As established markets become less profitable, companies increasingly
need to find ways to create and capture new markets. Despite much
investment and commitment, most firms struggle to do this. What,
exactly, is getting in their way? World-renowned professors W. Chan Kim
and Renee Mauborgne, the authors of the best-selling book Blue Ocean
Strategy have spent over a decade exploring that question. They have
seen that the trouble lies in managers' mental models--ingrained
assumptions and theories about the way the world works. Though these
models may work perfectly well in mature markets, they undermine
executives' attempts to discover uncontested new spaces with ample
potential (blue oceans) and keep companies firmly anchored in existing
spaces where competition is bloody (red oceans). In this bound version
of their bestselling Harvard Business Review classic article, they
describe how to break free of these red ocean traps. To do that,
managers need to: (1) Focus on attracting new customers, not pleasing
current customers; (2) Worry less about segmentation and more about what
different segments have in common; (3) Understand that market creation
is not synonymous with either technological innovation or creative
destruction; and (3) Stop focusing on premium versus low-cost
strategies.
The Harvard Business Review Classics series offers you the opportunity
to make seminal Harvard Business Review articles a part of your
permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a
groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire
countless managers around the world--and will have a direct impact on
you today and for years to come.
