Blue Ocean Strategy - Preceding Work

Preceding Work

The contents of the book are based on research and a series of Harvard Business Review articles as well as academic articles on various dimensions of the topic.

Kim and Mauborgne studied about one hundred fifty positions made from 1880 to 2000 in more than thirty industries and closely examined the relevant business players in each. They analyzed the winning business players as well as the less successful competitors. Studied industries included hotels, cinemas, retail stores, airlines, energy, construction, Publishing, automotive and steel. They searched for convergence among the more and less successful players. Divergence across the two groups was also studied to discover the common factors leading to strong growth and the key differences separating those winners from the mere survivors and the losers. Kim and Mauborgne defined a consistent and common pattern across all the seemingly idiosyncratic success stories and first called it value innovation, and then Blue Ocean Strategy.

Research results were first published in 1997 in a Harvard Business Review article by Kim and Mauborgne titled "Value Innovation: The Strategic Logic of High Growth". The ideas, tools and frameworks were tested and refined over the years in corporate practice in Europe, the United States and Asia and presented in the following eight additional articles, before being published in the form of a book in 2005.

• 1997. "Value Innovation – The Strategic Logic of High Growth". Harvard Business Review 75, January–February 103–112.
• 1998. "Procedural Justice, Strategic Decision Making and the Knowledge Economy." Strategic Management Journal, April.
• 1999. "Creating New Market Space." Harvard Business Review 77, January–February, 83–93.
• 1999. "Strategy, Value Innovation, and the Knowledge Economy." Sloan Management Review 40, no.3, Spring.
• 2000. "Knowing a Winning Business Idea When You See One." Harvard Business Review 78, September–October, 129–141.
• 2002. "Charting Your Company's Future." Harvard Business Review 80, June, 76–85.
• 2003. "Tipping Point Leadership." Harvard Business Review 81, April, 60–69.
• 2004. "Blue Ocean Strategy." Harvard Business Review, October, 76–85.

The name "Blue Ocean Strategy" was introduced in the Harvard Business Review article published in October 2004. The book builds on and extends the work presented in these articles by providing a narrative arc that draws all these ideas together to offer a unified framework for creating and capturing blue oceans.