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Blue Ocean Strategy, How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant (Audio CD)
by W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne
| Category:
Strategy, Competition, Innovation, Value creation |
| Market price: ¥ 328.00
MSL price:
¥ 298.00
[ Shop incentives ]
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
MSL Pointer Review:
A useful framework of business strategy and a fine articulation of "Thinking and Doing Something New, Something Different."
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AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 13 items |
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Carlos Ghosn (President and CEO, Nissan) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
You will never again see your competition in quite the same light. Kim and Mauborgne present a compelling case for pursuing strategy with a creative, not combative, approach. Their emphases on value innovation and shareholder engagement alone make this book a must-read for both executives and students of business. |
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Nicolas G. Hayek (Chairman of the Board, Swatch Group) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
This book is extremely valuable to read. It examines the experience of companies in areas as diverse as watches, wine, cement, computers, automobiles, and even the circus, to shed light on the development of future strategies. |
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BusinessWeek (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
Blue Ocean Strategy will have you wondering why companies need so much persuasion to stay out of shark-infested waters. |
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William J. Bratton (Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
I recommend Blue Ocean Strategy to any executive in the private or public sector. It shows how to break from the status quo, create a winning future strategy, and execute this fast at low cost. As much a practical guide as an eye-opener. |
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Patrick Snowball (Chief Executive, Norwich Union Insurance) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-26 00:00>
Kim and Mauborgne's strategies are not only original but practical. Our company has used them and obtained powerful results. The authors chart a bold new path to winning the future. |
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Daniel Michael (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-26 00:00>
Blue Ocean Strategy is a fresh look at strategic planning using a market-based approach. They use the term "value innovation" which focuses on "utility, price, and cost positions," to "create and capture new demand" and to "focus on the big picture, not the numbers." They call this the reconstructionist view of strategy! This results in capturing new market space in blue oceans rather than trying to beat the competition in the same old red oceans. One of their favorite examples is Southwest Airlines. I was in a meeting with Colleen Barrett a week ago and hearing her I believe Kim and Mauborgne have hit the mark!
One of the conclusions of their study is that there are no permanently excellent industries and there are no permanently excellent companies (as presented by other current authors)! A key determinant of whether an industry or company was on a rising trajectory of strong, profitable growth was the strategic move of blue ocean creation. These moves into blue ocean were created by both industry incumbents and new entrants. The key defining feature of blue oceans was value innovative - innovation that was linked to what customers value. The result of this value innovation was not only in strong, profitable growth: this strategic move exercised a strong, positive effect on establishing a company's standing brand name in buyers' minds.
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Clint Pachl (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-26 00:00>
I am a software engineer starting an automotive advertising business. I have been edifying myself on business over the last year, absorbing all the business info I can from reading books and talking to people. I have to say that this book has been the most helpful, with its out-of-the-box thinking backed with solid real world examples and powerful, simple, and implementable strategies. Most books that address the issues of competing in a crowded market concentrate on how to develop a niche and focus a those customers that demand it. This book addresses this issue from a whole different angle, and very elegantly I might add.
The authors tell you to identify all the factors that your competitors (and you) currently compete on. Decide which factors you will eliminate and reduce, factors that reduce margins, etc. Then, focus your efforts on innovating new business factors; factors where you will not go head to head with your competition, yet offer the customer added benefits. There are so many real examples in the book along with their six strategy process that I immediately thought of a few new business factors for my upcoming business. Diverging from the status quo, in effect, moves you from the violent red ocean into the calm blue ocean. Then you need to create a barrier to your newly created ocean. If the new business factors are patentable, required large/existing/non-attainable assets, or created some other natural barrier to the market, then your safe for awhile. Otherwise you will need to use strategic pricing as your barrier, like South West Airlines did. Strategic pricing (process detailed in the book) and creating new business factors (customer benefits) IS value-innovation! This is giving the customer more for less and can only happen in the blue ocean. Companies would go broke doing this in the red ocean!
Strategic pricing will help you set your price low enough that you will attract customers from the red ocean and your newly created business factors may even attract customers that were previously non-existent. The execution of your strategy must be very swift and focused, trying to gain as much market share as quickly as possible and making it tough for competitors to enter your blue ocean, much like Microsoft and Wal-Mart have done. This strategy totally goes against the traditional "find a niche, concentrate on select customers", in-the-box kind of thinking that I have been accustomed to reading for the last year.
I really love this book and could go on and on. I would easily have paid many times more for this book, as it has become an asset to my new business. As a software guy, all problems look like software problems (if the customers don't like it, add more bells and whistles, etc.). Well, I think this book has finally got me thinking like a business savvy exec. |
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Henry Cate (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-26 00:00>
A "Blue Ocean" represents an uncontested market, a product or service that only one company is selling. The authors show that historically this has been the most profitable situation to be in, as opposed to a market with lots of competitors, or a "Red Ocean." The authors found that most of the tools for developing strategies in business are focused on "Red Oceans." The authors found that most "Red Ocean" strategies take the current industry's structural conditions as a given. A "Blue Ocean Strategy" sees market boundaries and industry structures as flexible. This book was written to help people find new markets, analyze if the new market could be profitable, and then develops strategies for fully exploiting the new market.
One of the key tools for finding new markets is what the authors call a "Strategy Canvas." The idea is to pick a set of key factors that current markets focus on, then on a scale from low to high put a point for where a market is for each factor, and then draw a line for a market. By looking at where there are no lines you may get some ideas for new markets.
Once a new market is identified the authors help analyze if there is potential for making money. They have a set of ideas on how to look beyond the existing demand, more importantly they provide some tools and processes for the analysis just how big a new market might be.
And once the decision is made to move into a new market, the authors have ideas on how to organize the business. They made the point that there is often a lot of reluctance to make changes and provide some ideas on how to get employees on board.
In many ways developing a new market, or a "Blue Ocean," is a lot of work. And in the past it has been very risky. By using the ideas from "Blue Ocean Strategy" businesses will have a better chance of finding and developing profitable new markets. It will be interesting to see if there is a new emphasis by businesses to more systematically look for new markets, and where that leads us.
This is going to be a classic. It is very readable, and worth rereading. The key insights and principles in the book are well explained, and supported by lots of examples. People will be reading it for the next twenty or more years. If you enjoy books about business, read this book. If you are looking for ways to expand or develop your business, read this book. |
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Tim Kindler (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-26 00:00>
Kim and Mauborgne present a compare and contrast analysis of Red Oceans (where most companies engage in bloody competition in a wide range of industries) vs Blue Ocean (where companies operate in new, uncontested waters). The authors' description of Red Oceans is spot on - as they describe many industries with little real differentiation and the resulting intense competition. Blue Oceans, on the other hand, offer the enticing prospect of clear differentiation, competitive advantage, and higher profit margins. Although the framework, model and tools presented are interesting, it is not clear that the companies cited as operating in blue oceans actually went through anything resembling the strategic tools presented in order to create their "blue ocean" opportunities. It is more of a post-hoc review. That gripe notwithstanding, the book is worth a read, especially by those involved in strategic planning, market development, and new product development. |
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Gary Wang (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-26 00:00>
This popular book has been translated into most of the world's major languages including Chinese. In China, the Chinese translation edition has been on top of the business bestseller list for many weeks. You obviously feel the managers and entrepreneurs' hunger for winning strategies to stay in business in face of the cutthroat competition.
While the biggest strength of this book in my opinion is to give readers a conceptual framework to focus on new business opportunities when planning their business strategy, what the authors suggest is never to be taken as an immediate remedy. Most industries face tough competition, and managers and entrepreneurs are naturally inclined to look out of the window to see if they can spot a new route to sustained business growth. But let me tell you, developing new business through BD or R&D is so so hard and you know that only after you have exhausted lots of resources and have tried. I used to head a business unit of a leading American chemical firm in China and we tried hard to expand the market through aggressive BD initiatives committing resources as well as headquarters support. We chose this new business strategy trying to convert business from not-in-the-kind competition to help us attain the 20% growth target. The challenge was huge with the fact that our market share had been very high, and the industry growth was only about 12%. All the efforts proved less helpful after 18 months because the ambitious conversion took far more time and resources than we had thought. We ended up giving up the strategy.
The lesson is that we can always choose to think big and long term, but a good strategy can never be based on pure reasoning or market research not thoroughly validated. A good strategy has to be based on the resources available (time, manpower, money, experience, alliances/ relationships, and so on). Many new business initiatives failed because of lack of resources or a discipline to get the resources committed by the top. Or in other words, the strategy itself is basically flawed because the resource factor has not been placed on top of the strategy formulation.
Overall I recommend Blue Ocean Strategy as a useful framework. It helps you think out of the box while you're also looking at the cost and differentiation side of your competitive strategy. |
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1 2 | Total 2 pages 13 items |
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