Blue Ocean Strategy, a book by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, develops and explains how to beat the competition by reaching beyond it into new unexplored markets. The authors use the metaphor of the blue ocean as a direct contrast to red oceans. Red oceans are the battling grounds for typical market competition where firms fight for an already defined and stagnate market. Blue oceans, on the other hand, describe a strategy that breaks away from the blood red ocean into clear, uncharted oceans, or new markets (see Appendix A for the details of the differences). The authors studied the business launches of 108 companies, more than 150 strategic moves from 1880 to 2000, and more than 30 industries to uncover the key traits and practices of what they call "Blue Ocean Strategy."

Kicking off the book with four analytical tools that promise to help firms find and exploit untapped markets, the authors offer a step by step approach, comprised of six principles, on how to break away from the competition of red oceans and execute a blue ocean strategy. They show how and why a blue ocean strategy leads to a market where competition is - for a time - obsolete. Each principle is explained and supported by real world examples from such companies as Ford, Cirque du Soleil, Dell Computers, Casella Wines, and even the New York City Police Department. The chart, figure 1, illustrates both the concept of blue ocean strategies, and the organization of the book, Blue Ocean Strategies.

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The first part of the book explains what Kim and Mauborgne call the cornerstone of Blue Ocean Strategies: value innovation. Value innovation is basically a leap in value that makes current competition irrelevant. Whereas value alone merely extends the value