Book Review: Blue Ocean Shift by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

Just a bit of a disclaimer: I haven’t read Kim and Mauborgne’s seminal Blue Ocean Strategy (2005), but jumped straight ahead to Blue Ocean Shift after you guessed it, finding this book in the bargain bin. One thing I didn’t realise was that Blue Ocean Strategy was published in 2005, and its sequel, Blue Ocean Shift was published twelve years later in 2017.

By that time the authors have already taught plenty of organisations on this paradigm, and have observed how their ideas thrive in organisations and it can fall flat. By the way of coincidence, I live in Malaysia, where the book’s ideas are prevalent as the Malaysian government was the biggest adopter of the Blue Ocean paradigm to take the country to another playing field (or in this case to a blue ocean).

I’ve been trying to read more business books this year and have borderline almost gave up because how in general, the majority of these books are pretentious, badly written and relies so much on fucking common sense. Blue Ocean Shift so far, has been the best business book that I’ve read in 2021 and I got quite a fair bit out of it. Like any book, it is not a perfect book and does suffer from an idealistic pretension but the lessons learned are fascinating and applicable to many businesses who also want to level up.

In order to understand the blue oceans, we must understand what’s in a red ocean. Many industries are stuck in a red ocean, where the competition is tough and businesses end up tearing each other apart to pieces. This is not specifically implied in the book, but I see these businesses as fish eating feeding on each other, bloodletting. Businesses must then think of creative out of the box solutions which will take them out of the red ocean to the unspoilt blue oceans where the competition is non-existent and the cost factors are rock bottom. Businesses who succeed moving into blue oceans will deliver high buyer value while enjoying low costs.

Blue Ocean Shift is almost a guide on how to achieve this way of thinking throughout the organisation: how to assemble the team, changing the perspectives of stakeholders, studying the state of one’s own products and comparing it with the state of the industry, and poking holes at unexplored markets. In terms of utility, Blue Ocean Shift delivers.

While I was reading this book, I am constantly finding its application to the product that my company is developing and how we can reframe the image and messaging of the product. The key idea that I took out of this book is to focus not just on your current user base (customers) but also those who aren’t using your product at all (non-customers). There are different levels to non-customers, and at each level, a different strategy is needed.

Some of the models for the paths are also useful — such as the ERRC model (eliminate, reduce, raise and create) which identifies which values derived from the customers need to be eliminated and which ones need to be enhanced or created entirely. Other models, such as the buyer experience cycle, which identifies the pain points with every step of the cycle, is also useful.

Business ideas and paradigms come and go like fashion. The fad in my time as a project manager is design sprints, which I still find relevant and truly believe carries a lot of value for businesses willing enough to undertake it. I see a lot of similarities in the concepts of Blue Ocean Shift, as these are both user-centric methods which requires user validation at the end.

However, where the Blue Ocean strategy stands right now in Malaysia, I’m not so sure. Malaysia created the Malaysia Blue Ocean Strategy initiative during the time when Najib Razak was prime minister and has since wallowed in infamy. There were many initiatives that Malaysia was keen to promote and mentioned in the book before 2017, but I cannot find much since. The book mentioned improving the efficiency of police officers as most officers are stuck doing paperwork. The initiative moved the police back on the streets and delegated the paperwork to administrative staff, which improves policework and reduce crime, and also saves cost.

Knowing firsthand recently how the police works in Malaysia, I’m not so sure that the Blue Ocean shift lasted too long. The police is still buried in inefficient paperwork which kills their time and largely leaves them inefficient. If the Blue Ocean initiative is so great, why don’t we hear about much of the projects anymore? I’m left skeptical. However, this article mentions that :

“Malaysia attained some 60% increase in Gross National Income, 78% increase in Per Capita GDP and 2 million new jobs in 5 years under its National Blue Ocean Summit initiative.”

By this measure, Malaysia’s Blue Ocean shift was a success.

Regardless of the proof of concept, plenty of the ideas from the book will be useful for product managers, senior management and entrepreneurs. For some, it may be a good reality check for where they are, deep in the mires of the red ocean cesspool.