Applying Blue Ocean Strategy for Kenya's Fire Industry

Fire industry in Kenya has come a long way since 1970’s when the first ever private fire services firm was established. The fire industry in Kenya for a long time has been occupied by the big multinational companies with footings in the three eastern African countries, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The enactment of the Health and Safety Act in 2007 and streamlining of fire safety services in industries through the fire safety rules under legal notice number 59 of 2007 paved way for more players to join the fire industry. If you asked the major players in recent days they would tell you times are not good as the market is “flooded”.  These flooding calls for various strategies by the players in market but most usually think that the most important strategy is the competing advantage strategy where you benchmark with your competitor in mind. But this should not be the case; it is high time the industry emulates Blue Ocean Strategy which has been with us for a long period of time.

According to Harvard Business review, Chan and Renee (2014) describe Blue Ocean strategy as creating an industry that is not in existence today. The duo also notes that there are two ways to create blue ocean i.e; creating a completely new industry that was not in existence and two, creating a new market from an existing market. The later is what we call, the red ocean which is the existing fire service market. At the moment red ocean strategy in Kenyan market involves sales of extinguishers and basic fire safety trainings coupled with inspections of the same items. According to their study, those who study the market and introduce blue ocean strategy benefits from it for between 10 and 15 years as the market leader in the product. Take for example the mobile telecommunication in Kenya, safaricom, airtel, orange, and YU are in the same market and only focusing on the competitive advantage does not usually produce the figures. One of the mobile operators, orange reduced its standard charges, but this has not translated in market change in terms of customers. Safaricom on the other hand, came up with a blue ocean market famously referred by name MPESA, all the other players have imitated this and introduced the same but the industry player remains Safaricom. How long has MPESA been in place? That’s for you to see and decide.

Therefore, in order to succeed in the fire industry in Kenya, there is need for the industry players to embrace this strategy to re-invent them. According the Harvard Business review, Blue Ocean strategy is not about technology innovation because the underlying technology is usually in existence. The challenge therefore remains with the fire industry players in Kenya.

The write is a PhD candidate on Fire Service Delivery