This book is mostly "fluff"... The lack of originality is everywhere... Finding which characteristics will be the wining ones is an old market research goal, and it is much easier in retrospect... The authors are not beyond copying any once popular simple concept. In chapter 4 they introduce with a big fanfare a revolutionary new concept, classifying businesses as Pioneers, Migrators, or Settlers. Anyone recognizing Boston Consulting Group's portfolio matrix of cash cow, question mark and star companies is not wrong. This simplistic labeling is what made BCG so popular (and destroyed many companies and made Wall Street discount conglomerates in the US) and probably why this book has attracted people desperately looking for simple solutions in complicated contested markets. But anyone actually responsible for charting strategy and managing competition in real contestable markets (i.e., business managers and executives) will quickly realize this book has no practical substance. It is all fluff. And if you are lucky to create a less contested market, this book will tell you nothing about how to KEEP it that way!

Finally, as a strategy professional, I realized quickly that this book is not really about strategy, which as Porter shows is a whole chain of operational activities geared toward the different positioning. This book is better titled "a book of lists of some successful products and services in the past 20 years, plus some trivial labels of where they were unique" because once you see beyond the superficial fa�ade of the "value innovation process", this is what the book is all about: a list of some successful new products, created by companies and entrepreneurs who had the insight of how to be different. An insight as enigmatic after reading the book as it is before...

To apply the book's measure of "blue ocean innovation", it is not divergent from past books, nor focused on the real issues to justify its price. It does have a catchy tagline though, and like all quick fads, tagline is everything... I feel sorry for my hassled executive friends who are under severe pressure to compete and are hoping this book will help. It will not.

 

JLJ - occasionally I feature reviews for books that are not favorable. This review was one man's opinion. The majority of the reviews posted at amazon.com for this book were favorable. You be the judge.