Blue Ocean Strategy Customer's Review by D. F Shafer

By D. F SHAFER "don" (austin, tx United States) - See all my reviews

As opposed to many of the other reviewers we tried to use this process in a strategic marketing session with four teams in our company. This was a frustrating and disappointing process! First, the book, Blue Ocean Strategy, is a trite misrepresentation of an ex post facto process that has been dismissed by professional researchers and analysts. You do NOT prove your theory by fitting the past into your "model of the future". They did NOT work with Southwest Airlines to make them successful. They looked for examples that fit their thesis and applied it to ones they knew were succssful. This is not academically honest nor is it a good way to predict the future. It is like using Neural Networks to make predictions - they are 100% accurate in predicting the past.

Second, our team got to the point that we "believe" we found an underserved market area and we have three options and a full list of targeted areas for discussion. Now, how in the world can this book or anyone else on my team or in our company give me any insight into which one of these will be accepted by a prospect? This book promotes the worst form of pedantic navel gazing and raises self-reference to an absurd level. If we held the answer we would not need the strategic marketing exercise. Continuing this charade does us all a disservice. I worked with and managed product marketers for years in high tech companies who had companies like IBM and Intel as our customers. They did not do pencil whipping exercises. They went out and talked to prospects and asked them what they needed. This is not a novel approach but this Blue Ocean strategy seems to think that validation comes at the end after lots of silly charting and analysis.
This book will send you on a fools' errand. Buy it for your competition and hope that they follow it.