Blue Ocean Strategy Book Review

Book: Blue Ocean Strategy
Author: W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
Genre: Non-fiction 
No. of Pages: 347
ISBN: 978-1-62527-449-6 (Paperback)
ASIN‏: ‎ B00O4CRR7Y
Language: English 
Published by: Harvard Business Review Press; Revised ed. edition (20 January 2014)

 

“We call it value innovation because instead of focusing on beating the competition, you focus on making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for buyers and your company, thereby opening up new and uncontested market space.” - Kim and Mauborgne

 

To innovate beyond conventional boundaries and turning the context of blues into value-integrated creative dynamics; Kim and Mauborgne have fabricated a blueprint, that challenges structurally traditional MO of existing businesses that are competing in a definite market boundary, dealing with same pool of buyers, following the mundane tapped solutions for growth and are tired of the exceeding supply over demand.

 

Blue ocean strategy is a strategic non-fiction which compels its reader not only to think, but also to explore the creative realms of innovation, pursue the unthinkable and unleash the untapped markets for value-generation.

 

“In blue oceans, demand is created rather than contested, fostering abundant opportunities for growth that is both profitable and rapid.”

 

Blurb

 

The blue ocean strategy is linearly structured and framed into three parts – 1. The concept, 2. The formulation and 3. The execution. From the subject discussion to exemplary evidence and analytical diagrammatic representation, the book is written in an engaging expression of comprehensible jargons from business strategic management and related concepts, allowing the readers from various spectrums to expand their horizons in business strategy.  

 

Key Highlights from the book revolve around the following subjects jotted below:

Value-Innovation simultaneously pursuing both differentiation and low cost parameters.
Six-path framework for reconstruction of market boundaries.
Strategic Planning - Strategy canvas; Four actions framework; Pioneer-migrator-settler (PMS) map; Blue Ocean idea (BOI) index.
Strategy sequenced Business models and sketches from the historical patterns.

 

The authors have outlined a methodology along with the tools, and frameworks to proceed with, in order to probe or create a whole new market, ‘blue oceans’ and focus on generating a new range of demand whilst shifting away from the conformity bias that follows competitive strategy, the ‘red oceans’, for growth.

https://hbr.org/data-visuals

 

The intriguing part of this methodology is that not only it questions the limitations of the traditional and outdated dogma of businesses thriving in the red-ocean markets but also facilitates the craftmanship of new age thinking solutions that breakdown the complex equations of administration and redefines the proportional alignment between value-profits-people as the byproduct of sustainable innovation, without falling in shackles of the obsolete red-ocean dynamics and market boundaries.

 

Conclusion

 

Looking forward to the strategic scope of increasing the blue oceans and learning from existing resources and results from red oceans, it is evident that industrial productivity should be induced in balance whilst reaping the benefits from both of the oceans. 
The notion is to redefine “strategic methods” and bring a new momentum in the business industry.

 

About the Authors: 

 

W. Chan Kim (a South Korean business theorist), Renée Mauborgne (an American economist and business theorist) are the professors of Strategy and Management at INSEAD, and the Co-directors of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute in Fontainebleau, France.