Blue Ocean Shift

Many books could be blog posts. Especially business books. So when my girlfriend told me she had to read Blue Ocean Shift, the follow up to Blue Ocean Strategy, my first thought was to look for a good summary. I found one on YouExec.com (PDF). Here's an expert of the summary:

In 2005, the book Blue Ocean Strategy described how some organizations across many industries have successfully made the leap from a “red ocean,” where competitors are trapped in a blood- red fight for customers, into a wide-open “blue ocean” of uncontested market space. Blue Ocean Shift is the recipe book to help organizations shift from red oceans to blue oceans.

Whether the head of a large bureaucratic corporation, a small non-profit, or a government department, organization leaders tend to assume that the conditions of their industry are a given, a set of constraints that form the boundaries of the red ocean in which they must compete. Focused on competing over customers, leaders assume that there is always a trade-off between value and differentiation. But that assumption is wrong.

Organizations can break out of red oceans and move into a blue ocean with a Blue Ocean Shift. Breaking out of the red ocean starts by swapping market-competing moves in favor of market-creating moves. There are three overall components to a successful Blue Ocean Shift.

  1. Adopting a blue ocean perspective: looking to the far horizon, recognizing that different questions have to be asked, and pondering what could be;
  2. Having practical tools that guide the process: these will translate a blue ocean perspective into a whole new offering;
  3. Embracing the concept of humanness: inspire people and build their confidence, so that they drive the process forward and can successfully implement the shift to a blue ocean.

My rule of thumb is that if that you should read summaries of books you don't want to read but you think might contain useful information. And it should free up enough time to re-read multiple times the books you truly want to read. Knowledge builds up. You have to be careful