Imagine fishing in a deep blue ocean, with untapped resources, and your boat is the only one with the rights to fish in it.  Sounds like a recipe for absolute success, if you are a fisherman.  This analogy is not only for fishermen, but also for businesses.  If a business can find a niche where there is zero competition and high market demand, coupled with the ability to deliver, it becomes an unbeatable success formula.  This is the great idea behind “Blue Ocean Strategy, how to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant,” by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. 

Many strategy making books talk about how to develop a strategy from a mechanical point of view, walking you through the mechanical steps of the process.  These references give the reader the approach, but do not tell them how to actually come up with a winning strategy.  So, following the advice in the book will result in developing the wrong strategy the right way.  The result will be failure due to a poor strategy that is well written.  Other strategy references talk about winning strategies in a complex fashion that makes one feel that formulating a strategy is reserved for the most highly gifted of businessmen.  These on the other hand might make the reader give up completely on formulating strategies out of hopelessness in their ability to formulate a winning one. 

This book is different.  It shows that strategy is not about mechanical steps, nor about genius ideas, but more about tapping into untapped areas of the market.  These areas are called by the authors “the blue oceans,” and hence the name of the book and the method it endorses.  The authors have written many articles, before this book, on value innovation, which is the corner stone of their concept of the blue ocean strategy.  Value innovation is beyond conventional strategy and marketing wisdom to create value offerings that set the company in its own league and away from competition.

The book shows readers very clever but simple ways to find untapped areas of the market, and how to exploit them.  It does this from a consumer as well as product perspective.  It shows business people how to find unique aspects for their products and services that will set them apart from their competition, without having to increase cost to the consumer.  They propose doing that by focusing less on what competition is doing, but more on what the consumers wants, then giving the consumers more of what they want.  Another way to find blue oceans, according to the book is to look at segments of the market that were not considered customers, and tweak the offerings in a way that accommodates their needs and addresses the reasons why they have not been consumers so far. 

The book gives several examples of organizations worldwide who were able to find their own blue oceans, with many of them in the services industry.  Among them, interestingly enough is one about a circus called “Cirque De Soleil,” able to find its own blue ocean.  Other examples used include Southwest Airlines’ new service model, Chrysler’s minivan, and Dell’s direct computer sales. 

In addition to the examples, the book clearly and thoroughly discusses its ideas, which sometimes can get a bit dreary, but it seems the authors wanted to make sure they explain there ideas clearly, which is respectful. 

Later sections of the book help readers understand further the concept and warns about pitfalls of the wrong application of the technique.  It provides tips on how to make sure that what one found is indeed a new blue ocean, not just a mirage of one, or as the author puts it, a puddle.

The book was published in 2005 by Harvard Business School Press and became an international best seller, with over a million copies within the first year and translations into thirty two languages.  It comes in a hard cover and almost 250 pages. 

The book comes from authors who are renowned experts in their field.  Both are professors of strategy and international management at INSEAD; a top-tier business school with campuses located in Fontainebleau near Paris and Singapore.