This business book by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne was sold in over 2 million copies and translated in more than 40 languages. Despite the high praise it has enjoyed, I am not personally very fond of it. Here’s why.

You can summarize the main idea behind Blue Ocean Strategy in two paragraphs:

Instead of competing in crowded markets, companies should focus on exploring Blue Oceans - large, untapped markets, free of competition. One can discover such Blue Oceans through Value Innovation - the process of creating value for both the buyer and the company.

Value Innovation essentially means bringing a better product (faster, easier to use) for a smaller price (no unnecessary features, less costs). This contradicts conventional wisdom that quality and low prices are mutually exclusive.

Now, this is a fine idea, and I like it. My problem with the book is that there’s nothing really more to it besides this main idea. I got bored going through the 230 or so pages. Here’s what you’ll find if you take the time to read it:

• Repetitions: “Didn’t I read this before?” and “You already said that!” were constantly popping up in my head as I went through the book. It’s tiresome!

• Hardly useful labels and templates presented as tools and frameworks to create Blue Oceans systematically. I think most of them are too thin and too trivial to be useful. For instance, here is essentially The Four Actions Framework:

  1. Come up with brilliant new features
  2. Improve some existing features
  3. Eliminate unnecessary features
  4. Reduce some less important features
  

  What do you think?

• Anecdotal evidence involving hundreds of real companies from dozens of industries such as hotels, cinemas, retail stores, airlines, energy, computers, etc. The authors highlight inspired business decisions that follow Blue Ocean reasoning. The problem is they are all after-the-fact conclusions. We don’t know if the companies were consciously executing BO strategies.

  Take the example of the Apple II PC (1978) which was more powerful and easier to use than its competitor (the IBM PC), at a price affordable for middle-class families. Apple created the market of personal computers for home use. You can certainly call that a Blue Ocean, but does it mean Apple was using BOS with its tools and frameworks? Can we assert that Apple owes its success for doing the key things that constitute a Blue Ocean Strategy? Go figure.

On a more positive note, there is a thing I like about this book. It’s the story of many a world class company executing brilliant strategies, winning the hearts and mind of customers, and reshaping whole industries. Such inspiring stories do more for me than the concepts and theories of the Blue Oceans.