Book Review-Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim and Mauborgne
Book Review-Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim and Mauborgne
Blue Ocean Strategy refers to a marketing strategy book that was written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne of the Institute for Blue Ocean Strategy, professors at the France’s INSEAD business school and co-founders of the Institute for Value. The book was published by Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation in the year 2005. The Blue Ocean Strategy book depicts what the two authors think is the perfect marketing strategy to achieve profits and growth of the company. Blue Ocean Strategy proposes that for a company to be successful, it should establish fresh demand in unchallenged market space (“Blue Ocean”), instead of competing directly with other competitors in a current market.
The Blue Ocean Strategy book disregards the occurrence of the traditional alternative between product differentiation and low cost. Instead, the book proposes that both product differentiation and low costs are attainable simultaneously. Additionally, the book explores closely the companies experience in areas such as computers, airlines, watches, automobiles, coffee makers, retailers, textiles and even circus, to address this basic question and relies upon the debate regarding value innovation being a blue ocean strategy foundation. The authors further affirm that value innovation is certainly the innovation alignment with price, utility and cost positions. Hence, it establishes unchallenged markets and renders competition irrelevant.
Critical analysis of the Blue Ocean Strategy is worth the time of any business organization intending to increase its success via innovation. Kim and Mauborgne based their argument on the analysis of 150 strategies from 30 sectors operating in the last 100 years. They found out that competition in saturated markets, referred as “red oceans,” is not a proper way of success. Rather a meaningful success is facilitated by creating new markets, innovation, and finding unsatisfied needs with growth potential. These areas are termed as “Blue Oceans.” According to them, the idea is simple: red oceans are dangerous and filled with sharks.
Therefore, Kim and Mauborgne suggest that if one is not the biggest shark, then the best step to take is to swim away. However, they add that most business organizations prefer the perpetual danger generated from being in the bloody ocean filled with big sharks due to the fear of the unknown. The authors do not propose that identifying a blue ocean is easy. Nevertheless, they propose that a decent and well-executed strategy is worth the risk of trying the unknown.
Although the book Blue Ocean Strategy is fairly a good book as it aims to come up with new marketing strategies for effective competition and the successful growth of a business organization, the book also has some arguments that are debatable. For instance, the basic metaphor of the book which is the blue ocean is a naval term to be compared with littoral. For a common person, the term blue ocean can have a meaning of deep oceans, far away from the land, not danger/non-danger comparison.
The main issue with this metaphor is that it is unlikely to get the reader somewhere. An effective conceptual metaphor should have various implications that really enrich the reader’s thinking, depict the pattern of important features in the domain, and get the reader further than the raw abstractions.
Additionally, the book can also be criticized on the basis of anecdotal randomness. Anecdotes are among the most powerful tools of business writers since they offer easily packed values and wins. However, they should be used tastefully and thoughtfully. The problem with the authors is that they are analyzing a set of over a hundred sharp-shock type events. This is likely to result in a huge number of variables. Therefore, the researcher is likely to find commonality patterns among success and failures, and discriminating factors between success and failures if he or she focuses on any large subset of variables. Hence, Kim and Mauborgne need to ask themselves if they think the variables were the right ones to use and if they came up with an explanation or sufficiency arguments.
Moreover, the book can be criticized for promoting a false sense of security. The Blue Ocean Strategy book might actually deceive the reader into thinking that he or she is on the right track in dealing with a hard problem. The complicated marketing problem is, in fact, reinventing the business strategies of the company. One might be deceived that it just takes a couple of days for developing and implementing a marketing strategy. An honest business author acknowledges the risks of the complexity of marketing strategies and the risks of new markets.
Furthermore, the book Blue Ocean Strategy can also be criticized for not addressing effectively the real problem that it intends to tackle. The real problem of the book is how to reinvent a business. In other words, the issue is how one can return his or her company to growth and way from intensive competition. Even though the Blue Ocean has some answers, they are limited. This problem is as deep as the deepest problems of human life, and thus, it is important to have a book that addresses them properly. Finally, the Blue Ocean Strategy tries to address the problem, and it spectacularly fails.
Recommending the Book
Despite the criticisms, many of the core arguments in the book Blue Ocean Strategy have genuine merit for marketers and also business people as a whole. Kim and Mauborgne compare how some business organizations engage in intense competition with their opponents in search of profitable and sustained growth, competitive advantage and also to define their market share. On the other hand, others find their way right on top of their competitors by breaking the rule and establishing their own markets through targeting the unchallenged ones. Therefore, the authors reiterate that the key to establishing their own blue ocean is to focus on innovation and value and not to compete in the dangerous price wars. Hence, it is worth recommending the book to those who have not read it especially the business students and business people in general.
Reference
Kim, W., & Mauborgne, R. (2015). Blue ocean strategy. Boston: Harvard business School Press.
