Innovation in the Cultural and Creative Industries

1Nintendo in the Pursuit of the Blue Ocean

1.1. Introduction

The book by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne entitled Blue Ocean Strategy, published in 2004, was very successful from its publication. Translated into 44 languages, more than 3.5 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide. According to the authors, the Blue Ocean strategy is taught in more than 2,800 universities!

Designed with and for practitioners in constant search for the “winning strategic recipe”, the book aims to propose to leaders an approach that will enable them to create new strategic spaces, “blue oceans”, as opposed to “red oceans”, where competition is fierce. Management researchers, despite showing a definite interest in the concept of the “blue ocean”, are perhaps more likely to question the theoretical robustness of the approach and its ability to systematically produce winning strategies.

Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to test the work of Kim and Mauborgne through the analysis of the Nintendo case over a long period, from 2006 to the present day. This analysis seems to us to be conducive to highlighting not only the interest but also the limits of the Blue Ocean approach, particularly in the creative industries.

This chapter is organized into five main sections. Section 1.2 briefly presents the Blue Ocean approach, its principles and analytical tools. Section 1.3 presents the methodological framework and the video game industry. Section 1.4 presents Nintendo’s strategy for launching ...