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Blue Ocean Strategy
How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne
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Stop looking to the competition. Value-innovate and let the competition worry about you.
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What if the best way to win isn't by competing but by creating a new game?
Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne make the case for leaving red oceans (shark-infested waters) in pursuit of blue oceans (untapped market spaces where competitors don't exist yet).
SMARTEST TAKEAWAYS
Value Innovation
Instead of incremental improvements, make a “leap in value” that benefits both the company and customers. Here’s how:
1️⃣ Find what customers actually want (not just what the industry offers)
2️⃣ Break industry rules (the ones everyone else follows)
3️⃣ Lower costs while raising value (yes, you can do both)
Authors Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, Professors of Strategy at INSEAD
INSIGHTFUL EXAMPLE
How Cirque du Soleil Reimagined the Circus
The traditional circus was stuck in a “red ocean”—an industry facing high costs and fierce competition, forcing companies to battle over limited demand.
Cirque du Soleil created a “blue ocean” by eliminating expensive animal acts, raising the artistic quality, and blending circus with theater. The result? A new entertainment category that appealed to adults willing to pay Broadway prices.
PUT IT IN ACTION
Four Actions Framework
Four key questions to break free from a constrained industry:
© Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne. All rights reserved.
PUT IT IN ACTION
Additional Tools
Discover 15 more tools from the book:
BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY TOOLS
BOOK FACTS
Blue Ocean Strategy
First published: Feb. 2005
Updated & expanded: Jan. 2015
Print length: 320 pages
Listening length: 8:43
Ratings: 4.6 Amazon, 4.0 Goodreads
FROM THE AUTHORS
Additional Books
Beyond Disruption: Innovate and Achieve Growth Without Displacing Industries, Companies, or Jobs (May 2023)
Blue Ocean Shift: Beyond Competing — Proven Steps to Inspire Confidence and Seize New Growth (Sep. 2017)
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
2-Minute Book Summary
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