Talk:Blue Ocean Strategy

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[edit] Criticisms

I recently removed the following criticism, which I believe is the contributors original ideas and are non-verifiable via any other primary or secondary sources. Below, I present a short clarification to justify that criticism is not sound enough.

"Many of the principles they claim unique to Blue Ocean Strategy had been already proposed by Swedish professors Jonas Ridderstrale and Kjell Nordstrom in their 1999 book "Funky Business". For example, "competing factors" in Blue Ocean Strategy are similar to the definition of "finite and infinite dimensiones" in Funky Business. Just as Blue Ocean Strategy claims that a Red Ocean Strategy does not guarantee success, Funky Business explained that "Competitive Strategy is the route to nowhere". Funky Business argues that firms need to create "Sensational Strategies". Just like Blue Ocean Strategy, a Sensational Strategy is about "playing a different game" according to Ridderstrale and Nordstrom. Ridderstrale and Nordstrom also claim that the aim of companies is to create temporary monopolies. Kim and Mauborgne explain that the aim of companies is to create blue oceans, that will eventually turn red. This is the same idea expressed in the form of an analogy. Ridderstrale and Nordstrom also claimed in 1999 that "in the slow-growth 1990s overcapacity is the norm in most businesses". Kim and Mauborgne claim that blue ocean strategy make sense in a world that supply exceeds demand."

  • First of all, Blue Ocean Strategy does not claim uniqueness of any ideas presented. It is about whats and whys and hows of creating new marketspaces. It reports patterns extracted from successful market creating moves studied within the scope of the underlying research. Many of the patterns reported, ofcourse, are related to concepts discussed elsewhere and published in previous books. The main point is that Blue Ocean Strategy discusses the market creating moves in the whole totality ( strategy formulation and strategy execution )and presents systematic theory and methodologies for minimizing risks involved in this creation process.
  • Secondly, The underlying concept of Blue Ocean Strategy was published for the first time in 1997 in the HBR Classic article, "Value Innovation : The Strategic Logic of high Growth". Funky Business , as the contributor mentions , was published in 1999, which is 2 years after the authors' first HBR article on the topic.
  • Blue Ocean Strategy does not say anything like "Competitive Strategy is the route to nowhere". In contrast, the authors argue that competitive strategies will continue to play an important role, however , for sustainable profitable growth a balance has to be found between red ocean and blue ocean strategies. Blue Ocean Strategy is supposed to complement competition based strategies to complete the strategy picture , instead of rejecting them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thinkingblue (talk • contribs) 06:59, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
This seem like a fair rationale, although I would disagree with your last point - both Kim and Maubourgne have often and vociferously criticized traditional competitive strategies. While they may not have used the exact words "route to nowhere" they have said that in many other ways. Of course to sell books, they will need to differentiate their product ;-) Mattnad (talk) 14:29, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Articles for Deletion debate

This article was redirected to Sustainable competitive advantage as a result of an Articles for Deletion debate. The discussion can be found here. -Splashtalk 01:53, 7 March 2006 (UTC)


This article is about a non fiction book.

[edit] re-instating the redirect

It was decided by AfD that this article should be redirected. (See above comment) See WP:UNDEL for more information if you think the redirect was in error. Amalas =^_^= 03:03, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blue Ocean may be a book title and a business buzz word, but it is notable

When I Googled "Blue Ocean Strategy," restricting the search to .org .gov and .edu domains, I got 35,000 hits in .org, 750 in .edu, and 18 in .gov. (175,000 in .com with "Amazon" and "Barnes" suppressed).

Based on the same logic, the article on An Inconvenient Truth would be deleted and redirected to Global warming —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bridgman (talk • contribs) 16:41, 22 March 2007 (UTC).

This book has taken off in the business book market, and is on the lips of product management people in [dying] businesses everywhere. It has become a keyword in and of itself, as in "what is your blue ocean strategy?" "do you have a blue ocean strategy?" and "how are we going to establish our own blue ocean strategy?" (followed, of course, by some justification of how whatever it is that you're already doing is somehow a blue ocean strategy, but I digress). Cleduc 23:38, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Further analysis of the Nintendo Strategy

Although briefly mentioned I think a further analysis of Nintendo and its current strategy, as it relates to the concept of Blue Ocean strategy might help to improve this article.

Agree? Disagree? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.22.167.103 (talk) 06:57, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

It wouldn't hurt to expand this. I believe earlier versions of the article had more information, but they were lost during various edits. I do find it amazing that after all of these years that BOS/Value Innovation has been around, we have only 1 (one) published success by a company that said they applied the theories to achieve their goal, rather than the professors claiming other, previous successes were example of Blue Ocean Strategy.
I once saw Maubourge answer a question about "any successful application of their theories". She said there are, but confidentiality agreements prohibited her from talking about them. This was a few years ago, so things could have changed and perhaps she has examples now.
I think the article would be well served by finding other success stories like Nintendo. I don't like criticism section being larger than the other sections. Mattnad (talk) 18:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
It's likely worth noting that the Microsoft Entertainment division is turning a profit now. There are quite a few articles on this from recent months online. This includes the Xbox 360 portion of the company. It is not clear that the 360 itself incurs any sort of loss in its manufacturing at this point. Perhaps stating "at launch" would be more accurate. In addition, this concept seems incredibly broad... couldn't one argue that Xbox LIVE managed something similar that would fall within this strategy? Nintendo (and Microsoft and Sony) clearly don't follow this marketing system fully regardless.
Yes BOS is very broad. It can be adapted to take credit for virtually any success, and of course there are no failures attibuted to the concept. It's perfect! Mattnad (talk) 22:34, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Recent infusion of BOS-Speak

I'm a little concerned that some editors are trying to introduce a lot of promotional spin and BOS jargon into this article. In my view, the purpose of this article is offer a clear, concise and cogent explanation of Blue Ocean Strategy. Infusing the article with self-referencing jargon does not help the reader. While the professors may want a purity in how every term is used, that is most important for the book and not an article that tried to quickly summarize the concepts and critiques. The book is full of the the special BOS language and that's the best place for it. As for the PR spin "Record breaking" etc. etc., well, please leave that for the Harvard Business Press website. Mattnad (talk) 14:42, 7 January 2008 (UTC)