Blue Ocean Strategy - C. Kim, R. Maubrgne

An offering from the Havard Business School Press subtitled "How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant." An exceptional book about truly assessing where the market is going and figuring out how to create a new space before your competition does. It's a matter of looking at your own company's unique strengths, seeing what can be dropped or eliminated that the consumer no longer really sees as differentiating; and looking at research as to who your customer isn't and why. The authors use very interesting case studies to illustrate how enterprises as diverse as Cirque de Soleil, Yellow Tail Wines, and Starbucks found their blue oceans. Their concept of creating a strategy canvas makes their concepts very visual. For any company that's in maturing market with shrinking marketshare, this book provides a framework for looking at something as familiar as a century old industry in an entirely different way. I thought is was very worthwhile.