Blue Ocean Shift: Beyond Competing - Proven Steps to Inspire Confidence and Seize New Growth Hardcover – September 26, 2017

When my public health professor recommended this I thought he was nuts but within a few pages I understood what everyone was saying. We're in a new reality and have to find a new way to do what we have always done.

I read Blue Ocean Strategy and it was one of the most important business books I read. Now reading this, it takes all those concepts and ideas and walks you step by step on how to apply them systematically. Read Blue Ocean Strategy first to get familiar with all the tools, then read this on how to apply them step by step to create your Blue Ocean

With the Blue Ocean Shift, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne are adding more examples to the Blue Ocean Strategy case-book and more methodological guidance for the 'shift' (from red ocean to blue ocean). The book introduces great new examples, like the citizenM Hotels, the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, but also an interesting example of blue ocean thinking for the governmental sector, the Malaysia Community Rehabilitation Program.At the same time, they're entering into a 'red ocean' competition with the Disruptive Innovation model: "We address key issues, such as why focusing on creative destruction and disruptive innovation is limiting and captures only a partial picture of how new markets are created". It seems that they haven't succeeded to create a 'blue ocean' for their own product :)They are using their only preferred 'hammer' to treat cases like the Groupe SEB's ActiFry as a pure blue ocean 'nail', while it is in fact a mix of Disruptive Innovation (simplicity of use, low cost of cooking, based on a proprietary technology) and Blue Ocean Strategy (healthy cooking, using less fat).

The sequel to Blue Ocean Strategy, Blue Ocean Shift outlines a methodology to identify blue ocean opportunities. In the prior book the tools were described, but this book follow up with instructions on sequencing and use. Specifically, to find blue ocean opportunities:1) Take a lay of the land by using the Pioneer-Migrator-Settler chart.2) Create one or more as-is Strategy Canvases.3) Use the Buyer Utility Map to plot pain points and blocks to utility.4) Identify customers and noncustomers, the latter being the key to finding new blue oceans. Cross-reference those with pain points.5) Use the six-path framework to discovery insights that enable the creation of a new strategic offering.6) Apply the Four Action Framework, deciding which key factors of the as-is offering to eliminate, reduce, raise, and create.7) Cross reference your key factors with the six-path factors: make sure to get out and about in the real world.8) Draw to-be strategy canvases: the new offering. Make sure it offers differentiation and low costs.9) Host a blue ocean fair; share to-be strategy canvases with one another and have the team discuss and vote.10) Work through pricing, potential partners; build your offering.11) Launch!For each phase there is more in-depth analysis about how to use the various tools and many case studies, many from businesses that used Blue Ocean Strategy to create a new offering. There are also several introductory chapters that expand on the core premise of the first book.I have personally used this methodology as a product and business developer in both Fortune 500 businesses and small companies and can attest that it works.

The strategical thinking and frameworks on how to compete in an established market have been well known for the last few decades. In Blue Ocean Shift, Kim and Mauborgne demystify the mystic, and explain how to create a new market space in the first place.Describing tens of recent cases where companies successfully created new market space, and building on concrete market-creating tools, they take the reader step-by-step through the process of creating new market space. They make the apparent randomness of market creation become a humanistic, teachable and systemic process that can be reproduced.Whereas the first book, Blue Ocean Strategy, presented the frameworks and thinking of Blue Ocean Strategy, this book is a practical guide on how to apply it to your organization, big or small. The book describes and explains step by step how to run the market creation process in your organization, from the beginning to the end of the journey. It also explains in details how to inspire and build people’s confidence to own and drive the process for effective execution, or what the authors call humanness.I particularly liked the case of Malaysia’s Community Rehabilitation Program, which is a specific example of how a governmental organization specifically applied the Blue Ocean process and tools to do a Blue Ocean Shift and break the value-cost trade-off.This is a must-have book for whoever is tired of being confined within an established market, and is looking to a practical guide on how to create new markets of explosive growth.