blue ocean
Blue Ocean Strategy
How to Create Uncontested Market Space and
Make the Competition Irrelevant http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/ W. Chan Kim
Renee Mauborgne
Chapter One:
The blue ocean strategy is best illustrated by the performance of Cirque du Soleil. Created in 1984 by a group of street performers, Cirque productions have been seen by almost 40 million people in 90 cities around the world. In less than 20 years, Cirque du Soleil has achieved revenue levels that took Ringling and Barnham and Bailey (the circus global champions of the circus industry) more than 100 years to attain. What makes this rapid growth all the more remarkable is that it was not achieved in an attractive industry, but rather, in an industry with declining revenue for potential growth.
Cirque du Soleil’s success was not attained by taking customers from the already shrinking circus industry (which had historically catered to children) but instead, they were successful because they created a new marketplace in which to compete. Their offering appealed to a whole new group of customers – namely, adults and corporate clients that were prepared to pay a price several times as great as traditional circuses for an unprecedented entertainment experience.
Cirque du Soleil succeeded because it realized that to win in the future, companies must stop competing with each other. The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition on the current playing field. To understand what Cirque du Soleil has achieved, imagine a market universe composed of two sorts of oceans: red oceans and blue oceans. Red oceans represent all of the industries in existence today. This is the known market space. Blue oceans donate all of the industries not in existence today. This is the unknown marketplace.
In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are know. Here, companies try to outperform their rivals to gain a
How to Create Uncontested Market Space and
Make the Competition Irrelevant http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/ W. Chan Kim
Renee Mauborgne
Chapter One:
The blue ocean strategy is best illustrated by the performance of Cirque du Soleil. Created in 1984 by a group of street performers, Cirque productions have been seen by almost 40 million people in 90 cities around the world. In less than 20 years, Cirque du Soleil has achieved revenue levels that took Ringling and Barnham and Bailey (the circus global champions of the circus industry) more than 100 years to attain. What makes this rapid growth all the more remarkable is that it was not achieved in an attractive industry, but rather, in an industry with declining revenue for potential growth.
Cirque du Soleil’s success was not attained by taking customers from the already shrinking circus industry (which had historically catered to children) but instead, they were successful because they created a new marketplace in which to compete. Their offering appealed to a whole new group of customers – namely, adults and corporate clients that were prepared to pay a price several times as great as traditional circuses for an unprecedented entertainment experience.
Cirque du Soleil succeeded because it realized that to win in the future, companies must stop competing with each other. The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition on the current playing field. To understand what Cirque du Soleil has achieved, imagine a market universe composed of two sorts of oceans: red oceans and blue oceans. Red oceans represent all of the industries in existence today. This is the known market space. Blue oceans donate all of the industries not in existence today. This is the unknown marketplace.
In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are know. Here, companies try to outperform their rivals to gain a