W.Chan Kim- Renée Mauborgne: Blue Ocean Strategy

This title, „Blue Ocean Strategy” is based on an analogy of a market without competition – in other words, the symbol of limitless market opportunities. The ocean is bloody red where the sharks all attack each other, however there are still other, unthouched, blue areas of the ocean which can be found. Decisiveness, inovativeness and courage are needed to recognise the untouched areas where new markets may be discovered, where the water has not yet been blooded.

The book has been a bestseller since its first publication in 2005, expressing a significant market paradigm breakthrough, compared to earlier business and market building principles.

What’s the essence of this new strategic approach? Use of the „STOP, START, CONTINUE”, principle of change management, define what is to be radically finished, what is to begin, and what is to maintain from the traditional ways of doing business and its consistent realisation.

The book demonstrates this with examples, like the famous Cirque de Soleil – a show that shockingly broke away from the traditional circus principle „there is no circus without animal shows”, conflicting with contemporary animal protection principles. Instead of animal shows and clowns Cirque de Soleil created an amazing acrobatic and theatrical show gaining global fame. The captivating world of the, „New Circus” – a new market, targetting an audience who does not any more require and enjoy the unnatural animal-shows.

There is also a wine market example particularly interesting from Hungarian perspective, analising he global success of the Australian, „Kangoroo” labeled Chardonnay. This is a light, almost soft drink, a stardardized, mass produced white wine produced in stable quality at a low cost in large volume, and sold all over the world. To achieve this, they had to drastically break with manual labour, with the mystic traditions of wine making, with elitism and myths associated with this business, with the dependence on annual grape harvest, as well as targeting and broadening the consumers of the the soft drinks market(!) creating a totally new segment on wine market. Understanding the blue ocean strategy we might be able to gain an insight into the mistaken price strategy of the unique and outstanding Hungarian wine Tokaji aszú, and its misleading market positioning, competing on supermarket shelves in dump pricing with theAustralian, „Kangoroo” labeled Chardonnay.

Recent Hungarian example could be also the emergence of the BioHair Hairdressing chain in shopping malls. They also broke away from the necessity of personal trust that epitomised the area of hairdessing and its mystification. However these chains are predictable both in terms of prices and quality, they are fashionable, with a standardized catalogue of hair styles, in addition to being attractive with theirprefixed price ranges and with the consistent use of natural materials and green image, encapsulating a message of the future, and encouraging those who seldom went to the hairdressers in the past, to return them to this market.

I mention this book, because it has an inspiring effect on my future. It’s still too early to share my „blue ocean strategy”, my breakthrough ideas on business coaching that will once navigate me to the undiscovered, blue part of the market ocean!