Renée Mauborgne

"Their recent publication, Blue Ocean Strategy (2005), is a summation of a decade of articles on value innovation, including one in the Harvard Business Review. Kim and Mauborgne have presented themselves as unashamed strategic iconoclasts. The thinking behind most business strategy sees the agents as either individual companies or industries as a whole. The scene for strategic activity is essentially fixed and finite. Analogies were often made with the field of battle or the theater of war. Some strategists went further in borrowing military symbols. They talked about headquarters rather than the corporate head office. The battlefield was fixed in area; no new land could be added to it or created. Any struggles that took place were zero-sum games. These conflicts were intense and bloody (in figurative terms), staining red the ground on which they were fought."

"In the United States, international business still means the U.S. and the rest of the world. Here it is different. We wanted to learn about the reality of international business and understand the role and scope of strategy within that."

"We have worked together for the last 20 years, first in America and now at INSEAD in France, with time also spent in Asia along the way. From the get-go, we shared an intellectual curiosity to understand what it takes to stand apart and create strong profitable growth. In search of an answer to this question, we looked back more than 100 years and across more than 30 industries. Contrary to common thought, we did not find any permanently excellent companies, nor permanently excellent industries in our research. What we did find, however, were smart strategic moves. And the strategic move that we found matters centrally is to create blue oceans. Blue oceans allow companies to stand apart and create strong profitable growth. This led to our book, Blue Ocean Strategy. Even before Blue Ocean Strategy was released, it broke Harvard Business School Presss historical record for most foreign licenses ever obtained."

"Here we were at Davos, moderating a discussion on value innovation, and yet only one European, Hasso Plattner [the founder and CEO of SAP AG], was on the panel. This raised the question, ‘Why aren’t there more European CEOs and companies worth listening to on this subject?’ What is the problem in Europe? The answer that kept coming back is this: Europe is strong in science and technology, but weak in connecting innovation and commerce."