Harvard Business Review Leadership Library: The Executive Collection (12 Books)

CHAPTER 1

Creating Blue Oceans

A ONETIME ACCORDION PLAYER, stilt walker, and fire eater, Guy Laliberté is now CEO of Cirque du Soleil, one of Canada’s largest cultural exports. Cirque’s productions to date have been seen by some 150 million people in over three hundred cities around the world. In less than twenty years since its creation, Cirque du Soleil achieved a level of revenues that took Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey—the once global champion of the circus industry—more than one hundred years to attain.

What makes this growth all the more remarkable is that it was not achieved in an attractive industry but rather in a declining industry ...