“The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition.” (Kim and Mauborgne, 2005, 4). Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne explains how to overcome competition by creating uncharted markets. The author, W. Chan Kim, is the professor of strategy and international, management at INSEAD, and the second author, Renée Mauborgne is the INSEAD Distinguished Fellow as well as a professor of strategy and management. The authors use the term “blue ocean” as a metaphor for undiscovered markets. This metaphor is juxtaposed to “red oceans” which signify saturated markets. Although the book contains a good foundation and is well-written, the overuse of anecdotes that trick readers into thinking the strategies are fool-proof, the flaws and self-evident content, and the redundancy of the steps and tools, prevent Blue Ocean Strategy from being a good read.
Blue Ocean Strategy is based on 150 strategic moves spanning more than 100 years that have been studied in over 30 industries. The authors’ objective was to compare successful companies to their less successful competitors to analyse for a trend and common strategy. The result was the blue ocean strategy, which emphasises creating uncontested markets. The book is divided into three parts. The first part of the book explains the “cornerstone” of Blue Ocean Strategy which is value innovation. Kim and Mauborgne say “[w]e 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, 2005, 1...
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...a grid that answers them. These are only a few of the superfluous examples in the book.
In conclusion, Blue Ocean Strategy is a book with promise that unfortunately does not follow through. Although the book is well-written in the aspect of professionalism, visuals, and evidence, Blue Ocean Strategy’s content is what makes it a poor book. After finishing the book, readers are left wondering what to take away, as the book was over filled with examples and repetition. More importantly, readers feel as if the content is self-evident and that nothing new or awe-inspiring was written. For these reasons, my colleague and I do not recommend reading the book Blue Ocean Strategy.
Works Cited
Kim, W. C. ,and Renée Mauborgne. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market
Space and Make Competition Irrelevant. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2005.
Print.
In a high competitive world market and with the increasing rational buyers a company can only win by creating and delivering the best customer value than the others competitors do. To succeed, a company needs to use the concepts of value chain.
Porter (1997) suggests in order to gain competitive advantages in the changing business environment, it is essential to design a generic strategy for the business: product differentiation or cost leadership. The competitive strategy is determined at round 2, when recognised our rivals held whole product profile which was the product differentiation strategy. To differentiate our strategy from rivals for competitive advantages, Digby designed to imply the cost
Arthur, A., Thompson, Margaret, A., Peteraf, John, E. Gamble, A., J., Strickland III. (2014). Crafting & Executing Strategy: The Quest for Competitive Advantage 19e: Concepts & Cases. C6-C25.
Wit, BD & Meyer, R 2010, Strategy: process, content, context : an international perspective, Cengage Learning EMEA, London.
Numerous definitions of strategy exist, in most circumstances strategy can loosely be explained as an overall plan of deployment of resources to ascertain a favourable position within a market (Zablah, Bellenger and Johnston 2004; Grant 1994, p 14). Further, imbedded in many successful organisations are strategies, the importance of which is to remain relevant in the market, and successful in the various attributes of business; profiteering, employee motivation, maintaining sustainable core competencies, effectiveness in operation, or efficiency in the conduction of operations. Therefore challenges involved in the formulation and implementation of a strategy can revolve around the overall external market, as well as internal
Thompson, A. A., Strickland, A. J., & Gamble, J. E. (2008). Crafting & executing strategy: The quest for competitive advantage (16th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
In a world of free trade, growing competition and accessibility to foreign markets, the need for methodical market analysis and assumptions is steadily rising in today’s business environment. It is just a normal way of thinking to primarily intent to eliminate the financial before entering a new and foreign market. This suggests that enterprises have to develop an overall strategy for their business in order to gain competitive advantage and consequently market share. With the words of Michael E. Porter, professor at Harvard University and leading authority on competitive strategy, this desirable market success is indirectly linked to the individual structure of a market. The unique structure of a single market influences the strategic behaviour and the development of a competitive strategy within a firm. The competitive strategy finally decides whether a company performs successfully on the market or not. Referring to this interpretation of business success, M. E. Porter established his five forces framework that enables directives to gather useful information about the business environment and the competitive forces in industries.
Thompson, A.A., Strickland, A.J., & Gamble, J. E. (2010). Crafting and executing strategy: The quest for competitive advantage: Concepts and cases: 2009 custom edition (17th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill-Irwin
John G. S., 2008: Strategically thinking about the subject of Strategy [e-journal] 9(4) p.2 Available through:
The book has used peer-reviewed resources to enhance the use of professional approaches to innovation and management strategies by the readers who uses the book. The authors have given different management strategies and their practical application in business fields. As the title states, a strategy in business require innovative strategies for efficient development of the firm. More importantly, the book offers modern innovative ideas that need to be integrated with management strategies to develop modern businesses. The innovative approach provides a practical guide to the management strategies easing the execution of the strategies in the respectful environment. The book has given the strong relationships between innovation and strategies. These relationships are known to increase profitability in business organizations that use them efficiently. It offers how business managers can create successful value through innovation. Value creation in companies is done through examining untapped markets, clients ' needs and investing in new businesses. Therefore, this remarkable book helps readers in innovating and managing business
There are various schools of strategy that have been vigorously debated on and after a consolidated effort; three schools of strategy were produced. They are the planning school, the positional school, and the resource based school of strategy (Ritson, 2013). All these strategies will be described with examples to buttress each.
Organisational change can arise due to a change in strategy and this begins with examining capabilities and the internal environment. This is portrayed in the Strategy diamond. Firstly through arenas the organisation can plan where they will be active in and which part to place most emphasis on for example technologies or value creation strategies. Only after determining this can they implement a positive change, leading to the next element, vehicles to get them where they need to be such as alliances. This can lead to change in management along with strategic partnerships, and the way managers transition to this change will determine if the strategy impacts on the overall organisation in a way that reinforces its purpose and goals. Partnerships indicate how an organisation can strengthen its capabilities by merging with businesses who possess the skills they lack. (Carpenter et al. 2010)
Valdani, E., and Arbore, A., 2013. Competitive Strategies: Managing the Present, Imagining the Future. Palgrave Macmillan.
Markides, C. C. (2008) «Game-Changing Strategies: How to create new market space in established industries by breaking the rules», San Francisco, John Wiley and Sons.
The first, “blue oceans are not about technology innovation”, authors believe that technology isn’t a big factor in a blue ocean. It is a involved in the creation of blue oceans but they are not key factor. Second, “incumbents often create blue oceans and usually within their core business”,this point illustrates the fact that blue oceans are near everyone and could possibly be hidden in your company.Third, “company and industry are the wrong units of analysis”, this point want to show people that companies can thrive and fall in different cycles. No company is able to only rise, there is always a point of fall. Many people misunderstand blue ocean to be only success but authors say that the real unit of analysis of a blue ocean is the strategic move. Strategic moves are the set of managerial actions and decisions that help create major market business. Lastly, “creating blue oceans builds brands”, this shows that companies that were blue oceans in the past have made mark both in their time and also in current times. Companies such as Apple and Ford, have been able to build off their brand to expand. People trust their companies since it’s been in the industry for such a long time. This also stands true for companies that are not existent today, such as Nickelodeon, a companies known for the short funny films. While they were blue oceans in the past, their company brand is still known