Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant
W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
Harvard Business School Press

This is an especially thought-provoking book that, as have so many others, evolved from an article published in the Harvard Business Review. According to Kim and Mauborgne, "Blue Ocean Strategy challenges companies to break out of the red ocean of bloody competition by creating uncontested market space that makes the competition irrelevant...T More...

Keywords: blue ocean - red ocean - value innovation

How to win the competition? You can challenge your opponents on a head-to-head competition. Suppose that your target is to book 200 contracts each month. In order to fulfil the target you can compete on pricing. It means that you should give bigger discount than your opponents.

But head-to-head competition has its own limitation. There is another way to compete. A smarter way. Chan Kim and Mauborgne propose another solution: don't compete with More...

The signal-to-noise ratio of business books generally tends towards zero. They fall into one of three categories: baked-over platitudes designed to reinforce the self-esteem of the reader (see First Break all the Rules), laughably faulty reasoning (see Good to Great), and interesting ideas that are overextended and driven into the ground (see The Tipping Point). Fortunately for Blue Ocean Strategy, it tends towards the latter.

There are a few good ideas in the book, but they are shrouded in unnec More...

Intellectually dishonest. It's a massive branding excercise masquerading as strategy. Read Porter. Read Drucker. A full critique can be found probably anywhere but the main contention I had with the book is that you cannot "cut costs and differentiate" at the same time.
Take the example of the Nintendo Wii. Did they really cut costs? The argument is that compared to Nintendo GameCube it did. But what they mean is they really shaved off features and paired down the product. When strategists talk More...

The authors provide case studies on how some companies left their "bloody-red" oceans of competition for completely open blue oceans where they were unique.

Some are well-known business stories, such as Southwest Airlines becoming a low-cost provider. However, the book provides details into Southwest's underlying business strategies that may not be well known. Other case studies gave new insight into various companies and their product strategics. One interesting story, for example, was [yellow More...

Despite being sold in over 2 million copies and translated in more than 40 languages I found this book to be a dragging depressing dull book.

After struggling to read this obnoxiously smart sounding book, I asked myself, what did I learn that was new?

And the answer to this simple question was – nothing.

If you don’t have time to read this business bound no-brainer boredom of blunders, here in a single sentence is what this book is all about.
Instead of killing yourself where the markets are crowded More...

A really great read that helps solidify business strategy that's always been near the forefront of my mind but that I couldn't put words to previously.

Blue Ocean Strategy puts a concrete definition (and ample more-than-credible examples) around business frameworks that seek new marketplaces. By giving customers new and improved value while at the same time lowering their cost through innovative methods, businesses can open up "blue ocean" markets where competition is irrelevant. These are the ki More...

Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne

Blue Ocean Strategy is based on a decade-long study of strategic moves that organizations have made over 100 years in various industries. The results of the study are presented as the Blue Ocean Strategy, which is better described as a strategy to differentiate or create market space. The book is written well and presents a great paradigm for strategic business moves. Examples in book, including Home Depot, Curves, Cirque du Soleil and Netjets, More...

A new, digitally remastered version of Jaws was released on Blu-Ray this year. In the 1970s, this movie brought a new meaning to suspense. More importantly, it dramatically changed our view of the ocean. In Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant, authors Kim and Mauborgne use the shark-infested ocean analogy to share how competition works in the business world. We begin with a clear, peaceful blue ocean of new demand. It is easy to navigate an More...

It was a booming marketing strategy that suddenly every body talked about. Even my 'ex' boss!

With curiousity I bought this book to find out what is this so famous new marketing strategy?!?!? when I finally read the book, actually there is nothing new in it. It is actually the same strategy that I've learned in university. Mainly it talks about DIFFERENTIATION AND BEING DIFFERENT, that's it.

Thanks God I didn't buy the original english version that cost a fortune!!

Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne provides a method by which companies can create strategies to not only beat competition, but rise above it entirely. The authors argue that simply benchmarking against competition leads only to a slow demise, while rethinking one's entire product or service offering allows for new, untethered growth.

Blue Ocean Strategy is relevant to the trend spotting industry in that it encourages professionals to be open-minded about strategy generation. More...

This is a very well thought through and researched piece of work. It is a must -read for any CEO who wants his company to operate in a space different from the beaten track.



The book puts together a pack of simple yet powerful tools to conceptualize the new space, define it in detail, craft a profit strategy, and actualize its implementation.



The examples used are penetratively insightful, and liberal in number for the point(s) to be driven home.



Although primarily geared more for B2C businesses, t More...

Kind of a stupid book. The overall premise is, don’t compete directly with your competitors, create new markets. Of course, it falls into the classic trap that all business books seem to fall into, which is looking only at cases that support the theory and ignoring all that don’t. The theory itself is pretty obvious when you look at it - basically it argues that making a profit in any commodities market boils down to reducing costs, and that when your competitors cannot directly compete against More...

The basic premise of Blue Ocean strategy, to look past the fixed market assumptions and established competition within your industry and instead harvest "blue oceans" of untapped opportunities, is not a new one in business strategy.

Peter Drucker and Clay Christensen wrote seminal works on this topic and laid the foundation for key insights in how to create innovation and entrepreneurship within an organization.

In comparison to the very useful insights of Drucker and Christensen (and more recen More...

Great discussion about how to create uncontested markets for your products/services through "value innovation". There are some great examples throughout the book, my favorite being what Cirque du Soleil accomplished by essentially broadening the adult audience for "circus" by making it more like "theatre" while lowering the cost is takes to do either, and still charging theatre-like prices.

Besides the Cirque du Soleil example (p.25), there are some other great ones including:
* [ Yellowtail Wine More...

This is a great book to help understand how businesses can differentiate themselves from the pack and create new markets. The blue ocean is one where there are no competitors in comparison to the red ocean where all competitors are fighting for an ever shrinking piece of the pie. There are a lot of great planning ideas in here and they are illustrated with great stories. One of my favorites is the creation of Cirque du Soleil. This company took the best of theater and a circus and created a whol More...

The success of this book was from how the authors define the new term "Blue Ocean" which is easy to understand comparing to the opposite "Red or Bloody Ocean". I myself feel the Value Innovation concept is just a mixture of Low Cost Strategy and Differentiation Strategy to create a new offering to fill the gap in the market, or what the authors called "to create a new market". Another good part of the book is the tool called "Strategic Canvas" developed by the authors, that can help to make the More...

KIM, W. Chan. Strategija sinjega oceana: ustvarite nov trzni prostor in izstopite iz konkurencnega boja. Ljubljana: GV Založba. 2005. ISBN 86-7061-396-4.


str. 7- nobena pot ni lahka in ni prijateljstva, ki bi poznalo samo smeh.


str. 94: ...'naša strategija je tako dobra, da ne boste nase stranke, temveč naši OBOŽEVALCI'.


Str. : Leta 1994 je prevzel vodenje NYPD Bill Braton. kako je spremenil NY podzemno železnico, ki so jo ljudje imenovali 'greznica na tirih'? Vodstvene delavce je pripravil do t More...

This is the second book I've ever listened and it's a good use of time of my daily commute but not an experience comparable to actually reading a book.

In this case I consider the experience actually incomplete since it has quite a few references to graphic elements and it 's sometimes hard to follow without looking at the graph, chart or picture.

The book is a bit outdated using as examples of successful Blue Ocean Strategies companies that 8 years later are out of business or going through finan More...

Given its pedigree it's missing two segments - the yellow ocean (no competition, no customers) and the purple ocean (high competition, no customers). They must be saving those for a sequel. I read this because a few people had recommended it and if you think the ideal market to play in is one with no differentiation and high competition then it's a must read. Otherwise the only real value is being conversant with the buzz word. Evaluating past successes with 20/20 hindsight and talking about the More...

I can say that red oceans represent to all the industries in existence today. In the red oceans companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of product or service. If the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. the cutthroat competition turns the ocean bloody. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue ocean is an analogy to describe the wider, deeper potential of market space that is no More...

This ise a business school sort of trade book that has been getting a lots of hype. I had to read it for some other purposes so I worked through the book rather than through the numerous HBR articles. The premise of this book is that firms should not bother with messy competition, which will limit their profits and keep them warring with other competitors. Instead, firms should redefine their businesses into new offerings that are appealing to customers but are in such conditions or situations t More...

Logical, clearly written (though buzz words abound), and engaging, it's no wonder Blue Ocean Strategy was such a bestseller. Because they inevitably focus on innovative products or services (the authors use the term 'value innovation') that seemingly appear out of the blue to take a market by storm or to create a new market altogether, Blue Ocean Strategies (BOS) make the most compelling of stories. Unfortunately, the theory is weak for two reasons: the examples given, while interesting, are lar More...

Blue Ocean Strategy focuses on how to create new market opportunities in an industry. The notions presented in this book are sound, but are really nothing new (at least to a recent business school grad). The basic premise is for companies to get out of "Red Oceans" where everybody is competing on the same factors, driving price (and profits) downward. You do this by differentiating in a unique way so that you grow the market as a whole rather than just competing with others for the same pool of More...

I really enjoyed this book. I think it is really useful, not only for marketing people but for anyone. Of course, when you look at it as a whole, it seems that the book doesn't say anything new. Many of the facts, suggestions and "rules" the book provides sound so elemental, logical, even basic. But I guess that's what happens to amazing ideas: they were always there and you tend to think: "I could have come up with that". Then, why you didn't? Why only few people in business are reacting like t More...

BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY doesn't really feel like a book-length set of ideas, though the core concepts are solid: rather than competing in the space where the competition is the heaviest ("red water"), create new spaces ("blue water") for your products and services and enjoy the lack of competition . . . at least until your competitors catch on. Cirque du Soleil is one of the main case studies here: the Canadian entertainers removed the things that make circuses most "circusy" (animals, name stars, 3 More...

The material and presentation leans toward the strategy for increasing sales in a consumer market, rather than systems and infrastructure programs where there are single customers. Some mental gymnastics may be needed to apply this to the latter type of customers. Nevertheless, the discussion of value innovation (especially as opposed to technological innovation), the concept of the strategic canvas and value profile, and the encouragement to focus one�s attention on value innovation rather More...

Probably the first business book of any weight I have read, Blue Ocean is about shifting the entire paradigm in which a product or service is placed in the market as opposed to traditional strategies of differentiation along established value points. Though at its core it demands fundamental change in the way business is done, from the top to the bottom of an organization, I found that there was much to be gained from its concepts even for someone like myself who operates at the product marketin More...

This is a BFO - a Blinding Flash of the Obvious

Well put together and well read (audio version, unabridged, via audible.com)

Don't mean to have this sound like a commercial - I have to say that the book resonates because the current incarnation of my marketing business has a fundamental blue ocean strategy built in, and has since before I started in 1995.

I own an internet marketing company; web design, production, programming, hosting, rich media and Internet marketing. Before the sale of the firs More...

Every business person should strive to swim in a blue ocean, but few do. Most of us swim in a red ocean where the water is tainted with blood from relentless global competition.

Blue Ocean Strategy will help you chart a course toward uncontested market space (blue oceans) and break away from your competition. This book reached the top of my list (along with Made to Stick) of best business books I read in 2007.

The core strategy is to focus on making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in More...