Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space And Make The Competition Irrelevant [Hardcover]

"Companies struggling to stay afloat in the market's...red oceans would do well to look into Blue Ocean Strategy."

"Blue Ocean raises pertinent questions… and delivers valuable answers."

"Blue Ocean Strategy will have you wondering why companies need so much persuasion to stay out of shark-infested waters."

Written by the business world's new gurus, Blue Ocean Strategy continues to challenge everything you thought you knew about competing in today’s crowded market place. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves spanning more than a hundred years and thirty industries, authors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne argue that lasting success comes from creating 'blue oceans': untapped new market spaces ripe from growth. And the business world has caught on- companies around the world are skipping the bloody red oceans of rivals and creating their very own blue oceans. With over one million copies sold world wide, Blue Ocean Strategy is quickly reaching "must read" status among smart business readers. Have you caught the wave?

Blue Ocean Strategy is the fastest selling title ever published by Harvard Business School Press, with a record-breaking 36 languages sold. Since being published, the book has hit several bestseller lists, including the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek, and was the #1 bestselling book for 2005 at 800-CEO-READ.

The book has resonated with executives at small and large companies, nonprofits, and government agencies, many of whom have changed their strategies after reading the book. They include Nintendo, Ford, Samsung, and The Government of Singapore.

• NINTENDO - In an interview about the Nintendo Wii, Perrin Kaplan, vice president of marketing and corporate affairs for Nintendo of America, said "Inside Nintendo we call our strategy `Blue Ocean.' " - FORBES.COM, February 2007
  
• FORD - "One major influence on [Ford's secret Piquette Project] is BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY... Copies have been circulating briskly among Ford offices these days." - Detroit Free Press, January 23, 2006
  
• SAMSUNG - "Samsung Electronics has not only embraced, but has meticulously developed and applied to its product development this Value Innovation theory coauthored by Professors Kim and Mauborgne." - Korean Economic Daily
  

Companies have long engaged in head-to-head competition in search of sustained, profitable growth. They have fought for competitive advantage, battled over market share, and struggled for differentiation.

Yet in today’s overcrowded industries, competing head-on results in nothing but a bloody “red ocean” of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. In a book that challenges everything you thought you knew about the requirements fro strategic success, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne contend that while most companies compete within such red oceans, this strategy is increasingly unlikely to create profitable growth in the future.

Based on a study of 150 strategic moves spanning more then a hundred years and thirty industries, Kim and Mauborgne argue that tomorrow’s leading companies will succeed not by battling competitors, but by creating “blue ocean” of uncontested market space ripe for growth. Such strategies moves—termed “value innovation”-create powerful leaps in value for both the firm and its buyers, rendering rivals obsolete and unleashing new demand.

Blue Ocean Strategyprovides a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant. In this frame-changing book, Kim and Mauborgne present a proven analytical framework and the tools for successfully creating and capturing blue oceans. Examining a wide range of strategic moves across a host of industries, Blue Ocean Strategy highlights the six principles that every company can use to successfully formulate and execute blue ocean strategies. The six principles show how to reconstruct market boundaries, focus on the big picture, reach beyond existing demand, get the strategic sequence right, overcome organizational hurdles, and build execution into strategy.

Upending traditional thinking about strategy, this landmark book charts “a bold new path to winning the future”.

W. Chan Kim is The Boston Consulting Group Bruce D. Henderson Chair Professor of Strategy and International Management at INSEAD and an advisory member for the European Union.

Renée Mauborgne is The INSEAD Distinguished Fellow and a professor of strategy and management and a Fellow of the World Economic Forum. Together, they have written for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Financial Times, and their Harvard Business Review articles have sold over 500,000 reprints.

They were selected for Thinkers 50, the global ranking of business thinkers, and The Sunday Times (London) called them “two of Europe’s brightest business thinkers…Kim and Mauborgne provide a sizeable challenge to the way managers think about and practice strategy.” They split their time between New York and Fontainebleau, France.