Blue Ocean Strategy applicable to all countries: Najib

PUTRAJAYA: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak said the Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS) is applicable to all countries irrespective ... of where the country is in "the food chain".
He said Malaysia which incepted the strategy in 2009 that resulted in an internal revolution in the way the government was doing its business, was now working forward towards becoming a high income nation.
"We want to share with our friends around the world that this is a wonderful methodology, wonderful strategy and this is the way forward when you inject innovation, creativity, the outcome will be more wealth and more public happiness," he said at the Leader's Discussion session, held as part of the International Conference on Blue Ocean Strategy (ICBOS) here today.
Najib said the strategy introduced different ways of doing things that were imparting from the orthodox and conventional to achieve high impact, low cost and rapid execution in national development.
"In Blue Ocean, we tell them (government departments) to see within the system if there are resources not fully utilised, or underutilised or even with white elephant (project) see if you can get hold of the resources," he said.
The Prime Minister said that the biggest challenge to implement BOS was to overcome silos between ministries and the culture of protecting their own turf.
"All of these have changed, because when we started it was a small group and now we have the National Blue Ocean Strategy Summit and in a big meeting room we convene everybody. People want to be part of this journey, they want to be part of this national effort," he said.
Najib said that 90 programmes had been implemented, highlighting the Urban Transformation Centre (UTC) and the collaboration between the police force and the armed forces as being hugely successful.
He also said that through the Community Rehabilitation Programme, which separated the petty criminals from hardcore criminals, it had ensured that only four of 1,000 released inmates would return to crime life.
"In the case of California for example, the rate of recidivism is more than 60% and this is huge," he said.
Meanwhile two leaders of island nations were unified in saying that the BOS could be promoted to overcome the climate change crisis at the international level.
Nauru President Baron Waqa and Maldives Vice President Abdulla Jihad said the urge to work collaboratively towards overcoming the issue was a major concern, especially for island nations.
"Not just Nauru is suffering from the climate change, but the rest of the world are suffering too. As BOS is inclusive in nature, we should be working in partnership alongside each other," Waqa said.
Thailand Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha said through BOS, all countries could prosper and develop their economies through innovation and creative thinking according to their needs and had constructive roles to play.
"Thailand wishes to play a part and have a constructive role in cooperating to create such an ocean of the future," he said.
King of Swaziland King Mswati III on his part praised Malaysia for sharing its secret to success with other countries through BOS.
"Swaziland has benefited immensely over the years from this philosophy. We now have Malaysia's university, the Limkokwing University of Creative Technology that has transformed the landscape of education in the kingdom and the SADC (Southern African Development Community) region," he said.
The Icbos is held in conjunction with the 2016 NBOS International week from today until Aug 18 at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC), here. — Bernama