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

CHAPTER 10

Renew Blue Oceans

CREATING A BLUE OCEAN is not a static achievement but a dynamic process. Once a company creates a blue ocean and its powerful performance consequences are known, sooner or later imitators appear on the horizon. Here, the questions are: How soon or late will they come? How easy or difficult is a blue ocean strategy to imitate? Put differently, what are the barriers to imitation?

As the company and its early imitators succeed and expand the blue ocean, more and more companies jump in, eventually turning the color of the ocean red. This raises a related question: When should a company reach out to create another blue ...