Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space And Make The Competition Irrelevant [NOOK Book]

A definate must read...

I extensively use Blue Ocean Strategy with my clients to help them find and dominate uncontested market space. I have seen first hand, how their research can be applied to mid-sized corporations regardless of industry. My clients commend the 'ease of use' of the Strategy Canvas in identifying how they should position their organizations to create vast blue oceans. A must read for any business leaders looking to achieve profitable and sustainable corporate growth. Robert Schmidt Prophet Strategies

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Lots of practical and understandable information

Kim and Mauborgne have created an excellent counterpoint to the traditional strategic viewpoints of thought leaders like Michael Porter. Their use of figures such as the strategy canvas and the Eliminate-Reduce-Raise-Create grid provide simple tools to help the reader understand the concepts presented. The authors support their findings with significant research from a number of industries, including the New York Police Department. If there is one area of the book that could be improved, it would be the sections on implementing and executing strategies. Some of the 'tipping point' strategies are found in a number of books without a great deal of additional insight. However, this minor drawback does not significantly distract from what is a great way to look at strategy from an alternative viewpoint. I would strongly recommend reading this book with some of the strategy books or articles from Michael Porter to understand the different approaches to understanding strategic management. This contrast will help a reader understand both viewpoints.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

A MUST Read!

If you want to move forward - READ THIS BOOK! Don't think about it, just do it!

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

A compelling and highly useful book on business strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy is an outstanding book. It clearly outlines the steps to developing new market space and breaking out of the trap of competing head to head with competition. Red oceans are defined as bloody battlegrounds where companies compete against each other in a head to head fashion. Blue oceans are new market space conceived by forward thinking managers to de-commoditize their businesses. Examples of this are provided such as Curves, Southwest Airlines, Cirque du Soleil, Yellowtail Wine, Bloomberg, and even the New York City Police Department.

Tools such as the strategy canvas, the four actions and the blue ocean idea index are provided to assist the reader in visualizing how to create a blue ocean in their industry.

The authors also provide relevant direction on how to successfully integrate a blue ocean strategy into any company by selling it into the organization correctly. Finally, the very useful appendix provides detailed examples in history of continual blue ocean creation over decades. Examples given are the automotive, computer and theater industries.

I would highly recommend this book to any business person or business student.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Innovate your strategy, not just your products

In direct opposition to 'environmental determinism', the perspective that businesses must simply accept the realities and boundaries of their markets, the Blue Ocean Strategy offers an enticing alternative. Why not stretch the boundary or break it entirely by creating a value innovation that customers can use immediately? Examples of Blue Ocean companies are Starbucks, The Body Shop and Cirque du Soleil. They define their target market and function in a way that differentiates them so solidly from their competition as to leave them without much competition at all. There are six steps to the Blue Ocean Strategy: 1. Reconstruct market boundaries. Strategically examine your industry's key competitive drivers. 2. Focus on the big picture, not the numbers. Consider the competitive environment through your customer's eyes so that you stay focused on what matters to them. 3. Reach beyond existing demand. Don't just focus on your current customers. Look for your potential customers. 4. Get the strategic sequence right. Technological innovation does not guarantee market success. The technology must be made relevant to customers and provide value. 5. Overcome key organizational hurdles. 6. Build execution into strategy. Link engagement, explanation and expectation with the actual process of developing the strategy. Executing a blue ocean strategy will require trust among your team.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

thats what i was expecting!!!!

This book is a must for businesses of all industries. blue ocean strategy is one of my inspirations...i enjoyed reading it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Good addition

Blue Ocean Strategy provides a unique and comprehensive approach to strategy that can be applied to products, services, police departments, or any organization attempting to create an innovative strategy to accomplish goals. I really enjoyed the parts referring to William J. Bratton and his work with the New York police department. I also like the appendix, which describes the blue ocean strategies from the past including the automotive industry and the computer industry. Overall, I think it is a good addition to my library.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A Must-Read!

This breakthrough book provides an organized framework for identifying and implementing out-of-the-box 'blue ocean strategies' in all industries. The blue ocean strategy explains how to sail your business into new markets with less competition and greater profitability. Disarmingly written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, the book is energized with fresh research about the impact of innovative ideas on old industries. The compelling business examples alone are worth taking this cruise. Even the appendices make interesting reading and contain more detailed examples about products ranging from the Model T to movie theaters (the authors explain how innovators reinvented theaters and created their own blue ocean phenomena). While the book provides its share of rules and principles for intrepid strategists to follow, complete with its own jargon, managers easily can navigate right to the authors¿ key strategic advice. We consider this book essential for any strategist or entrepreneur who wants to move out of intensively competitive shark-infested waters and into the relative tranquility of the open blue ocean. Getting there isn¿t risk-free, but great adventure awaits the intrepid executive who makes the voyage.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Eye opening and innovative

This book is a must for businesses of all sizes. The chapter on reconstructing market boundaries is worth the price alone. Blue Ocean Strategy inspires me every time I read it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Wasn't what I was expecting

Would probably help those who have been attempting to compete in the 'Red Ocean', I was essentially looking for the details rather than the overall strategy, since this is more or less something that we have already put in practice. I also disagreed to some extent that any business can make competition completely irrelevant. There are enough alternatives for people today that the consumer is 'looking across' the alternatives as much as the producers are. However, the overall point of the book is good, especially if you find yourself constantly competing neck & neck with your competition.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A Great Book of Wisdoms

Dr. Kim and Professor Mauborgne have successfully redefined the traditionally taken-for-granted academic and practical strategy from competition to value innovation. Blue Ocean Strategy, a landmark work by the most distinguished thinkers, is filled with wisdoms of economics, finance, marketing, organizational behavior, human resources management, and most importantly humankind¿s search for meaning. The authors challenge CEOs, top government officials and scholars to break through our intellectual and psychological attachment to the competition-based Red Ocean strategy. Organizations and entrepreneurs creating Blue Ocean strategic moves will survive and succeed in the increasingly globalized economy.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A quantum leap in business strategy - This book will completely change the way we think about our businesses

Conventional strategy books, including Porter¿s, usually focus on analysis of existing market competition as given. Blue Ocean Strategy, in contrast, provokes our creativity and makes us think beyond existing markets, and provides us with a how-to guide to the thinking process and idea implementation. It is a success strategy where everyone can win. It is easy to understand and offers practical methods and frameworks we can apply to any businesses, large or small, in any industries. Before reading this book, I was skeptical about the practicality of its messages and thought this could be another academic book with many assumptions, complicated analytical tools and jargons mainly to entertain strategy consultants and business executives of large corporations for their brain exercises. I was so wrong. This book of groundbreaking principles with practical frameworks is for every business professional like us to read. We can gain a lot of insights into applying creativity in our day-to-day businesses.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Groundbreaking work

INSEAD Professors Kim and Mauborgne have written extensively about Blue Ocean Strategy / Value Innovation over the past few years in the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal and other publications. With 'Blue Ocean Strategy,' they put their work into book form for the first time, and with very impressive results. In an era of globalization, rapid technological development and the commoditization of products, companies and countries need to find new ways to compete. Businesses cannot remain profitable through traditional ¿military-style¿ or ¿Red Ocean¿ strategy, working within existing markets to undercut competitors¿ prices or exploit ever-shrinking niches. Rather, they need to develop new markets, creating their own ¿Blue Oceans.¿ Kim and Mauborgne provide examples of Blue Ocean successes like Southwest Airlines, Cirque de Soleil, and Yellow Tail, companies that created new markets. They also provide a methodology companies can use to develop ¿Blue Oceans.¿ A groundbreaking work that I highly recommend.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Go Beyond Competiting

¿Blue Ocean Strategy¿ is a must read for all business leaders who are responsible for charting their companies¿ future. Professors Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim offer business leaders a blueprint for creating uncontested market space and making the competition irrelevant. This book offers important and fresh insights into business strategy that challenges the widely accepted wisdom of competitive advantage and competitive benchmarking. Kim and Mauborgne clearly articulate the theory of ¿Blue Ocean Strategy¿ and elegantly bring the theory to life with entertaining and educational examples. These examples show how companies in mature and unattractive industries have created new market space. In contrast to competion-based red ocean strategies, value innovation blue ocean strategies are created through the actions and beliefs of business leaders who do not accept the existing boundaries of their markets and industries. These strategies have resulted in the creation of new untapped demand and profitable growth that have reached beyond existing customers and have turned non-customers into customers. While competition-based red ocean strategies see either differentiation or low cost as a strategic choice, companies following the logic of blue ocean strategy seek to break the value-cost trade-off by pursuing differentiation and low-cost simultaneously. Up to this point, it has been taken for granted that creating new growth strategies was risky, left to entrepreneurs, and serendipitous. Kim and Mauborgne show that this need not be the case. Through their 15 years of research spanning over 100 years of business, Kim and Mauborgne have succeeded in formulating a comprehensive and systematic set of analytical frameworks to guide management teams in discovering new blue oceans while simultaneously reducing the risk that is typically assumed with growth. Kim and Mauborgne articulate six principles for creating blue oceans, explain an associated framework to support implementation of each principle, and demonstrate how each principle will help business leaders to minimize each specific risk factor that is typically encountered during growth strategy formulation and execution efforts. Additionally the principles in this book will help business leaders to think through how to sequence their strategic moves, tune their business models and engage their organizations in the blue ocean strategy process so that they can not only create new ideas, but more importantly realize healthy profits from them.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Value Innovation - strategy book of the year 2005?

The authors have published many articles over the last decade on Value Innovation. This is their first book. It summarizes their extensive knowledge on out-of-the-box strategic thinking. I'm looking forward to reading it. This review is based on their article in Harvard Business Review, Oct 2004, on 'Blue Ocean Strategy'. What is a BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY? The authors explain it by comparing it to a red ocean strategy (traditional strategic thinking): 1. DO NOT compete in existing market space. INSTEAD you should create uncontested market space. 2. DO NOT beat the competition. INSTEAD you should make the competition irrelevant. 3. DO NOT exploit existing demand. INSTEAD you should create and capture new demand. 4. DO NOT make the value/cost trade-off. INSTEAD you should break the value/cost trade-off. 5. DO NOT align the whole system of a company's activities with its strategic choice of differentiation or low cost. INSTEAD you should align the whole system of a company's activities in pursuit of both differentiation and low cost. A red ocean strategy is based on traditional strategic thinking - e.g. Harvard's strategy guru Michael Porter - and is what the authors believe you should not do. A blue ocean is created in the region where a company's actions favourably affect both its cost structure and it value proposition to buyers. Cost savings are made from eliminating and reducing the factors an industry competes on. Buyer value is lifted by raising and creating elements the industry has never offered. Over time, costs are reduced further as scale economies kick in, due to the high sales volumes that superior value generates. There are two ways to create blue oceans. In a few cases, firms can give rise to completely new industries, as eBay did with the online auction industry. But in most cases, a blue ocean is created from within a red ocean when a company alters the boundaries of an existing industry. The authors have studied more than 150 blue ocean creations in over 30 industries. Examples include: - Japanese fuel-efficient autos (mid-70s) and Chrysler minivan (1984) - Apple personal computer (1978) and Dell's built-to-order computers (mid-1990s). The INSEAD professors Kim and Mauborgne have written regularly on the subject of Value Innovation since 1997 in Harvard Business Review. Being a business development manager, their thought leadership on strategic innovation has inspired me tremendously over the years. Their articles have been standard texts for many MBA students for some time (e.g. 'Value Innovation', 'Creating New Market Space', 'Charting your Company's Future'). I expect their first book to be just as dominant in any strategy library as Michael Porter's books (the guru behind the classic red ocean strategies). The rating is based on their articles so far. Peter Leerskov, M.Sc. in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Just Say "No"!

Can someone explain to me why the nook edition costs $16.47, while the Kindle edition costs just $9.88 and even the hardcover edition costs just $13.47? I like my nook Color, but I refuse to be taken advantage of like this. Wise up B&N . . ! (The comment system forces us to pick a rating, so I picked "above average". I have been told that it is a very good book.)

Nice book

Ver good read i think

Worth the read

There are a lot of great concepts to explore. My mind is spinning with ideas now.

A Road Map to a Better Strategy

Written in a very understandable format, Blue Ocean Strategy by W.Chan Kin and Renee Maugorgne expose a fantastic plan to step out of the pack of competitors. The authors lay out their strategy canvas that can be used to plan and take action when picking new directions for your company or products. The strategy canvas is part planning tool and part implementation tool. Through great examples and stories Blue Ocean Strategy really got my mind thinking in new ways. Well worth the read if it is your job to plan ahead. For a more detailed review visit BudwickOnBooks.blogspot.com

Check out Blue Ocean Strategy

will help in affirming change-oriented behaviors