How to find your blue ocean in research?
Kim and Mauborgne's book "Blue Ocean" is about how to stand out and find a commercial space with little or no competition. This space must be unattainable by competitors and must be accompanied by high barriers to entry (cf. Porter).
My question is the following:
How do you find your blue ocean in research? At a time when desk rejects are increasingly frequent and we are witnessing an inflation of articles submitted to good ranking journals, how can you distinguish yourself to get past this first selection barrier?
This is done through the subject, the research methods used and the field proposed.
The subject must be current. The problem is that sometimes a subject that is too new does not have a strong conceptual basis. Moreover, very managerial concepts from the business world have difficulty in breaking through the research barrier. For example, I worked very early on on social listening and had a lot of trouble getting my French colleagues to understand that it was a revolutionary method of listening to markets.
Research methods must be original. Is practising Python considered original today? That's the big question. The time it takes to learn a new language is sometimes considerable and represents a major financial sacrifice. But technology is moving faster than our ability to learn. Today, isn't it more interesting to learn "no code"?
The research field proposed must also be distinctive. I must admit that I am tired of qualitative research fields that rely on rather unreflective analysis grids and on the verbatims of a few unrepresentative consumers. I am also tired of fields based on the answers of our students! Finally, I am angry (yes angry) at the low interest of companies in academic management research. Companies and the state prefer to "pay a lot of money" to consultancies when they have our research materials at their fingertips. If we want to develop open science, we need the company or any other institution to open its doors to us. Unshareable data is the best way to kill research in the long run.
So finding your blue ocean in research is not just up to the researcher. His or her ecosystem is paramount. At the moment, the conditions are not right for virtuous research.
What do you think?
Maria...a very interesting question...maybe the holy grail question.
I guess we all get a little frustrated at times. In my own case I sought to catch topics in their early stages such as lean (where I started publishing in 1992 just after the seminal work on the topic ' The Machine That Changed the World). This means that the gap is wide and the potential fir early work citations is great.
However, I have found that there are two problems with this early adopted (high innovation) strategy:
1. As there is by definition a lack of academic literature it is hard to provide a good literature summary as there is not one...something I got criticised for in a recent paper.
2. Your topic might be too new and radical fir reviewers to see the need for it.
On of my suggestions would e to explore the overlap of two existing bodies of knowledge as this is where the blue ocean might be best.
Peter
Good morning
I love what I do.
I tried to be honest and clear
I live in a blue ocean, even happen whatever happens
I am keeping working on and on, I every day I kill my ego and I work in order to be useful
Best regards
Ph.D. Ingrid del Valle García Carreno
Great question first of all.
I think there is no straightforward answer to this question. A lot of factors can come into play here. Your work might be novel but unappealing to some editors/reviewers while it might be for others. People view things from different angles. Studies should be deeply rooted in the literature because even some so-called grey areas may require revisitation. Along these lines, your blue ocean in research might be luck
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