February 11, 2025 • 26 mins
Surprisingly, if you appeal to tired & worn out people it might just reflect in your own work.
'Blue Ocean Strategy' by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne is a business strategy book promoting the idea of moving away from a contested core business to less competitive greener pastures. Highlights several companies that have done this and why they were successful. Plenty of graphs, charts & lists contained within 11 chapters & 3 appendices.
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Timeline:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:26) Themes/Questions
(00:12:38) Author & Extras
(00:20:41) Summary
(00:22:57) Value 4 Value
(00:25:33) Join Live!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kyrin Down (00:00):
Surprisingly, if you appeal to tired and worn out people, it might just reflect in your own work.
Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the mere mortals book reviews.
Kyrin here live on the 02/12/2025.
(00:21):
And as you might surmise, this is the podcast where I give you swimming techniques.
No. It's not a podcast. And you're probably not gonna find it in here, even though you might think you would, in Blue Ocean Strategy
by w dot Chan Kim
and Renee Malborn. Malboragney
is I guess how you would pronounce that name.
Now this book was published in 02/2005, but I have the 02/2015
(00:45):
revised edition, I guess, you, what you'd call it, which has an extra chapter or two. It's 261
pages in length,
five to six hours reading in total. It's pretty thick with,
the actual
content that's contained within this.
Now this is a business strategy book promoting the idea of this Blue Ocean strategy, which is essentially a call to
(01:07):
find greener partures for your your business, for your market that you're in, and to stop
floundering in this competitive strategy of the red ocean, which is where it's kind of like dog eat dog shark eat shark, I guess is what you'd call it and move to this blue ocean of of better pastures. I'm not sure why they didn't use something like green pasture strategy. This probably would have been better.
(01:32):
It highlights,
the several companies that they believe who have done this. And actually, there's there's quite a few companies,
and why they were successful.
You'll find within here plenty of, like, graphs and just general,
I don't know,
techniques,
bullet points, lists,
tables.
There's all sorts of things that you'll find within here, which are all going to try and demonstrate their point of what is a Blue Ocean strategy. So there's also,
(02:00):
three appendices. There's 11 chapters, and they go by the names of things,
split into three parts. Part one, blue ocean strategy, creating Blue Ocean's analytical tools and frameworks. Part two, formulating Blue Ocean strategy, reconstruct market boundaries, reach beyond existing demand, get the strategic sequence right. Part three, executing Blue Ocean strategy, align value, profit, people, and propositions. You know, all business talk, all very, very good.
(02:26):
So let's jump into some of the themes and questions here.
And so Blue Ocean strategy
is essentially
a mindset shift, I guess. It's
technically probably a strategic shift in a company.
If you're feeling the pressure of tightening costs,
if your
growth is slow, if you're tired, if everything just feels like it's harder than it needs to be, perhaps you're not thinking right and you need to start investigating,
(02:53):
oh, a blue shirt blue ocean strategy. I need to change what my business and and is doing and and address a new market. And essentially,
it's all about unlocking
demand that wasn't there before.
You're going for a market which does not exist, and so therefore, you can be the only and sole competitor within it.
It's mostly applied, I guess, or talking to
(03:17):
companies that are or or perhaps like executives that are already in this,
rather than addressing it to startups, for example.
I got the feeling this was more for, like, hey. You're you're already in
knee dip. I'm gonna be, you know, crisscrossing analogies here, but you're already knee deep into the weeds and and you're floundering there or you're struggling through that jungle.
(03:39):
And I guess maybe the the ocean version of this would be you're in the kelp, you can't escape the kelp, and you're trying to get out of that. And so there's,
you know, quite a few things that it lists off. So for example, red ocean strategy. So this is what you're probably already doing
is competing in existing market space. You're trying to beat the competition. You're,
(04:02):
you're trying to exploit existing demands. There's,
making value
cost trade offs
and things like this. Whereas Blue Ocean Strategy is more about create, creating uncontested market space.
You're make making the competition irrelevant so you're not competing,
create and capture new demand, break the value, cost trade off, etcetera, etcetera.
(04:23):
And some of the probably, like, most useful things I think in this were if you were to compare
yourself visually on a in a company and you'll see on the screen here, you've got a graph which is just showing low average high of whatever it is that you're measuring. So it could be
cost of your product. It could be
the ease of access,
(04:44):
the,
you know, a technical
detail that you do better or don't do as good as, as your competition. And you kind of measure yourself and see where you rank up and and where your competition does. And so you might find, okay, they're better at some points. I'm better at low points.
And basically it's the the strategy is to eliminate some things which are unhelpful, unuseful. Your your customers don't actually need it, even though you might think they do To reduce some things which are perhaps adding cost to your product or making it harder to use, you wanna raise some things which are neglected by the current
(05:20):
system, by the current market and and isn't being addressed. And then probably the most importantly, to create new metrics for yourself to go, okay, this is what we're going to try and focus on, etcetera, etcetera.
The examples given this book are ones like Cirque du Soleil, which revamped the idea of a circus instead of being this
kind of place where you'd go to see animals.
(05:42):
And it didn't really have a theme. It was more about like this crazy jovial thing, whereas Cirque du Soleil is more like,
you know, unique handcrafted
music experience,
costumes,
getting rid of these star performers and focusing more on the show as a whole rather than as a, you know, the amazing,
(06:03):
at Sulpata or something like that, and completely eliminating animals from the from the performance,
making it more like an operatic
type experience to go to rather than a,
theme park type deal. We have Yellowtail Wines, which are actually an Aussie company, which made the wine industry
(06:23):
shift or their entrance into it was from this kind of sophisticated
prestige
wine market where if you're a new person coming in, it's so hard to, like, know and it's very snobbery. Whereas this was more about, like, the party, the fun atmosphere of of being able to just have a social drink with friends,
type deal. And that's why they were successful.
(06:44):
NetJets, which was a shared private aviation company, so sharing private,
private planes
and even strategies of,
like the New York Police Department. So not technically a company, but how they,
addressed
certain things related to crime and stuff and and compared themselves to other cities and and said, okay. We're gonna do this better. We're not gonna do this, etcetera, etcetera.
(07:07):
And then even perhaps even industries, how they changed. The
experience of going to a movie changed with Nickelodeons,
with multiplexes and megaplexes.
And then I guess even nowadays you'd call it streaming. And so Netflix, I'm sure they would have said had a a blue ocean strategy. So
the meta thought process of all this, I think, is is rather solid. You know, playing a zero sum sum game is rather hard,
(07:33):
and only suited for competitors who really like to defeat other people who love the grind, who love
pulling one over of creating, you know, getting your market share higher or beating someone out by like pure
just like grit and holding on
and working hard for dear life.
I think this book is meant to appeal to more,
(07:54):
not gonna say the lazy, but the people who are tired of that who are just like, I'm, I'm putting all this energy in and it's not really having
effects.
I don't want to compete in this game.
And hence, while why people like Tim Ferriss, Pat, recommend this book.
And it certainly appeals to me this idea of, yeah, I'd I'd rather compete against myself or in a arena where it's just me rather than against other people because yeah. Sure. I'm I'm I'm, like, lazy and tired. I I don't wanna, like, grind away on,
(08:26):
you know, one particular metric of value cost averaging or whatever just to to do something like that, even though I'm I'm not in business. So
that appeals to me. The whole meta idea of Blue Ocean Strategy. Sure. That's that's cool.
What
I personally have a problem with is that I just kept thinking while reading. This is probably a port or tool for actual
(08:49):
prediction and and kind of for execution as well.
You know, the vast bulk of the book's taken up with, like, formulating the strategy,
visualizing visualizing strategy at the corporate level. And it's got all of these things, like, key competing factors, the def defense airport, f aerospace industry. And then it's got, like, you know, all of these tables and graphs and and talking about this stuff.
(09:12):
And,
it's very, like, flowcharts
and lists and things like this.
The six utility levers. And yet whilst reading, I'm just like,
okay, maybe this is how companies and businesses work. Maybe this is what like the the meetings at the the ultimate high level of CEOs and CFOs and stuff and things like that is like, I've never been there. I can't speak for that.
(09:36):
But I'm just going like, man, it's kind of like the
the the Blue Ocean strategy is just a mindset switched. That's that's really all I got from this is like, you need to change your mindset.
Here's a couple of, like,
rough tools of how you could go about doing it. But honestly, I think
it's more about the whole book is more about just trying to get into a CEO's head that, oh, shit, we're competing in this in this market. And it's really hard and our business is going to struggle and we're gonna spend a lot of energy running around. It's kinda like the red queen, you know, running as hard as you can to just stay in the same place sort of deal. So,
(10:13):
I think the real money comes from the real value would be from
probably just diving into one company and going like, okay, why did they make this decision rather than this decision? Because it didn't seem
great in terms of the executing of things. My co host, Juan,
he can come up with, you know, a hundred business ideas and he does all the time,
(10:34):
yet he'll only choose
maybe one of them to to actually act upon.
And it's it would be much more interesting to have a book of, okay, listing out the other 99 ideas and why he only chose to act upon this this one. So
they took keep talking about the corporate graveyards of companies that failed to adapt or,
(10:55):
did the transition poorly to blue ocean.
Yet
all of this feels very, very like hindsight
type deal.
I would hazard a guess that there would be many times that they would,
you know, if a company came to them and said, like, hey, we're doing this thing, Blue Ocean Strategy, that and they'd be like, the authors of this would be like, yeah, you're you're nailing it. You're going to you're going to this blue ocean strategy is going to you're on the right path
(11:23):
yet
it it just feels very, very like
unmetric based,
very qualitative
like this. These people are doing blue ocean strategy, but these people who failed didn't do it. And
it just felt very, very cherry picked
rather than something that's a practical thing that you can really use going forward.
(11:46):
A reason for why I say this as well is the
the kind
of cavalier nature in which they use the blue ocean strategy. So for example, at one point they suggest that
the the Sex and the City show was a blue ocean strategy because it addressed the market of,
I don't know, like, female
single people or something like this.
(12:07):
Does that mean every popular TV show is a blue ocean strategy? Like,
you know, it it seems like a rather unfalsifiable
theory,
in terms. So if I was going to say it about this book,
Blue Ocean Strategy. Yeah, sure. The idea is solid, but I would not be looking to this for any
(12:27):
competency or anything that you could be saying. Like, yeah, this will really help in terms of execution
for your particular market for the nuances that go on with that. Let's jump into the author, perhaps some extra details, authors, I should say.
So w dot Chan Kim and Renee Malbone are business people who just happen to write a book. So this was published by the Hardness Harvard Business School. They were more lecturers and slash teachers, from what I can gather, worked at the place called INSEAD,
(12:57):
which
was,
I thought, was an acronym for something. And it was, but actually wasn't. And we'll get into why this is kind of important in a little bit.
There's nothing particularly wrong with them not being authors. And they've they've written a couple of books, but they're all, you know, Blue Ocean Strategy Revisited or Blue Ocean Traps or whatever. So there's there's variation books on this.
(13:19):
So I'm given a bit of leeway here and that they're not writers.
They're business people. And the book is undoubtedly
successful and popular. So kudos to them for writing a book that managed to to gain a lot of traction.
Me personally, it's hard to pick out exactly why I disliked the style of this book. It felt wordy in a kind of business way. So
(13:43):
there seemed to be a lot of unnecessary sentences to drive
home a point or to restate a statement in a slightly different form.
It it didn't feel like it feel it felt like this had been written once
and like then they just chucked it out, perhaps cleaned up a couple of words here and there and then put it out. It didn't feel like it had multiple revisions of
(14:03):
them reading over and going, okay, this point here, can I get this across more succinctly?
Does it need to be written this way as wordy as this way? So
I would argue that there was a lot of low value, repetitive nature in this book.
And this was kind of just a filler of supplementary talk that didn't actually help prove
(14:26):
or
put their strategy into into place.
Particularly noticeable
of this was I would kind
of appreciate the build bits about companies where they would say, you know, okay, this company, for example, this company does this. This company does this. But then in the pieces of actual business,
I definitely saw my mind wandering and I certainly was speed reading towards the end of this book.
(14:52):
Once again,
that's that's okay. You know, many of the companies in this are somewhat outdated. This book's twenty years old now.
And the references,
you know, they they talk about things like how Dyson revolutionized the the vacuum industry by getting rid of the paper bags. And I'm like, oh, yeah. Shit. I remember that. Like, just barely, barely vaguely in my mind. I remember reading that. So, you know, there's a little bit of outdated stuff. Once again, they're they're not authors.
(15:18):
I can give that a bit of a pass.
I can forgive them this. But what is unforgivable
is one of the wildest things I've ever seen in a book, which occurs on both page 14 and then on page 38.
So if you'll bear with me here, I'm gonna read out this section here. So,
where should I start?
Cirque du Soleil did away with all of these factors. These factors had long been taken for granted in the traditional circus industry, which never questioned their ongoing revel relevance. However, there was increasing public discomfort with the use of animals. Moreover, animal acts were one of the most expensive elements, including not only the cost of of the animals, but also their training, medical care, housing, insurance, and transportation.
(15:58):
Similarly, while the circus industry focused on featuring stars, in the mind of the public, the so called stars of the circus were trivial next to movie stars or famous singers.
Again, they were a high cost component carrying little sway with spectators,
gone to other three ring venues.
Okay. You know what? That's not too bad. That that's kind of interesting.
Shows me something that I didn't know about the circus industry beforehand.
(16:22):
That's okay. There's there's something in this book, and this is why Cirque du
Soleil did well. Now we come on to this, section over here on page, 38.
In the case of Cirque du Soleil, it eliminated several factors from two traditional circuses such as the animal show, star performers, and multiple show arenas. These factors had long been taken for granted in the traditional circus industry, which never questioned their ongoing relevance. However, there was increasing public discomfort with the use of animals. Moreover, animal acts are one of the most expensive elements. Not only is there the cost of the animals, but also their training, medical care, housing, insurance, and transportation.
(16:59):
Similarly, although the circus industry focused on featuring stars, in the mind of the public, the so called stars of the circus were trivial next to movie stars or famous singers. Again, they were a high cost component carrying little sway with spectators, gone to a three ring venues.
Are you fucking kidding me?
What
kind of shithouse lockery is this? So this is what for page 14 to 38. So that is 24 pages away from each other. They have taken the exact same paragraph
(17:29):
and and this is the kicker, the exact same paragraph and then altered a word here or there. So it's like they put in the or change this comma from this place or added, you know, the Cirque du Soleil.
I
the first time so reading through I came to this page 38.
And I'm just
like, wait, that that seems really familiar.
(17:49):
Like, and and because it was right at the start of the book, I could go back and I'm like, oh, maybe I read it in the appendice because I they referenced an appendix. So I went back to read that first. But, no, it's in the actual meat of the book where they they copy the same fucking thing and then just put it in. And that's a full paragraph and a half just there.
I'm I'm flabbergasted.
(18:10):
I have never seen such I don't know what to call this, like, lousy,
tired,
just stupid copy editing where you have posted
the exact same
I'd like, what value did that add by not only copying it, but then just changing a word here or there?
Sumi Masen, what the fuck? What the actual fuck?
(18:32):
And this wasn't just a one off because now that I was looking for this, I was like, okay.
I
I didn't I didn't know what to think. Like, what what is this? So then as I'm reading and I as I mentioned, like, I read the appendix, and then I went back and,
they did the exact same thing on the model t, page a 32. And then on appendix a, they do the exact same fucking thing right down to changing a word here or there.
(19:02):
I'm
I I I didn't know what to think of this other than
how do you write a book? Like, was this in the original written like this?
You know, I thought they only added an extra chapter into this book, the
the chapter 10 on like Red Ocean Traps.
So did they do this in the original
version as well? Is this book somehow different or special? Have like, how
(19:26):
did they intentionally do that? And if they intentionally did that, what were they thinking?
There's a couple of other things that I started to notice in here.
For example, in chapter 10, they just start randomly using the word per se and not just a little, a lot. They'll use it twice in one paragraph, three times on one page. It's just like, they just started discovering that per se is a is a fun thing to say and then just randomly just start dropping it in everywhere.
(19:55):
I mentioned the INSEAD, which was right at the start talking about the, the authors
and, you know, co director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy and INSEAD is all capitalized. So I assume that stood for something,
like Institute of something.
And sure enough, it does. But it's it's kind of like this weird it feels like they should have just put in the old
(20:18):
name of it, which was a French word, institute, the artist,
something, educate
education, whatever it was.
There was just a whole bunch of points in this book where
I'm I'm just going,
this is just really lousy. This is really tired. This is really lazy. And
I'm I'm not on board with that. I'm really not on board with that. So jumping to the summary, similar books, recommendations,
(20:44):
the fundamental idea of of this book is fine. Blue Ocean Strategy.
Cool.
Stop competing in a heavily competitive market. It's not worth the effort.
I'm down with that. Calling way for
a new way of looking at things for stagnating companies
in terms of actionable advice. If I was an executive,
I'd probably wouldn't be able to take anything away from this
(21:07):
other than like, okay, yeah, you know what? We need to start thinking about these things.
A couple of the graphs
of of like, yeah, this is how you can compare things might be helpful.
But in terms of the actual book, sloppy and lazy writing,
I can only imagine this is why at the start I was referencing, like, if you're appealing to perhaps some, like, tired and sloppy people, maybe that reflects in your own work because this just seems sloppy and tired.
(21:35):
I'm surprised
this book has done as well as it has.
Funny little thing on the back here. It's got, like, three stars.
I'm not sure why you'd put that on the back of your own book. Even if it's just for a design thing, you'd you'd probably think that you'd put five stars.
And this, I think, is emblematic of this book because giving this three stars out of 10 is generous at best.
(21:58):
This is easily for big forgettable, and I hope we will never have to mention this book again. A solid one and a half out of 10 Blue Ocean Strategy,
w dot Chen Kim, Renee Malbourne. I I'm an
unforgivable that that passage that just completely ruined
this book of
(22:18):
any value. It has,
similar books.
I don't know this book. I feel like it wishes it was a long tail. If you want to if you want a business book that we've covered on this channel,
The Long Tail by Chris Anderson,
is similar in style. It's not appealing to executives. It's more just explaining a concept.
And I think they would have done much better if they had followed that
(22:41):
style of saying, you know, this is what a Blue Ocean strategy is and not and not riding it in the sense of trying to
it was just very business y speak.
But, you know, the book's done successfully for them, so kudos to them. Maybe I'm just a hater.
Let's jump onto the final sections here. Value for value.
I hope I'm providing more value to you than than you than I got from this book.
(23:06):
Is podcast available anytime, anywhere for anyone?
And I just ask that for all this value that I'm pro providing upfront,
if you can return some in kind.
Now you can do this many ways. Time
sharing this,
creating clips from this,
jumping up onto our any of our social media platforms. You know, all these sorts of things are very helpful. Talent. I would love to hear your book recommendations, what you think I would enjoy, not enjoy your thoughts on this particular book. Adding something to the conversation is very much appreciated.
(23:38):
Come join us in the discord for that or leave a comment on the YouTube.
And then finally, we do have some ways for you to support monetarily.
The main one I talk about is the PayPal link, but we also do have a special little thing you can do, which is called a boost to gram.
And you can send this through on a select podcasting apps
like True Fans and Fountain.
(24:00):
And we got a couple of messages coming in from,
Lyceum who was sending in some stuff for us. And he says, here's a book review. Here's a review of your book review. Cool beans. And he was, listening to the man who was Thursday, g k Chesterton, from last week. He says, I'm gonna listen to this book on Audible. Thanks for the book tip. I've watched some episodes of the Fader Brown TV series, so I believe that is based on the other books by, mister g k Chesterton.
(24:27):
And he says, talking about books, have you read Anne Rand's favorite novel, Calumet k?
And he sends it a Magna Carta boost of 1,215
satoshis,
super comment by Martin Lindascog, Lyceum at true fans dot f m. Thank you very much,
mister Martin Linderskog Lyceum.
I have not read that book by Anne, Anne Rand's favorite novel, so it's not a book by her.
(24:50):
I have I know he's very much a fan of the,
Ayn Rand's literature in general. So I have read the Fountainhead.
I have read
Atlas Shrugged. I didn't mind them.
Atlas Shrugged was a bit long for my liking. I probably enjoyed the Fountainhead a bit more.
It does have that slight feel of propaganda to it rather than artistic work. It's kind of like a mix between the two.
(25:14):
And the
all out,
I don't I I can't remember what her style of philosophy is. I think it's Anne Randism, to be honest,
is a bit much for me, but,
I I have not read that. I'll look into that, Calumet Key. So thank you very much for the recommendation. I'll I'll have a look into it.
And finally, here we are live
(25:36):
as usual, 11AM
Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday.
What I'm saying is gonna have to catch up on the replay to to to check the heat because it has turned into slightly longer. And I thought I'd get this a little bit off shorter.
And he was in the chat and, I did stuff up a couple of times at the start. So if you join in live, you get to see the the stuff ups, the meat behind, how these podcasts are produced.
(26:00):
And,
that was kind of funny. So, yeah, very much appreciated if you can join me for those. I'm gonna be continuing that for the foreseeable future until I start traveling in probably May.
Juan will also be coming out with some book reviews shortly. I know he's, as I mentioned, read
the
art
the 48 laws of power by Robert Greene.
(26:24):
Next stop coming from me will be the lucky country by Donald Horn. I'm making my way through the gilded age by Mark Twain. And I also have
the I think it's called the price of interest or the price of time,
by Edward Chancellor because I very much loved his book
of Devil Take the Hindmuss. So I'm jumping onto his, which is all about interest rates and things like this. So Usuri Usuri, if you want to know about that, which will be coming up. So, Tayo, thanks very much for joining in. I really hope you're having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world. Ciao for now. Karen out. Bye.
Surprisingly, if you appeal to tired and worn out people, it might just reflect in your own work.
Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the mere mortals book reviews.
Kyrin here live on the 02/12/2025.
(00:21):
And as you might surmise, this is the podcast where I give you swimming techniques.
No. It's not a podcast. And you're probably not gonna find it in here, even though you might think you would, in Blue Ocean Strategy
by w dot Chan Kim
and Renee Malborn. Malboragney
is I guess how you would pronounce that name.
Now this book was published in 02/2005, but I have the 02/2015
(00:45):
revised edition, I guess, you, what you'd call it, which has an extra chapter or two. It's 261
pages in length,
five to six hours reading in total. It's pretty thick with,
the actual
content that's contained within this.
Now this is a business strategy book promoting the idea of this Blue Ocean strategy, which is essentially a call to
(01:07):
find greener partures for your your business, for your market that you're in, and to stop
floundering in this competitive strategy of the red ocean, which is where it's kind of like dog eat dog shark eat shark, I guess is what you'd call it and move to this blue ocean of of better pastures. I'm not sure why they didn't use something like green pasture strategy. This probably would have been better.
(01:32):
It highlights,
the several companies that they believe who have done this. And actually, there's there's quite a few companies,
and why they were successful.
You'll find within here plenty of, like, graphs and just general,
I don't know,
techniques,
bullet points, lists,
tables.
There's all sorts of things that you'll find within here, which are all going to try and demonstrate their point of what is a Blue Ocean strategy. So there's also,
(02:00):
three appendices. There's 11 chapters, and they go by the names of things,
split into three parts. Part one, blue ocean strategy, creating Blue Ocean's analytical tools and frameworks. Part two, formulating Blue Ocean strategy, reconstruct market boundaries, reach beyond existing demand, get the strategic sequence right. Part three, executing Blue Ocean strategy, align value, profit, people, and propositions. You know, all business talk, all very, very good.
(02:26):
So let's jump into some of the themes and questions here.
And so Blue Ocean strategy
is essentially
a mindset shift, I guess. It's
technically probably a strategic shift in a company.
If you're feeling the pressure of tightening costs,
if your
growth is slow, if you're tired, if everything just feels like it's harder than it needs to be, perhaps you're not thinking right and you need to start investigating,
(02:53):
oh, a blue shirt blue ocean strategy. I need to change what my business and and is doing and and address a new market. And essentially,
it's all about unlocking
demand that wasn't there before.
You're going for a market which does not exist, and so therefore, you can be the only and sole competitor within it.
It's mostly applied, I guess, or talking to
(03:17):
companies that are or or perhaps like executives that are already in this,
rather than addressing it to startups, for example.
I got the feeling this was more for, like, hey. You're you're already in
knee dip. I'm gonna be, you know, crisscrossing analogies here, but you're already knee deep into the weeds and and you're floundering there or you're struggling through that jungle.
(03:39):
And I guess maybe the the ocean version of this would be you're in the kelp, you can't escape the kelp, and you're trying to get out of that. And so there's,
you know, quite a few things that it lists off. So for example, red ocean strategy. So this is what you're probably already doing
is competing in existing market space. You're trying to beat the competition. You're,
(04:02):
you're trying to exploit existing demands. There's,
making value
cost trade offs
and things like this. Whereas Blue Ocean Strategy is more about create, creating uncontested market space.
You're make making the competition irrelevant so you're not competing,
create and capture new demand, break the value, cost trade off, etcetera, etcetera.
(04:23):
And some of the probably, like, most useful things I think in this were if you were to compare
yourself visually on a in a company and you'll see on the screen here, you've got a graph which is just showing low average high of whatever it is that you're measuring. So it could be
cost of your product. It could be
the ease of access,
(04:44):
the,
you know, a technical
detail that you do better or don't do as good as, as your competition. And you kind of measure yourself and see where you rank up and and where your competition does. And so you might find, okay, they're better at some points. I'm better at low points.
And basically it's the the strategy is to eliminate some things which are unhelpful, unuseful. Your your customers don't actually need it, even though you might think they do To reduce some things which are perhaps adding cost to your product or making it harder to use, you wanna raise some things which are neglected by the current
(05:20):
system, by the current market and and isn't being addressed. And then probably the most importantly, to create new metrics for yourself to go, okay, this is what we're going to try and focus on, etcetera, etcetera.
The examples given this book are ones like Cirque du Soleil, which revamped the idea of a circus instead of being this
kind of place where you'd go to see animals.
(05:42):
And it didn't really have a theme. It was more about like this crazy jovial thing, whereas Cirque du Soleil is more like,
you know, unique handcrafted
music experience,
costumes,
getting rid of these star performers and focusing more on the show as a whole rather than as a, you know, the amazing,
(06:03):
at Sulpata or something like that, and completely eliminating animals from the from the performance,
making it more like an operatic
type experience to go to rather than a,
theme park type deal. We have Yellowtail Wines, which are actually an Aussie company, which made the wine industry
(06:23):
shift or their entrance into it was from this kind of sophisticated
prestige
wine market where if you're a new person coming in, it's so hard to, like, know and it's very snobbery. Whereas this was more about, like, the party, the fun atmosphere of of being able to just have a social drink with friends,
type deal. And that's why they were successful.
(06:44):
NetJets, which was a shared private aviation company, so sharing private,
private planes
and even strategies of,
like the New York Police Department. So not technically a company, but how they,
addressed
certain things related to crime and stuff and and compared themselves to other cities and and said, okay. We're gonna do this better. We're not gonna do this, etcetera, etcetera.
(07:07):
And then even perhaps even industries, how they changed. The
experience of going to a movie changed with Nickelodeons,
with multiplexes and megaplexes.
And then I guess even nowadays you'd call it streaming. And so Netflix, I'm sure they would have said had a a blue ocean strategy. So
the meta thought process of all this, I think, is is rather solid. You know, playing a zero sum sum game is rather hard,
(07:33):
and only suited for competitors who really like to defeat other people who love the grind, who love
pulling one over of creating, you know, getting your market share higher or beating someone out by like pure
just like grit and holding on
and working hard for dear life.
I think this book is meant to appeal to more,
(07:54):
not gonna say the lazy, but the people who are tired of that who are just like, I'm, I'm putting all this energy in and it's not really having
effects.
I don't want to compete in this game.
And hence, while why people like Tim Ferriss, Pat, recommend this book.
And it certainly appeals to me this idea of, yeah, I'd I'd rather compete against myself or in a arena where it's just me rather than against other people because yeah. Sure. I'm I'm I'm, like, lazy and tired. I I don't wanna, like, grind away on,
(08:26):
you know, one particular metric of value cost averaging or whatever just to to do something like that, even though I'm I'm not in business. So
that appeals to me. The whole meta idea of Blue Ocean Strategy. Sure. That's that's cool.
What
I personally have a problem with is that I just kept thinking while reading. This is probably a port or tool for actual
(08:49):
prediction and and kind of for execution as well.
You know, the vast bulk of the book's taken up with, like, formulating the strategy,
visualizing visualizing strategy at the corporate level. And it's got all of these things, like, key competing factors, the def defense airport, f aerospace industry. And then it's got, like, you know, all of these tables and graphs and and talking about this stuff.
(09:12):
And,
it's very, like, flowcharts
and lists and things like this.
The six utility levers. And yet whilst reading, I'm just like,
okay, maybe this is how companies and businesses work. Maybe this is what like the the meetings at the the ultimate high level of CEOs and CFOs and stuff and things like that is like, I've never been there. I can't speak for that.
(09:36):
But I'm just going like, man, it's kind of like the
the the Blue Ocean strategy is just a mindset switched. That's that's really all I got from this is like, you need to change your mindset.
Here's a couple of, like,
rough tools of how you could go about doing it. But honestly, I think
it's more about the whole book is more about just trying to get into a CEO's head that, oh, shit, we're competing in this in this market. And it's really hard and our business is going to struggle and we're gonna spend a lot of energy running around. It's kinda like the red queen, you know, running as hard as you can to just stay in the same place sort of deal. So,
(10:13):
I think the real money comes from the real value would be from
probably just diving into one company and going like, okay, why did they make this decision rather than this decision? Because it didn't seem
great in terms of the executing of things. My co host, Juan,
he can come up with, you know, a hundred business ideas and he does all the time,
(10:34):
yet he'll only choose
maybe one of them to to actually act upon.
And it's it would be much more interesting to have a book of, okay, listing out the other 99 ideas and why he only chose to act upon this this one. So
they took keep talking about the corporate graveyards of companies that failed to adapt or,
(10:55):
did the transition poorly to blue ocean.
Yet
all of this feels very, very like hindsight
type deal.
I would hazard a guess that there would be many times that they would,
you know, if a company came to them and said, like, hey, we're doing this thing, Blue Ocean Strategy, that and they'd be like, the authors of this would be like, yeah, you're you're nailing it. You're going to you're going to this blue ocean strategy is going to you're on the right path
(11:23):
yet
it it just feels very, very like
unmetric based,
very qualitative
like this. These people are doing blue ocean strategy, but these people who failed didn't do it. And
it just felt very, very cherry picked
rather than something that's a practical thing that you can really use going forward.
(11:46):
A reason for why I say this as well is the
the kind
of cavalier nature in which they use the blue ocean strategy. So for example, at one point they suggest that
the the Sex and the City show was a blue ocean strategy because it addressed the market of,
I don't know, like, female
single people or something like this.
(12:07):
Does that mean every popular TV show is a blue ocean strategy? Like,
you know, it it seems like a rather unfalsifiable
theory,
in terms. So if I was going to say it about this book,
Blue Ocean Strategy. Yeah, sure. The idea is solid, but I would not be looking to this for any
(12:27):
competency or anything that you could be saying. Like, yeah, this will really help in terms of execution
for your particular market for the nuances that go on with that. Let's jump into the author, perhaps some extra details, authors, I should say.
So w dot Chan Kim and Renee Malbone are business people who just happen to write a book. So this was published by the Hardness Harvard Business School. They were more lecturers and slash teachers, from what I can gather, worked at the place called INSEAD,
(12:57):
which
was,
I thought, was an acronym for something. And it was, but actually wasn't. And we'll get into why this is kind of important in a little bit.
There's nothing particularly wrong with them not being authors. And they've they've written a couple of books, but they're all, you know, Blue Ocean Strategy Revisited or Blue Ocean Traps or whatever. So there's there's variation books on this.
(13:19):
So I'm given a bit of leeway here and that they're not writers.
They're business people. And the book is undoubtedly
successful and popular. So kudos to them for writing a book that managed to to gain a lot of traction.
Me personally, it's hard to pick out exactly why I disliked the style of this book. It felt wordy in a kind of business way. So
(13:43):
there seemed to be a lot of unnecessary sentences to drive
home a point or to restate a statement in a slightly different form.
It it didn't feel like it feel it felt like this had been written once
and like then they just chucked it out, perhaps cleaned up a couple of words here and there and then put it out. It didn't feel like it had multiple revisions of
(14:03):
them reading over and going, okay, this point here, can I get this across more succinctly?
Does it need to be written this way as wordy as this way? So
I would argue that there was a lot of low value, repetitive nature in this book.
And this was kind of just a filler of supplementary talk that didn't actually help prove
(14:26):
or
put their strategy into into place.
Particularly noticeable
of this was I would kind
of appreciate the build bits about companies where they would say, you know, okay, this company, for example, this company does this. This company does this. But then in the pieces of actual business,
I definitely saw my mind wandering and I certainly was speed reading towards the end of this book.
(14:52):
Once again,
that's that's okay. You know, many of the companies in this are somewhat outdated. This book's twenty years old now.
And the references,
you know, they they talk about things like how Dyson revolutionized the the vacuum industry by getting rid of the paper bags. And I'm like, oh, yeah. Shit. I remember that. Like, just barely, barely vaguely in my mind. I remember reading that. So, you know, there's a little bit of outdated stuff. Once again, they're they're not authors.
(15:18):
I can give that a bit of a pass.
I can forgive them this. But what is unforgivable
is one of the wildest things I've ever seen in a book, which occurs on both page 14 and then on page 38.
So if you'll bear with me here, I'm gonna read out this section here. So,
where should I start?
Cirque du Soleil did away with all of these factors. These factors had long been taken for granted in the traditional circus industry, which never questioned their ongoing revel relevance. However, there was increasing public discomfort with the use of animals. Moreover, animal acts were one of the most expensive elements, including not only the cost of of the animals, but also their training, medical care, housing, insurance, and transportation.
(15:58):
Similarly, while the circus industry focused on featuring stars, in the mind of the public, the so called stars of the circus were trivial next to movie stars or famous singers.
Again, they were a high cost component carrying little sway with spectators,
gone to other three ring venues.
Okay. You know what? That's not too bad. That that's kind of interesting.
Shows me something that I didn't know about the circus industry beforehand.
(16:22):
That's okay. There's there's something in this book, and this is why Cirque du
Soleil did well. Now we come on to this, section over here on page, 38.
In the case of Cirque du Soleil, it eliminated several factors from two traditional circuses such as the animal show, star performers, and multiple show arenas. These factors had long been taken for granted in the traditional circus industry, which never questioned their ongoing relevance. However, there was increasing public discomfort with the use of animals. Moreover, animal acts are one of the most expensive elements. Not only is there the cost of the animals, but also their training, medical care, housing, insurance, and transportation.
(16:59):
Similarly, although the circus industry focused on featuring stars, in the mind of the public, the so called stars of the circus were trivial next to movie stars or famous singers. Again, they were a high cost component carrying little sway with spectators, gone to a three ring venues.
Are you fucking kidding me?
What
kind of shithouse lockery is this? So this is what for page 14 to 38. So that is 24 pages away from each other. They have taken the exact same paragraph
(17:29):
and and this is the kicker, the exact same paragraph and then altered a word here or there. So it's like they put in the or change this comma from this place or added, you know, the Cirque du Soleil.
I
the first time so reading through I came to this page 38.
And I'm just
like, wait, that that seems really familiar.
(17:49):
Like, and and because it was right at the start of the book, I could go back and I'm like, oh, maybe I read it in the appendice because I they referenced an appendix. So I went back to read that first. But, no, it's in the actual meat of the book where they they copy the same fucking thing and then just put it in. And that's a full paragraph and a half just there.
I'm I'm flabbergasted.
(18:10):
I have never seen such I don't know what to call this, like, lousy,
tired,
just stupid copy editing where you have posted
the exact same
I'd like, what value did that add by not only copying it, but then just changing a word here or there?
Sumi Masen, what the fuck? What the actual fuck?
(18:32):
And this wasn't just a one off because now that I was looking for this, I was like, okay.
I
I didn't I didn't know what to think. Like, what what is this? So then as I'm reading and I as I mentioned, like, I read the appendix, and then I went back and,
they did the exact same thing on the model t, page a 32. And then on appendix a, they do the exact same fucking thing right down to changing a word here or there.
(19:02):
I'm
I I I didn't know what to think of this other than
how do you write a book? Like, was this in the original written like this?
You know, I thought they only added an extra chapter into this book, the
the chapter 10 on like Red Ocean Traps.
So did they do this in the original
version as well? Is this book somehow different or special? Have like, how
(19:26):
did they intentionally do that? And if they intentionally did that, what were they thinking?
There's a couple of other things that I started to notice in here.
For example, in chapter 10, they just start randomly using the word per se and not just a little, a lot. They'll use it twice in one paragraph, three times on one page. It's just like, they just started discovering that per se is a is a fun thing to say and then just randomly just start dropping it in everywhere.
(19:55):
I mentioned the INSEAD, which was right at the start talking about the, the authors
and, you know, co director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy and INSEAD is all capitalized. So I assume that stood for something,
like Institute of something.
And sure enough, it does. But it's it's kind of like this weird it feels like they should have just put in the old
(20:18):
name of it, which was a French word, institute, the artist,
something, educate
education, whatever it was.
There was just a whole bunch of points in this book where
I'm I'm just going,
this is just really lousy. This is really tired. This is really lazy. And
I'm I'm not on board with that. I'm really not on board with that. So jumping to the summary, similar books, recommendations,
(20:44):
the fundamental idea of of this book is fine. Blue Ocean Strategy.
Cool.
Stop competing in a heavily competitive market. It's not worth the effort.
I'm down with that. Calling way for
a new way of looking at things for stagnating companies
in terms of actionable advice. If I was an executive,
I'd probably wouldn't be able to take anything away from this
(21:07):
other than like, okay, yeah, you know what? We need to start thinking about these things.
A couple of the graphs
of of like, yeah, this is how you can compare things might be helpful.
But in terms of the actual book, sloppy and lazy writing,
I can only imagine this is why at the start I was referencing, like, if you're appealing to perhaps some, like, tired and sloppy people, maybe that reflects in your own work because this just seems sloppy and tired.
(21:35):
I'm surprised
this book has done as well as it has.
Funny little thing on the back here. It's got, like, three stars.
I'm not sure why you'd put that on the back of your own book. Even if it's just for a design thing, you'd you'd probably think that you'd put five stars.
And this, I think, is emblematic of this book because giving this three stars out of 10 is generous at best.
(21:58):
This is easily for big forgettable, and I hope we will never have to mention this book again. A solid one and a half out of 10 Blue Ocean Strategy,
w dot Chen Kim, Renee Malbourne. I I'm an
unforgivable that that passage that just completely ruined
this book of
(22:18):
any value. It has,
similar books.
I don't know this book. I feel like it wishes it was a long tail. If you want to if you want a business book that we've covered on this channel,
The Long Tail by Chris Anderson,
is similar in style. It's not appealing to executives. It's more just explaining a concept.
And I think they would have done much better if they had followed that
(22:41):
style of saying, you know, this is what a Blue Ocean strategy is and not and not riding it in the sense of trying to
it was just very business y speak.
But, you know, the book's done successfully for them, so kudos to them. Maybe I'm just a hater.
Let's jump onto the final sections here. Value for value.
I hope I'm providing more value to you than than you than I got from this book.
(23:06):
Is podcast available anytime, anywhere for anyone?
And I just ask that for all this value that I'm pro providing upfront,
if you can return some in kind.
Now you can do this many ways. Time
sharing this,
creating clips from this,
jumping up onto our any of our social media platforms. You know, all these sorts of things are very helpful. Talent. I would love to hear your book recommendations, what you think I would enjoy, not enjoy your thoughts on this particular book. Adding something to the conversation is very much appreciated.
(23:38):
Come join us in the discord for that or leave a comment on the YouTube.
And then finally, we do have some ways for you to support monetarily.
The main one I talk about is the PayPal link, but we also do have a special little thing you can do, which is called a boost to gram.
And you can send this through on a select podcasting apps
like True Fans and Fountain.
(24:00):
And we got a couple of messages coming in from,
Lyceum who was sending in some stuff for us. And he says, here's a book review. Here's a review of your book review. Cool beans. And he was, listening to the man who was Thursday, g k Chesterton, from last week. He says, I'm gonna listen to this book on Audible. Thanks for the book tip. I've watched some episodes of the Fader Brown TV series, so I believe that is based on the other books by, mister g k Chesterton.
(24:27):
And he says, talking about books, have you read Anne Rand's favorite novel, Calumet k?
And he sends it a Magna Carta boost of 1,215
satoshis,
super comment by Martin Lindascog, Lyceum at true fans dot f m. Thank you very much,
mister Martin Linderskog Lyceum.
I have not read that book by Anne, Anne Rand's favorite novel, so it's not a book by her.
(24:50):
I have I know he's very much a fan of the,
Ayn Rand's literature in general. So I have read the Fountainhead.
I have read
Atlas Shrugged. I didn't mind them.
Atlas Shrugged was a bit long for my liking. I probably enjoyed the Fountainhead a bit more.
It does have that slight feel of propaganda to it rather than artistic work. It's kind of like a mix between the two.
(25:14):
And the
all out,
I don't I I can't remember what her style of philosophy is. I think it's Anne Randism, to be honest,
is a bit much for me, but,
I I have not read that. I'll look into that, Calumet Key. So thank you very much for the recommendation. I'll I'll have a look into it.
And finally, here we are live
(25:36):
as usual, 11AM
Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday.
What I'm saying is gonna have to catch up on the replay to to to check the heat because it has turned into slightly longer. And I thought I'd get this a little bit off shorter.
And he was in the chat and, I did stuff up a couple of times at the start. So if you join in live, you get to see the the stuff ups, the meat behind, how these podcasts are produced.
(26:00):
And,
that was kind of funny. So, yeah, very much appreciated if you can join me for those. I'm gonna be continuing that for the foreseeable future until I start traveling in probably May.
Juan will also be coming out with some book reviews shortly. I know he's, as I mentioned, read
the
art
the 48 laws of power by Robert Greene.
(26:24):
Next stop coming from me will be the lucky country by Donald Horn. I'm making my way through the gilded age by Mark Twain. And I also have
the I think it's called the price of interest or the price of time,
by Edward Chancellor because I very much loved his book
of Devil Take the Hindmuss. So I'm jumping onto his, which is all about interest rates and things like this. So Usuri Usuri, if you want to know about that, which will be coming up. So, Tayo, thanks very much for joining in. I really hope you're having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world. Ciao for now. Karen out. Bye.
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