Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim (Author), Renée Mauborgne (Author)

There are "business books", and there are "theory books." Business books are frequently long on story and advice, but short on higher-level concepts that survive when transplanted. Theory books are frequently packed with high-level thinking but covered in dust, because wading through the prose is too hard.

Then there are those terrific exceptions that just bang you between the eyes because they're both.

Blue Ocean Strategies opens for Cirque du Soleil....sorry...opens with Cirque du Soleil. And it proceeds to get more interesting from there. The 'high-level concept' at the heart of the book is what the title suggests. If you want to build a competitive business, don't compete. Instead, go where the competition isn't - out in the 'blue ocean' - and create a new market space

Kim & Mauborgne then proceed to lay out the processes they use with clients to help their clients do exactly that. These include:

• Reconstruct market boundaries
• Focus on big picture, not numbers
• Reach beyond existing demand
• Get the strategic sequence right. (The advice on pricing in this section is particularly brilliant.)
• Overcome key organizational hurdles.
• Build execution into strategy

There are a host of analytical tools, many quite visual, which bring the principles to life. Having used some of these actively in formulating company strategy, I only wish I'd have used more of them.

The book is long, and it can feel like a tough read - as if the target reader is an intelligent adult, imagine that.

Highly recommended.