MALAYSIAN STATE CAN BE BETTER THAN DUBAI, SAYS `BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY` AUTHOR

By Kristy Inus

KOTA KINABALU (Malaysia), Oct 22 (Bernama) -- East Malaysia state of Sabah
with its many natural resources can develop better than Dubai if its existing
potential is fully exploited, according to author behind the well-known "Blue
Ocean Strategy".

Good state and federal government leadership has set things in place, where
priority is being given to Sabah for growth and development, said Professor W.
Chan Kim.

"Sabah is one of the most interesting places in Asia to venture into, it is
a powerful state," said Kim who co-wrote the international bestseller "Blue
Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition
Irrelevant" in 2005 with Professor Renee Mauborgne.

"Dubai has nothing compared to Sabah which has incredible resources. So if
somebody can create Dubai from a desert 30 years ago into a city like today and
one of the world's biggest tourists spots, Sabah can be much better with the
resources it has," he told reporters after the opening of the Blue Ocean
Strategy Conference here Thursday.

Kim, who is also co-director of the Blue Ocean Strategy Institute of INSEAD
(originally known as Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires), the
world's second largest business school, was here as to speak at the one-day
conference attended by state leaders, government officials and members of the
business community.

He will discuss the Blue Ocean Strategy, which is the systematic pursuit
of new market and new demand creation through the simultaneous pursuit of higher
value and lower cost.

It is called "Blue Ocean" because of its focus on creating unknown market
space where one do not compete head to head against the competition, but rather
out-compete them by creating new markets where no competition exists.

Kim said although Sabah may be blessed with many resources, the paradox is
that it is one of the least richest states in the country.

"My intepretation of this is when you are so naturally endowed, you are so
comfortable to sell what you have but what you have will eventually disappear,"
he said.

Saying that Sabah has the third biggest rainforest area in the world after
Arizona in the United States and Africa, and the biggest in Asia, Kim added that
the state needed to figure out how to use this fact which was not widely known
to attract global attention.

"The conclusion I want to make is that rather than simply exploiting natural
resources, we need to ensure conservation. On the other hand, we need to attract
the world so that we can leverage on our resources for more income, raise the
living standards and then eradicate poverty in Sabah," he said.

Kim pointed to the pharmaceutical industry as one of the areas which Sabah
had not fully tapped into although it owned one of the biggest rainforest areas.

"About 25 per cent of major ingredients of modern pharmacy comes from
rainforests. Sabah has the biggest rainforest in entire Asia, yet the rate of
applying that (in pharmaceutical) is below one per cent, so this is a huge
potential," he said.

In terms of applying Blue Ocean Strategy in developing Sabah, Kim said it
was "not a matter of coming up with new things or dreaming something big for the
future but creating new ways of doing things".

Citing an example of green energy as an idea everyone could work on, he said
that Blue Ocean Strategy meant the method chosen to deliver it and this could be
applicable to Sabah which has vast remote and rural areas with power problems.

At the conference, Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman said the state has all the
potential and was going in the right path by looking into the Blue Ocean
Strategy, especially with the transition from the Ninth Malaysia Plan to the
10th Malaysia Plan.

According to him, Sabah is fast gaining momentum and prominence as a
development hub for Borneo and it not only has a strategic location in Southeast
Asia but also the qualified manpower to make things happen.
-- BERNAMA