there are a few things that I would do differently. The most prominent of them would be to present more of the statistics that I used in identifying “pain points” of the market in my pitch.
What advice do you have for future participants?
While my advice is heard by students nearly everyday, it is important to say nonetheless: work ahead of time! Giving yourself the opportunity to absorb knowledge and concepts as you go is invaluable, and such thoughtfulness is clear to judges. Therefore, you not only make personal improvements but you also better your chances of success!
Quote
“I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities that the Blue Ocean Competition gave me! I loved learning new entrepreneurial concepts and interacting with a like-minded community. This was an experience like no other, and I highly recommend it to students across the globe.” -Ella