Quotes from W. Chan Kim

Get focused on (..) understanding how to deliver a leap in value to buyers

Our research reveals that most companies' strategic planning process keeps them wedded to red oceans. The process tends to drive companies to compete within existing market space.

Voluntary cooperation is more than mechanical execution, where people do only what it takes to get by. It involves going beyond the call of duty, wherein individuals exert energy and initiative to the best of their abilities—even subordinating personal self-interest—to execute resulting strategies.

Few products and services are used in a vacuum. In most cases, other products and services affect their value

Commitment, trust, and voluntary cooperation are not merely attitudes or behaviors. They are intangible capital.

The first involves streamlining operations and introducing cost innovations from manufacturing to distribution.

To maximize the size of their blue oceans, companies need to take a reverse course. Instead of concentrating on customers, they need to look to noncustomers. And instead of focusing on customer differences, they need to build on powerful commonalities in what buyers value.

Focus, divergence, and a compelling tagline. Without these qualities, a company's strategy will likely be muddled, undifferentiated, and hard to communicate with a high cost structure.

Untapped value is often hidden in complementary products and services. The key is to define the total solution buyers seek when they choose a product or service. A simple way to do so is to think about what happens before, during, and after your product is used.

In this way, blue ocean strategy makes sense of the strategic paradox many organizations face: the more they focus on coping with the competition, and striving to match and beat their advantages, the more they ironically tend to look like the competition. To which blue ocean strategy would respond, stop looking to the competition. Value-innovate and let the competition worry about you.

Los innovadores de valor buscan ideas de éxito y saltos sustanciales en valor, sin que les importe demasiado cómo le va al sector.

your offering needs to stand out as never before.

If you ask companies to present their proposed strategies in no more than a few slides, it is not surprising that few clear or compelling strategies are articulated.

Identify where the mass of target buyers is and what prices these buyers are prepared to pay for the products and services they currently use.

Unlike the practice of conventional technology innovators, value innovation is based on a win-win game among buyers, companies, and society.

There are three mutually reinforcing elements that define fair process: engagement, explanation, and clarity of expectation

By looking across the market boundary of theater, Cirque du Soleil also offered new noncircus factors, such as a story line and, with it, intellectual richness, artistic music and dance, and multiple productions. These factors, entirely new creations for the circus industry, are drawn from the alternative live entertainment industry of theater.

no debemos permitir que lo que podemos hacer ahora condicione nuestro punto de vista sobre lo que se necesita hacer para ganar mañana. Nuestro enfoque es de pizarra limpia».

Value innovation is not the same as technology innovation.

At the same time, by eliminating many of the most costly elements of the circus, it dramatically reduced its cost structure, achieving both differentiation and low cost. Cirque strategically priced its tickets against those of the theater, lifting the price point of the circus industry by several multiples while still pricing its productions to capture the mass of adult customers, who were used to theater prices.

With your blue ocean move chosen, and its market potential confirmed, it's time to formalize your business model.

Engagement means involving individuals in the strategic decisions that affect them by asking for their input and allowing them to refute the merits of one another's ideas and assumptions.

To produce a high-performing and sustainable blue ocean strategy, you need to ask the following questions. Are your three strategy propositions aligned in pursuit of differentiation and low cost? Have you identified all the key stakeholders, including external ones on which the effective execution of your blue ocean strategy will depend? Have you developed compelling people propositions for each of these to ensure they are motivated and behind the execution of your new idea?

Encouraging refutation sharpens everyone's thinking and builds better collective wisdom