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Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant Posters
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Rating:  -
This book provides 'out of the box' thinking for any executives struggling with competition and being perceived as a 'commodity' in their marketplace. Innovating your value and differentiating yourself to the portion of the market that the masses of competitors are not servicing is one path to success. The examples of Cirque du Soleil, Yellow Tail Wines and NetJets shows how creative strategy can move you out of the 'Red Ocean' (competitive blood bath) and into the 'Blue Ocean' (new market realm) to ultimately make the competition irrelevant.
I highly recommend this book to my clients that feel like they are stuck in a 'commodity play'. Value Innovate. Don't be a commodity!
Kevin A. McCann
President & CEO
Executive Strategy Group, LLC
http://www.executivestrategygroup.com
"Value Defined, Value Delivered" (tm)
Rating:  -
Aristotle tells in his Poetics about the figures of speech that can be used by poets and orators, then he adds: "It is a great thing to make a fitting use of each of one of these devices, but the greatest thing of all is being a master of metaphors. This alone can be gotten from no one else, and is the sign of born talent, since to use metaphor well is to have a sense for likeness."
Conversely, to use a bad metaphor is a sure sign of poor taste. And to use it repeatedly and in an incoherent manner not only demonstrates lack of poetical sense, but also denotes poor reasoning.
In their essay, Kim and Mauborgne use the evocative powers of the ocean to help corporate executives craft innovative business strategies. This is altogether fitting: the sea is the mirror of man's soul, and navigating on uncharted waters has always been a powerful metaphor of human endeavor. Management discourse is replete with terms borrowed from navigation, from being at the helm to toiling in the hold.
Indeed, as argued by the authors, corporate strategy would gain from distancing itself from the vocabulary of war-making and from using bellicose metaphors, and should instead develop the analogy with the art of seafaring. Forget Sun Tzu and Clausewitz, welcome to Bougainville and Cook. Captains of industry are more like masters and commanders of vessels riding with the tide of consumers' demand than generals engaged in a battle with the competition.
The Blue Ocean therefore provides a good catch phrase for a spirit of adventure, endless possibilities, and the thrill of discovery. It is what every entrepreneur should aspire. The Red Ocean, in turn, is more difficult to construe. I have been reminded of the "wine-dark sea" of Homer, or of the River Tiber foaming with blood as in Virgil. The image here is menacing and frightening, and those waters should be avoided by all business leaders.
Provided, of course, the seagoing vessel is the object of comparison for a business enterprise. This is not very clear in the text. The authors sometimes refer to swimming, implying that the entrepreneur is compared to a large fish, maybe a shark. Indeed, only sharks competing for a bloody prey can turn the ocean into red. But if one has to espouse the form and character of a shark, on has to behave like one. For sharks, swimming in red oceans is much better than patrolling blue ones. Blood is what they are after, and therefore they love to cruise bloody waters.
The metaphor gets even more illogical. The authors write about creating one's blue ocean within a red ocean, they give advise on how to unlock an ocean, or they refer to the cornerstone (sic) of a blue ocean strategy. Again if you are a shark, you can create your pool of bloody water within an ocean of blue, but the reverse is nonsensical. Creating an ocean defies common sense and even artistic license. Mixing blue and red will only give you purple. And cornerstones put into any pool of water will sink to the bottom.
Maybe I am trying to read too much into this metaphor. Like a simple melody or the silly lyrics of a song, its purpose is to stick to the mind and to become a self-evident reference. Blue and red oceans are sticky labels: even when you would like to ignore them, you cannot help but using them when you discuss their content. The reason behind this stickiness is self-reference: precisely because the image is the message, you cannot go beyond the metaphor to reach a core meaning. There is nothing beyond the call to imagination.
Rating:  -
I will not say this book is the defininate guide to success but does provide a new way of looking at the market, in particular an alternative look on the market.
By not only focussing on cost reduction, but more on getting more people interested in your product, this book gives some eye openers.
Even if it's not practical for you, the book is easy and entertaining to read and therefore no waste of time.
Rating: -
Today, competition between companies is rampant and bloody, especially with the new emerging economies such as China and India. According to the authors, our industries have become overcrowded, creating a "red ocean" of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. The authors argue that while most companies compete within such red oceans, this strategy is increasingly unlikely to create profitable growth in the future. The authors argue that tomorrow's leading companies will succeed not by battling competitors, but by creating "blue oceans" of uncontested market space ripe for growth. Such strategic moves, according to the authors, render rivals obsolete and unleash new demand. The authors say, "These ideas are not for those whose ambition in life is to get by or merely to survive." (ix). The ideas in this book are meant to make a difference, and to create a company that builds a future where customers, employees, shareholders, and society win. As a side note, more than one million copies of this book were sold in the first year!
The metaphor of red and blue oceans is used to describe the market universe. Red oceans are all the industries in existence today--the known market space. In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known. Here companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of existing demand. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Products become commodities, and cutthroat competition turns the red ocean bloody. Hence the term `red oceans'.
Blue oceans, in contrast, denote all the industries not in existence today--the unknown market space, untainted by competition. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. 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 not yet explored.
This book challenges companies to break out of the red ocean of bloody competition by creating uncontested market space that makes the competition irrelevant. Instead of dividing up existing--and often shrinking--demand and benchmarking competitors, blue ocean strategy is about growing demand and breaking away from the competition. The authors say, "No company--large or small, incumbent or new entrant--can afford to be a riverboat gambler. And no company should." (x).
One such company that broke away from the competition is `Cirque du Soleil' (French for `Circus of the Sun). This Canadian company, founded in 1984 by Guy Laliberté, has forever changed the world of Circus entertainment. Instead of competing in a declining industry, with Circus profits at an all time low due to a decline in attendance and increase in overheads, Laliberté created a whole new industry in circus entertainment. The focus was no longer on animal shows, which were expensive to perform and were opposed by Animal Rights movements, but on spectacular audiovisual performances from artists from around the world. You'll have to attend a show to real know what `Cirque du Soleil' is all about. Each show is a synthesis of circus styles from around the world and has its own central theme and storyline which brings the audience into the performance by having no curtains and continuous live music.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s Cirque expanded rapidly and went from one show with 73 employees in 1984 to currently 3,500 employees from over 40 countries. `Cirque du Soleil' tours every continent and has an estimated annual revenue exceeding US$600 million. The multiple permanent Las Vegas shows alone play to more than 9,000 people a night--5% of the city's visitors--adding to the 70+ million people who have experienced `Cirque du Soleil.'
Laliberté succeeded in breaking away from the competition and creating a new demand: stunning and magical performances with a storyline from cultures spanning the globe! A visit to 'Cirque' is a journey through time and space.
`Cirque du Soleil' is just one example (and the first) the authors cite. Their research is based on more than fifteen years of research on 150 strategic moves by companies in thirty industries and spanning more than a hundred years. The authors also published a series of `Harvard Business Review' articles. Their research led them to create strategies to making the competition irrelevant.
In this book, you will be introduced to the six principles that every company can use to successfully formulate and execute blue oceans. You will learn how to reconstruct market boundaries, focus on the big picture, reach beyond existing demand, get the strategic sequence right, overcome organizational hurdles, and build execution into strategy. Basically, these strategies will chart "a bold new path to winning the future."
The authors say that there are no permanently excellent companies, just as there are no permanently excellent industries. A perfect example is Polaroid. A giant once; gone today. The industry itself has changed and evolved, with the advent of digital photography. The companies that created a new demand in this industry are the ones that survived.
Rating:  -
This book addresses a fundamental requirement of all business owners: In order to succeed, you must swim into uncharted waters and create a unique identity. Now that we know we're dealing with the concept of branding, there are five books I've read prior to Blue Ocean Strategy:
Marketing Warfare: 20th Anniversary Edition
This book introduced the military concept of "flanking" (staking your claim in an uncontested area) over 20 years ago.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
More on branding from Ries & Trout, with an additional 11 "laws" specifically targeted toward Internet branding.
The Brand Gap: Expanded Edition
"Five disciplines to help companies bridge the gap between brand strategy and brand execution"
Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands
As in "When your competitors, 'ZIG', you must 'ZAG'"...as the back-cover copy states, it's a book on how to "out-position, out-maneuver, and out-design the competition."
The Power of Unfair Advantage: How to Create It, Build it, and Use It to Maximum Effect
A tough, no-nonsense book from a business writer who witnessed the transition of "Silicon Valley" from orchards to semiconductor firms. He also summarizes Ries & Trout's "flanking" principles.
So the question is "After reading these books, what new insights did I gain from Blue Ocean Strategy?" The answer? Not many.
The first problem I have with the book is the writing style of the authors. It's just a personal preference. I prefer the more direct, hard-hitting styles of the authors I've listed above. I found myself two or three pages into selected chapters and thinking "Are you EVER going to get to the POINT?"
The second problem is that there seems to be an attempt to build a "working model" or "paradigm" and what I find myself with is a grad student term paper that doesn't really climb into the real-world business trenches with me.
YES, Cirque du Soleil makes for an interesting case study. But I'm more interested in the hard-core, nitty gritty realities of stepping out onto the battlefield and making my business stand out.
I strongly urge anyone considering the purchase of this book to either thumb through it in your local bookstore or head on over to Google Books and read the available excerpts. The writers will either win you over or they won't. I gave the book three stars for the importance of its subject matter and docked it two stars for the writing style of the authors.
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