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Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant

w. chan kim renée mauborgne

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In this perennial bestseller, embraced by organizations and industries worldwide, globally preeminent management thinkers W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne challenge everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success. Recognized as one of the most iconic and impactful strategy books ever written, BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY, now updated with fresh content from the authors, argues that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves (spanning more than 100 years across 30 industries), the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors but from creating "blue oceans"—untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.

6 pages, Audio CD

First published January 1,2004

This edition

Format
6 pages, Audio CD
Published
November 1, 2007 by Gildan Media
ISBN
9781596590687
ASIN
1596590688
Language
English

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About the author

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w. chan kim

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W. Chan Kim is the Co-Director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute and a Chair Professor of Strategy and International Management at INSEAD. His book Blue Ocean Strategy, co-authored with Renée Mauborgne, has sold 3.6 million copies and is recognized as one of the most iconic and impactful strategy books ever written. It is being published in a record-breaking 44 languages and is a bestseller across five continents.
Kim is ranked in the top 3 management gurus in the world in the Thinkers50 listing of the World's Top Management Gurus. He was selected for the 2011 Leadership Hall of Fame by Fast Company magazine and was named among the world's top 5 best business school professors by MBA Rankings. He also received the Nobels Colloquia Prize for Leadership on Business and Economic Thinking. He is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and an advisory member for the European Union. He also serves as an advisor to several countries.

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 100 votes)
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31(31%)
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32(32%)
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37(37%)
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jak_III
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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This book raises a very interesting question which, I believe, does not get enough attention in business writing - succeeding by avoiding competition. But other than getting you to think about this topic and a couple of cool tips on performing organizational change, this book contains very little useful information. It spreads itself too thin and accomplishes nothing
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PlOtRuN
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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Another great model. That doesn't take into account halo effect and bias in the data. Great for having a tool and framework for business model, but not an generalised model. Read Phil Rosenzweig book to get perspectives on the common mistakes from its data
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StrawbearyHoney
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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Очаквах нещо съвсем различно, но книгата ми допадна, защото на разбираем за неикономист език и с много примери разказва за стратегията Син океан и способността на някои компании да променят правилата на играта, като създават толкова иновативни продукти и услуги, че за известно време нямат никаква конкуренция. Airbnb, Uber и подобни. Книгата е писана по-отдавна, някъде през 90-те може би, затова примерите са други, но наистина бяха много интересни. Как компаниите да напускат "червения" океан, където безспирно се състезават с конкуренцията чрез по-добри качества и цена, и да погледнат нещата отвъд собствената си индустрия, за да разберат какви фундаментални промени могат да предложат, които да задоволят нуждите на клиентите си. На места звучи малко сладникаво и еднозначно, но за неикономисти, като начин за разчуване на съзнанието ми беше приятно :-)
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Last_Aeon
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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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.
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Badass_Hole
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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I read this book as a way to prepare for my full time job (started back in July) and honestly it is a good read to understand the organization processes of a company. Little did I know that this book related to many topics that I learned in my UX classes during my undergrad journey. Overall, it was a good read and I would definitely recommend this book.
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Ayveh
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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I found an entire paragraph that had been copy-pasted from one chapter to another. Poor writing and editing lowered my opinion of this book, as well as not having a strong summarizing chapter. I didn't realize it was ending until I saw the Appendices starting.
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devilsfruitt
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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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
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Churt_Fumpus
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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This is 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 that other firms cannot easily imitate them. This is "blue ocean" strategy - in which you are the only fish in a big pond. The alternative, of course, is "red ocean" strategy - red because there are other fishes in the pond, whose competition will bloody the waters. Get the analogy?? Examples are provided of firms that have done this and suggestions are made about how to copy them. The writing style is crisp.

OK, but the problem is that there is nothing new here.

Coming up with a distinctive position that is very attractive to customers and that will justify high prices and good profits is a very old idea. Who wouldn't want to do that? The problem is that finding such opportunities happens most times through a combination of some skill and more luck. The firms that do this, and the examples in the book, have not escaped competition and their advantage does not last for long on average.

Telling someone to go out and follow such a strategy is a little bit like the old joke about the cure to poverty being simple - step 1, get yourself a million dollars; Step 2 . . .
(I think Steve Martin originally did this.)

The examples are not really helpful. Given a successful firm, it will not prove hard to find a reason why it succeeded. That is not helpful for someone else moving forward.

Overall, this is a popular treatment of corporate strategy that oversimplifies a lot. Careful readers can find better meals on which to chew.
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