Part 1. 
Please go online and research Blue Ocean Strategy.  There is the original article titled Value Innovation: a leap into the blue ocean by W. Chan Kim which is a great starting point to begin this semester.  There are also numerous websites covering this topic and thus plenty of information.  There are more current articles on this topic that you may want to review and add to this discussion.Share your sources with your discussion mates on this and each of the other discussion topics upcoming this semester.  This concept fits well with what you will be doing in Capsim.  Participate often and enjoy this discussion!  Dan
Blue Ocean Strategy Article by Kim.pdf
Part 2.
An age-old question is “Does structure follow strategy or does strategy follow structure?”  The new, successful firms appear to be on-line driven and not really interested in brick and mortar.  Amazon is the obvious example.  Does the rapid growth of Amazon and similar firms put pressure on Walmart and Target, etc. to change or can they still survive (can anyone still survive) without creating online revenue streams to go along with their traditional strategy of storefronts?  Is Amazon a true Technology company?  They never really developed or wanted to develop a brick and mortar strategy.  Is ecommerce, in all its forms, the Blue Ocean of today (soon to become Red)?  Is this truly the future, the destiny of retail and many other industries?  These are just examples of threads/directions that you can discuss along with the many others that you all will develop over the time frame this board is open. 
Enjoy this topic!  Dan
Grading:  To earn points, you must participate by stating your comments to the topic (original posts) and responding to your classmates posts (replies). You are required to have a minimum of two original posts and two responses to classmates posts per discussion board. To earn all 20 points, your posts need to be well-thought out, clearly worded using complete sentences and be value-added to the overall discussion. You need to read all of your classmates posts, not just a few.  Feel free to share personal work experiences which uses these concepts in the discussion topic as well as performing some additional research and share articles, videos, etc with your classmates.  Enjoy this discussion board and view it as an intellectual conversation and not as something that you have to do in order to earn points.