W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne - Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space And Make The Competition Irrelevant

When I got out of the military a few months ago, I was looking for different ideas to pursue for a future career. I had a large sum of money saved up and some stocks that I could cash out which would allow me to do most anything I wanted. I really just needed to know what direction I wanted to go in. I spent a great deal of my time in library's and bookstores doing my research as well as talking to friends and family. I really wanted to work for myself, but all of the ideas that I had were great they just required too much legal preparation in order to make the business happen.

It was about three weeks after getting out of the military, I had already grabbed an easy sales job just to keep money coming in steadily. I had been on numerous interviews, read countless books, and I really didn't know what I wanted to do. Then, I get this package in the mail. It was a book that was sent to me by a professor of mine that I had been in contact with on a regular basis over the last several years. She had read this book and thought that it would be incredibly helpful to me in my search for something 'new'.

Concept
The book Blue Ocean Strategy is written by two professors at INSEAD, a major business school in France. The book essentially talks about how too many businesses are operating in markets that already have competition. Rather than attempting to discover new markets, businesses are often times trying to find ways to tap into markets that already exist by being friendlier, faster, cheaper, or whatever else. The major issue with this is that you instantly have competition and you have to attempt to take away business from these other companies that have been doing it longer and know the market better.

The authors of the book talk of how little sense it makes to attempt to go after a small piece of a pie, when you can essentially have the entire pie to yourself by taking the market in it's entirety. The problem is that too many businesses just can't think creatively enough to make the move towards the open ocean and are stuck competing from infancy making it much more difficult to get started in the business, especially for those just getting into the business.

The idea is that you have to create something new, something fresh or at least a major spin on things that already exist. For example, there are loads of retailers that sell dolls, but maybe you could open a store that sells only gothic dolls. You may be looking at a much smaller market, but if you play your cards right, you could end up with the majority of the gothic doll market. If you have a bigger, better selection than everyone else, you are going to attract a majority of those consumers if they have nowhere else to go for that type of selection.

The authors believe that if you think harder, you achieve a great deal more.

My Thoughts
The book itself is very well written and really easy to understand. They use a great number of examples from real world companies that have jumped into a market and through innovation, they were able to create something completely different and change the way the market operated. For example, they look at Starbucks. Sure there are loads of coffee houses out there, but Starbucks was the first to turn coffee into a lifestyle. They introduced WiFi into their cafes, brought in a variety of other products and mixed in a variety of money making products beyond just coffee. They also gave themselves a premium image, allowing them to charge substantially more for coffee than their competition without losing much business in the process. They made coffee glamorous and now it is a major industry.

The book is incredibly well done, has a lot of great examples and really creates a positive, motivating image of untapped markets that really should be taken advantage of. The major issue with the book is that while it is great in it's scope, and it is motivating, it really seems to focus in on MAJOR business much more than it does the small business. However, you can still take a lot of the concepts from the book, spin them a bit, and use them for your own benefit, even if you are simply looking to start a small business of your own.

I personally gained a great deal from reading this book and believe that it is an excellent choice for anyone BEFORE they jump into any business. It really does open your eyes as to different ideas that you can come up with not only to come up with a business concept but to even enhance upon something that you thought you already planned out.