"Don't Compete with Rivals - Make Them Irrelevant"

Companies have long engaged in head-to-head competition in search of sustained, profitable growth. They have fought for competitive advantage, battled over market share, and struggled for differentiation.

Yet in today's overcrowded industries, competing head-on results in nothing but a bloody "red ocean" of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. In a book that challenges everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne contend that while most companies compete within such red oceans, this strategy is increasingly unlikely to create profitable growth in the future.

Based on a study of 150 strategic moves spanning more than a hundred years and thirty industries, Kim and Mauborgne argue that tomorrow's leading companies will succeed not by battling competitors, but by creating "blue oceans" of uncontested market space ripe for growth . Such strategic moves - termed "value innovation" - create powerful leaps in value for both the firm and its buyers, rendering rivals obsolete and unleashing new demand.

BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY provides a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant. In this frame-changing book, Kim and Mauborgne present a proven analytical framework and the tools for successfully creating and capturing blue oceans. Examining a wide range of strategic moves across a host of industries, BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY highlights the six principles that every company can use to successfully formulate and execute blue ocean strategies. The six principles show how to reconstruct market boundaries, focus on the big picture, reach beyond existing demand, get the strategic sequence right, overcome organizational hurdles, and build execution into strategy. Upending traditional thinking about strategy, this landmark book charts a bold new path to winning the future.

About W. Kim Chan

W. Chan Kim is The Boston Consulting Group Bruce D. Henderson Chair Professor of Strategy and International Management at INSEAD, France (the world's second largest business school). Prior to joining INSEAD, he was a professor at the University of Michigan Business School, USA. He has served as a board member as well as an advisor for a number of multinational corporations in Europe, the U.S. and Pacific Asia. He is an advisory member for the European Union. He was born in Korea.

Kim is a fellow of the World Economic Forum. His Harvard Business Review articles, co-authored with Renée Mauborgne, are worldwide bestsellers and have sold over a half a million reprints. Their Value Innovation and Fair Process articles were selected as among the best classic articles ever published in Harvard Business Review. They have co-authored articles in The Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Asian Wall Street Journal, and numerous journals.

Kim has published numerous articles on strategy and managing the multinational which can be found in: Academy of Management Journal, Management Science, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of International Business Studies, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and others. He is the co-author of Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant (Harvard Business School Press, 2005). Blue Ocean Strategy has become an "International Bestseller", after reaching the "Wall Street Journal Bestseller" and "BusinessWeek Bestseller" status. It had sold over one million copies in the first year and is being published in 37 languages, covering over 180 countries, breaking HBSP's historical record of most foreign language translations ever achieved.

Kim is a winner of the Eldridge Haynes Prize, awarded by the Academy of International Business and the Eldridge Haynes Memorial Trust of Business International, for the best original paper in the field of international business. He was selected for Thinkers 50, the global ranking of business thinkers, and was named along with his colleague Renée Mauborgne, as "the number one gurus of the future" by L'Expansion, one of France's leading business magazines. The Sunday Times (London) called them "two of Europe's brightest business thinkers. Kim and Mauborgne provide a sizeable challenge to the way managers think about and practice strategy." The Observer called Kim and Mauborgne, "the next big gurus to hit the business world."

Kim and Mauborgne co-founded the Blue Ocean Strategy Network (BOSN), a global community of practice on the Blue Ocean Strategy family of concepts that they created. BOSN embraces academics, consultants, executives, and government officers. Kim is also a board member of the Value Innovation Action Tank (VIAT), a non-profit organization, which has 15 Singapore government ministries and agencies as founding partners. VIAT was established in March 2004 to bring Value Innovation to the country's private, public and people sectors. The Times (London) said, "the ultimate centre of excellence is one which does not cost the business school any money, but which positions its faculty as leaders in its field, creator of practical ideas, and direct influencer of governments. In this, Singapore's Value Innovation Action Tank (VIAT) is probably the benchmark. VIAT aims to convert Kim and Mauborgne's ideas into reality by using a variety of frameworks, processes, tools and educational programmes."

W. Kim Chan is invited to present at 11th Global Institute for Leadership Development.