This is a very good book. I am reading it for the first time because the new one has come out and I wanted a baseline. The premise is simple most competitors compete in price, variety, quality etc but the profits are slim and market is stagnant. This is called the red (bloody) ocean. To win big, you need to develop the Blue Ocean Strategy, bu looking into unexplored market. For example, Cirque du Soleil had transformed circus performance into sort of a theatre thing, attracting audience who would not mind paying the high price for a nice performance. It also managed to cut costs by doing away with the animals.

This is all very well and good, but sometimes success is only obvious after the fact. Even Steve Jobs did not get everything right and had a few products that flopped. It is of course easy to see after the facts, but the only way to develop these blue oceans is to try and try and try again.

The unforeseen effect of this book has been the explicit point made in this book: Do not focus on your existing customers because they are relatively happy anyway, and competition is stiff; focus on getting new customers instead as they are the Blues. This has caused some companies, including my local cable TV company giving their customers the feeling that they don't treasure their existing customers and are just nice to the new ones. That is the saddest side effect of this international best seller.

This brought a lot of perspective from the competing industry. Create a blue ocean and you won't be competing directly with the competition and make more money blah, blah, blah. I do recommend it, didn't need an extended version, could have cut to the chase much more. Many examples used that were great, but some were just trying to get it to fit into the theory.

A good foundational read for the strategist. While the insights are not new, the book serves to put another framework into understanding value creation, validating the theory, and tackling change management at a high level.

I appreciate that it's written in an easily digestible format, likely with its target C-level audience in mind.

I never write reviews. But I’ll do it this time. It will be at least some satisfaction and compensation for time wasted on this book.

Blue ocean as a concept - fine. Nothing wrong about it. But do you have to describe it in the most boring way possible? It is so boring it’s deadly - you’ll fell asleep and choke to death trying to chew it.

Good luck

A good and concise book on using strategy to unlock new demand (in blue ocean) and making competition irrelevant, instead of competing in existing market space (of red ocean).

Through good real life examples of companies teaches you the importance of value innovation over technology innovation.

The main idea is pretty good and there are lots of good cases (I had no idea about the Yellowtail wine story!), lots of good information on how to handle the move towards a blue ocean strategy (specially making sure people are aware of what is going on before making brutal changes) and looking for places where you can improve the business. Most of the "tips" are stuff you will find in many other management books, the most interesting pieces are the case studies and the main idea itself (even if there are some cases, like the NYC policing story, that we now know aren't really what they say it was). They're also very forthcoming in saying that there are no companies that have been producing blue oceans all the time so it's unlikely we'll ever see one, but it's still important to look for it and build it, creating new markets and driving people towards these new markets so you can grow your business or create a new business that is not going to be fighting every step along the way with other incumbents.

Chiar dacă anul ăsta se fac 16 ani de când a fost publicată, ideile prezentate sunt destul de atemporale. Valoarea pe care ar trebui să o aducă există. Din păcate vârsta și-o arată la cât de ușor e de citit, de ascultat în cazul meu.

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 your competition, why don't you make them irrelevant!

The book idea is to give your customers better services without any head-to head competition. It gives you a framework helps you to re-design your products/services. It helps you find your niches.

The book is quite easy to read and has an excellent and brilliant idea. It's a must for anyone responsible in decision making.

Socrates said: The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

This book is one of the finest blueprints to build the new.

It is a slow starter, however I picked up incredible nuggets from the book. Here are a few to build something new:

1. Focus on customers than competitors
2. The four actions framework
3. Look across alternate industries to build value (the circus + theatre example)
4. Look across the value chain of buyers (Novo Insulin example)
5. Complementary products or services (baby sitting service in a theatre)
6. Look at the conditioning of both buyers and sellers and bring something new
7. Balance the rational and emotional - keep asking why (the Cement company example from Mexico)
8. Learn lessons from non-customers
9. Buyer utility map
10. Buyer experience cycle
11. Your IP + Buyer value = Great success (New technology does not necessarily translate into buyer value, one needs to apply it.)
12. A great leadership style to bring change: engage (listen) + explain (why the final decision was made) + set expectations (what is expected from people)
13. Structuralist (demand-supply + PEST overview) v/s. Reconstructionist views of strategy (Value Innovation) - I found this to be the best part of the book.

I would recommend the book to everyone for whom differentiation and strategy are critical.

Full review at Solomon Says:

Let's go through the pros and cons of this book. The idea that there are no eternally excellent companies, and that the strategic move, instead of the company should be the unit of analysis is compelling. The authors argue that all companies make mistakes, so we should look to their strategic moves for excellence or the lack thereof instead of the companies themselves.

Now for the con, which is pretty much the existence of this book. Anybody even remotely familiar with business will realize what a gigantic truism Blue Ocean Strategy is. “Create awesome things that everyone and their grandmother wants.”. This is literally all the book says. Sure. Why Not!!! Just let me put on my magic hat!

Innovation of the type that Kim and Mauborgne are suggesting is very, very hard. The Blue Ocean Strategy fails to acknowledge this difficulty. It takes the greatest challenge of corporate strategy and peddles an oversimplified solution through anecdotes and fancy terms.

Blue Ocean Strategy is not a theory. There is neither hypothesis nor attempted proof here. The whole thing goes backwards from effects to causes. What little “theory” is given is self-validating. We already know what the traits of a successful product/service are. It adds value to peoples lives and makes money for the company. The authors have made these two the hallmark of their “value innovation”, and since every successful new business meets these criteria, the authors pretend that the theroy is valid.

The book is also guilty of what Nassim Taleb calls “survivorship bias”. It analyzes only successful cases of blue ocean creation. If there is any industry segment which is trying to create blue oceans, it is startups. How many startups did all that this book suggests and yet failed?

Blue Ocean Strategy is a great tag line, but is actually a descriptive work masquerading as prescriptive theory. Read it only if you must.

I remember as a child asking my dad why I should pick up skiing over snowboarding. He responded that while snowboarding was certainly fun, because of its popularity it was also commonplace. Reasonably talented teenage snowboarders were a dime a dozen on any ski hill. Good young skiers, however, were few and far between. Reflecting on the choice between becoming one of the unwashed masses of snowboarders or one of the few, the happy few skiers, I chose the latter. Over the years being a reasonably good skier has served me well, differentiating myself from many of my peers and has created numerous business relationships and opportunities.

Kim and his co-authors take this basic concept and apply it to business. They suggest that positioning one's company away from popular and hotly contested "red ocean" and moving to less frequented "blue ocean" can pay huge dividends.

Blue Ocean Strategy differentiates itself from many business strategy books in that it doesn't simply dwell on this semi-novel strategic formulation, instead it includes numerous tools and suggestions for actively moving a company from red to blue ocean. Although some of the suggestions strike me as too esoteric to prove useful in a real business, the majority are simple, straight-forward, and can be utilized as useful thought experiments if nothing else.

All in all I found the book engaging a worthwhile read.

كتاب استراتيجية المحيط الأزرق
و. تشان. كيم & رينية ماوبرغن
مراجعة وسام مصلح
هذا الكتاب عبارة عن إيمان عميق بالتغيير ويحتوي أفكار لا تناسب من يطمح في حياته لمجرد البقاء والاستمرار بشكل ما، إنما هو لم يريد أن يحدث فرقا، وينشئ شركة، تُبنى للمستقبل الذي يربح فيه الزبون كما يربح الموظفون وذوو العلاقة والمجتمع. وهذا كله ليس سهلا ولكنه يستحق المحاولة.
يصنف الكتاب المنافسة بين الشركات على المساحات السوقية بمثابة كالمحيط الذي يرغب كل المتنافسين على الحصول على أكبر نصيب منه، ولكن الجديد أنه صنفها باللونين الأحمر والأزرق، حيث أشار باللون الأحمر لتلك الأسواق المكتظة بالمنافسين والتي تعمل على مبدأ التنافس وأطلق عليها المحيطات الحمراء حيث نسبة الخسائر عالية والمساحة ضيقة جدا على المتنافسين. كما أنه أشار باللون الأزرق لتلك المساحات الخالية من المنافسين والتي تعبر عن الشركات التي ابتكرت أعمال ومنتجات جديدة فتحت لها محيطات هادئة وخالية من المنافسين وبعوائد عالية جدا وبدون جهد كبير.
وهنا يظهر ابتكار هذا الكتاب الرائع حيث أنه رسم صورة ذهنية عالية لتمثيل كلا من الشركات التقليدية والشركات الابتكارية. وهو الأمر الذي سيركز عليه في الكتاب ليطرح استراتيجيات ووسائل تحقيق الانتقال من المحيطات الحمراء إلى المحيطات الزرقاء.
ويذكر أن استراتيجية المحيط الأزرق هي بمثابة تحدي كبير أمام الشركات لتنتشل نفسها من المنافسة الدموية التي تتميز بها المحيطات الحمراء وذلك عبر خلق مساحة من السوق لا منازع فيها بحيث تصبح المنافسة أمرا غير مطروح. ويقوم هذا الكتاب بأكثر من مجرد تحدي الشركات فهو يقدم الطريقة لإنجاز هذا.
السؤال الذي يقفز في الأذهان الآن، كيفية إيجاد هذه المحيطات الزرقاء وإحكام القبضة عليها؟!
يذكر الكتاب قصة طريفة تسهل علينا إدراك مفهوم المحيطات الزرقاء " وهي قصة سيرك الشمس" الذي قدم مفهوم جديد في عروض السرك وأرباح عالية في الوقت الذي كانت المؤشرات تشير إلى اكتظاظ السوق بمثل هذه المسارح والتي بدأ يقل عليها لإقبال في ظل ظهور أنواع أخرى من وسائل الترفيه. فلقد عمل مسرح الشمس على فنح مساحة سوق جديدة لم تكن مطروقة من قبل وجعلت المنافسة غير مطروحة وخاطب المسرح شريحة جديدة من الزبائن البالغين المثقفين المستعدين لدفع ثمن التذكرة لحضور مثل هذه العروض الراقية فكريا وفنيا. بكل بساطة لقد عرف سرك الشمس كيف يجد المحيط الأزرق بأن حقق التميز وقلل الكلفة عليه وعلى الزبون، وهو جوهر الترفيه، فبدلا من اتباع المنطق المتعارف عليه في الجري وراء المنافسة وتقديم حلول أفضل للمشكلة القائمة وهي تقديم عرض سيرك أكثر وإثارة، بحث سيرك الشمس عن تقديم المرح والإثارة المميزة للسيرك إضافة إلى تقديم المستوى الفكري والغنى الفني للمسرح في الوقت نفسه. فجعل من خلطة المسرح والسيرك منتجا جديدا صنع به مساحة جديدة خالية من المنافسين.
ويطرح المؤلفان فكرة ابتكار القيمة وهي حجر الزاوية في استراتيجية المحيط الأزرق، وذلك بأن تنظيم الشركة بين المنفعة والسعر والكلفة بشكل مناسب. هذه المقاربة للنظام ككل هي التي تجعل من خلق المحيطات الزرقاء استراتيجية مستدامة. تساعد استراتيجية المحيط الأزرق في التكامل بين نطاق نشاطات الشركة الوظيفية ونشاطاتها العملياتية.
وعلينا هنا أن نفرق بين الابتكارات الإنتاجية وهي التي تكون لمستويات فرعية من نظام الشركة دون التأثير على الاستراتيجية المتكاملة للشركة وهو ما قد يخفض تكاليف الشركة ولا يؤثر على منفعة الزبون من عروضها. أما ابتكار القيمة هو أكثر من مجرد ابتكار بل هو يتعلق باستراتيجية كاملة لكل النظام السائد في الشركة لتحقيق قفزة في القيمة للمستهلك وللشركة نفسها. وبغياب مثل هذه المقاربة الكاملة سيبقى الابتكار بعيدا عن جوهر الاستراتيجية.