What do you think?
Rate this book
Blue Ocean Leadership
Ten years ago, world-renowned professors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne broke ground by introducing "blue ocean strategy," a new model for discovering uncontested markets that are ripe for growth. In this bound version of their bestselling Harvard Business Review classic article, they apply their concepts and tools to what is perhaps the greatest challenge of closing the gulf between the potential and the realized talent and energy of employees. Research indicates that this gulf is According to Gallup, 70% of workers are disengaged from their jobs. If companies could find a way to convert them into engaged employees, the results could be transformative. The trouble is, managers lack a clear understanding of what changes they could make to bring out the best in everyone. In this article, Kim and Mauborgne offer a solution to that a systematic approach to uncovering, at each level of the organization, which leadership acts and activities will inspire employees to give their all, and a process for getting managers throughout the company to start doing them. Blue ocean leadership works because the managers' "customers"--that is, the people managers oversee and report to--are involved in identifying what's effective and what isn't. Moreover, the approach doesn't require leaders to alter who they are, just to undertake a different set of tasks. And that kind of change is much easier to implement and track than changes to values and mind-sets. 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.
80 pages, Paperback
Published June 20, 2017
About the author
W. Chan Kim
52 books385 followersW. Chan Kim is the Co-Director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute and a Chair Professor of Strategy and International Management at INSEAD. His book Blue Ocean Strategy, co-authored with Renée Mauborgne, has sold 3.6 million copies and is recognized as one of the most iconic and impactful strategy books ever written. It is being published in a record-breaking 44 languages and is a bestseller across five continents.
Kim is ranked in the top 3 management gurus in the world in the Thinkers50 listing of the World’s Top Management Gurus. He was selected for the 2011 Leadership Hall of Fame by Fast Company magazine and was named among the world's top 5 best business school professors by MBA Rankings. He also received the Nobels Colloquia Prize for Leadership on Business and Economic Thinking. He is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and an advisory member for the European Union. He also serves as an advisor to several countries.
Kim is ranked in the top 3 management gurus in the world in the Thinkers50 listing of the World’s Top Management Gurus. He was selected for the 2011 Leadership Hall of Fame by Fast Company magazine and was named among the world's top 5 best business school professors by MBA Rankings. He also received the Nobels Colloquia Prize for Leadership on Business and Economic Thinking. He is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and an advisory member for the European Union. He also serves as an advisor to several countries.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 14, 2023
This book yet again proves that good things come in small packages.
This is a small leadership book from the Harvard Business Review (HBR) describing the qualities that leaders should possess to keep them updated to bring out the best in them and their team. If you liked the book Blue ocean strategy written by the same authors from HBR, you would love this one.
This book discusses what precisely the frontline, middle and senior managers should do. The Blue ocean leadership grid is an analytic tool used to make canvases that challenge people to think about which acts and activities leaders should do less and which leaders should do more.
This book might help you to become a great leader in Business or any other Profession.
—————————————————————————
You can also follow me on
Instagram ID - Dasfill | YouTube Channel ID - Dasfill | YouTube Health Channel ID - Dasfill - Health | YouTube Malayalam Channel ID - Dasfill - Malayalam | Threads ID - Dasfill | Twitter ID - Dasfill1 | Snapchat ID - Dasfill | Facebook ID - Dasfill | TikTok ID - Dasfill1
This is a small leadership book from the Harvard Business Review (HBR) describing the qualities that leaders should possess to keep them updated to bring out the best in them and their team. If you liked the book Blue ocean strategy written by the same authors from HBR, you would love this one.
This book discusses what precisely the frontline, middle and senior managers should do. The Blue ocean leadership grid is an analytic tool used to make canvases that challenge people to think about which acts and activities leaders should do less and which leaders should do more.
This book might help you to become a great leader in Business or any other Profession.
—————————————————————————
You can also follow me on
Instagram ID - Dasfill | YouTube Channel ID - Dasfill | YouTube Health Channel ID - Dasfill - Health | YouTube Malayalam Channel ID - Dasfill - Malayalam | Threads ID - Dasfill | Twitter ID - Dasfill1 | Snapchat ID - Dasfill | Facebook ID - Dasfill | TikTok ID - Dasfill1
August 4, 2023
The book is giving an overview, with examples, of the theory "blue ocean strategy”, that W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne produced about a decade ago, theory around behaviours that already exist in the market, intuitively or mindfully, by singling them out and organising the principles.
This is part of the collection “Blue Ocean Classics, which includes “Blue Ocean Strategy” (condensed), “Red Ocean Traps”, “Blue Ocean Leadership”. This is a review for the entire collection.
Concepts
Red oceans: the entire market space, which turns bloody red because of the competition.
Blue oceans: the unknown market space, where there is no competition currently, here there is opportunity for growth that is rapid and ample. (example: eBay creating a new online auction industry)
Blue oceans are often formed from within red oceans, when a company innovates something in the industry. In time, blue oceans can turn red.
With more blue oceans, some red oceans turn blue.
Good open questions:
Should a new company jump into a red ocean?
What strategies exist around protecting blue oceans?
According to the research, blue oceans are often in: transport to work, work/productivity, after-work entertainment. A company brand can benefit for decades from blue ocean creation.
Successful starting strategies: differentiation and low cost combined, benchmarked against other players.
“Red Ocean Traps” (article):
managers trained with theories of the red oceans environment, often get stuck thinking in a blue ocean mindset, since it is comfortable following already established, common, less innovative principles. This will keep the company operating in red oceans.
Common principles: benchmarking against competition only, having a customer lead business, doing just customer lead development and research, expecting R&D investment to lead to new market creation instead of user research investment, new market are made my making old markets obsolete (destructive and disruptive strategies can reach strong residence), focusing on low cost solely (can lead to quality sacrifice), focusing on differentiation and low cost on specific axis in isolation (can lead to making the business a competitor).
(Example of success: Amazon launching Kindle - Kindle Suite and breaking the market by refusing to follow customer feedback around bigger laptop/mobile screens for reading)
“Blue Ocean Leadership” (article):
Here is where the book and I disagree a bit, I was not aware that modern leadership practices were theorised or conceptually invented by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. The type of leadership described was already common, for example in big tech companies, before the book was first published, but yes, linking successful leadership tactics with the Blue Ocean Strategy makes sense to make any attempt more efficient at putting a company on the Blue Ocean Strategy track. The book is proposing some specific techniques to investigate leadership performance that are interesting to consider.
Main concepts to apply: authentic/empathetic leadership, flexibility, removal of redundant leadership layers (flattening the org, lean company org), employee/customer feedback driven leadership, distributed leadership, workshop driven engagement with leadership (brainstorming), individual engagement with reports (1:1 culture), connecting cross-layer, building trust, transparency.
Overall, I don’t regret spending time on this book. It was informative, and the blue-red ocean concept brought on a new perspective on the market.
Unfortunately, I believe it will be difficult to break the patterns of Red Oceans, especially since the current market has more and more well established mastodon-companies, which will only grow more, covering more areas of influence, and they aligned themselves in an almost-permanent competition with each other. A potential way to look at it will be to big companies creating small pools of Blue Oceans, here and there, temporarily, until the other giants pick up on it and offer an alternative.
This is part of the collection “Blue Ocean Classics, which includes “Blue Ocean Strategy” (condensed), “Red Ocean Traps”, “Blue Ocean Leadership”. This is a review for the entire collection.
Concepts
Red oceans: the entire market space, which turns bloody red because of the competition.
Blue oceans: the unknown market space, where there is no competition currently, here there is opportunity for growth that is rapid and ample. (example: eBay creating a new online auction industry)
Blue oceans are often formed from within red oceans, when a company innovates something in the industry. In time, blue oceans can turn red.
With more blue oceans, some red oceans turn blue.
Good open questions:
Should a new company jump into a red ocean?
What strategies exist around protecting blue oceans?
According to the research, blue oceans are often in: transport to work, work/productivity, after-work entertainment. A company brand can benefit for decades from blue ocean creation.
Successful starting strategies: differentiation and low cost combined, benchmarked against other players.
“Red Ocean Traps” (article):
managers trained with theories of the red oceans environment, often get stuck thinking in a blue ocean mindset, since it is comfortable following already established, common, less innovative principles. This will keep the company operating in red oceans.
Common principles: benchmarking against competition only, having a customer lead business, doing just customer lead development and research, expecting R&D investment to lead to new market creation instead of user research investment, new market are made my making old markets obsolete (destructive and disruptive strategies can reach strong residence), focusing on low cost solely (can lead to quality sacrifice), focusing on differentiation and low cost on specific axis in isolation (can lead to making the business a competitor).
(Example of success: Amazon launching Kindle - Kindle Suite and breaking the market by refusing to follow customer feedback around bigger laptop/mobile screens for reading)
“Blue Ocean Leadership” (article):
Here is where the book and I disagree a bit, I was not aware that modern leadership practices were theorised or conceptually invented by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. The type of leadership described was already common, for example in big tech companies, before the book was first published, but yes, linking successful leadership tactics with the Blue Ocean Strategy makes sense to make any attempt more efficient at putting a company on the Blue Ocean Strategy track. The book is proposing some specific techniques to investigate leadership performance that are interesting to consider.
Main concepts to apply: authentic/empathetic leadership, flexibility, removal of redundant leadership layers (flattening the org, lean company org), employee/customer feedback driven leadership, distributed leadership, workshop driven engagement with leadership (brainstorming), individual engagement with reports (1:1 culture), connecting cross-layer, building trust, transparency.
Overall, I don’t regret spending time on this book. It was informative, and the blue-red ocean concept brought on a new perspective on the market.
Unfortunately, I believe it will be difficult to break the patterns of Red Oceans, especially since the current market has more and more well established mastodon-companies, which will only grow more, covering more areas of influence, and they aligned themselves in an almost-permanent competition with each other. A potential way to look at it will be to big companies creating small pools of Blue Oceans, here and there, temporarily, until the other giants pick up on it and offer an alternative.
February 28, 2023
En este librito-artículo establece una forma de alinear las acciones y la inversión de tiempo y esfuerzo de los líderes de una organización con los objetivos de esta. Establece cuatro pasos en un proceso para hacer esta transformación.
Me gustó la propuesta básica: toma en cuenta a todas las personas de la empresa para saber cómo los líderes los pueden ayudar y pon a trabajar a los líderes.
Otra cosa que me llevo es que no tienes que esperar que las personas mágicamente cambien su personalidad, sino que es más práctico hacerlos cambiar sus acciones: además es más visible y puede motivar a las demás personas.
Por lo demás, lo sentí demasiado enfocado en empresas gigantes y bastante burocrático, pero creo que aplica para muchas empresas sobre todo aquellas que están estancadas cumpliendo sus metas. Quiero intentar aplicar la idea básica de saber que esperan las personas a las que lidero de mí y cómo les puedo servir mejor.
Me gustó la propuesta básica: toma en cuenta a todas las personas de la empresa para saber cómo los líderes los pueden ayudar y pon a trabajar a los líderes.
Otra cosa que me llevo es que no tienes que esperar que las personas mágicamente cambien su personalidad, sino que es más práctico hacerlos cambiar sus acciones: además es más visible y puede motivar a las demás personas.
Por lo demás, lo sentí demasiado enfocado en empresas gigantes y bastante burocrático, pero creo que aplica para muchas empresas sobre todo aquellas que están estancadas cumpliendo sus metas. Quiero intentar aplicar la idea básica de saber que esperan las personas a las que lidero de mí y cómo les puedo servir mejor.
April 18, 2019
Blue Ocean Strategy is one of my favorite books (Along with The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith and A System of Logic by John Stuart Mill) so to find an an abridged version of the book tied to leadership was a joy!
What the book covers is the clear roles of management and how at each level what activities inspire employees. How do we get talented employees to become more engaging and involved in the lifecycle of the business. A great quick read and since I had time today this was the beat way to spend a day
What the book covers is the clear roles of management and how at each level what activities inspire employees. How do we get talented employees to become more engaging and involved in the lifecycle of the business. A great quick read and since I had time today this was the beat way to spend a day
June 14, 2019
Some might confused this book with Blue Ocean Strategy. There is nothing to do with it at all. The content of the book was based on the idea that the leader (front line, middle, and senior ) should be assessed by people around them to find the as-is situation. Then the new to-be should be voted in public. And these qualities of the leadership are focused on the activities, not their mindset.
It's interesting piece of work, but does not contain anything new.
It's interesting piece of work, but does not contain anything new.
February 13, 2024
A very quick read but worth it. The statistics mentioned support making management more humane - we don't manage businesses so much as we manage people. I think that mentality is often lost in corporate America.
From other reviewers it doesn't sound like it's closely related to Blue Ocean Strategy - I had actually stumbled upon this nifty read first, but will add that to my reading list, too.
From other reviewers it doesn't sound like it's closely related to Blue Ocean Strategy - I had actually stumbled upon this nifty read first, but will add that to my reading list, too.
January 18, 2018
Very disappointing
Cannot believe I PAID for a one-page summary. Not worth it. HBR is usually great but this one fails miserably.
Cannot believe I PAID for a one-page summary. Not worth it. HBR is usually great but this one fails miserably.
June 5, 2018
Quick read. Gives a good framework to improve employee engagement, productivity and motivation at organization level.
November 15, 2020
The book is just them going on and on about a simple idea that is explained at the end in a few lines and a grid.
I like the suggested idea but the book is not to my liking
I like the suggested idea but the book is not to my liking
April 20, 2021
What a waste of a great title!
November 19, 2022
Great idea, demonstrated in clear canvases and examples.
January 20, 2024
A fine guide to define leadership roles in large organizations. Not sure if I’m sold on the method. Maybe I skim read too quickly.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews