Get the actual book

This is a great book, and I don't want my 1 star rating to be considered a reflection on the quality of the content. The problem is that it is not a great audio book. In addition to the original book being very diagram-driven (which never translates well) the reader is, frankly, terrible. His cadence is odd, skipping pauses where they would make sense and addign them seemingly at random. Combined wiht his pronounciation, I ended up double checking to see if it was an actual human being rather than a sophisticated piece of software.

In short: pick up the book. The audiobook will only disappoint.

167 people found this helpful

Overrated

the fundamental concept of blue ocean strategy is a great one. Important for every business, but it is not new. Jack Trout has been writing about differentiation, guerrilla nd flanking strategies for decades, I found his books to be more complete and useful.

As a student of business, marketing and strategy I had high expectations for this book. It had been on my list for years. I am sorry to say I am disappointed.

I expected more depth, more actionable steps and better examples. Many of the examples, fundamental to the core idea of the book, are not historically accurate. Let's look at an obvious one:

Apple was not the first company to offer a personal computer with integrated monitor and keyboard. The Commodore PET was. Commodore was a very successful company for many years, ahead of Apple in technology and innovations. Commodore had a multitasking, full color, multimedia, computer with advanced graphics many years before the Mac had any of these capabilities.

This is not a trivial point. Commodore created the blue ocean. Apple went into that ocean, and competed directly with Commodore, in the same ocean, and won. The reason Apple was successful was not because of the blue ocean but because of other aspects of its strategy and its execution.

My suggestion is to read a summary of Blue Ocean and move on to another book.

48 people found this helpful

Narrator needs a different ocean

The print book, Blue Ocean Strategy is intriguing, but highly data-driven, which is very hard to translate into narrative. It is understandable that a narrator might have some difficulty translating this into audio.

If someone like Kotter Smith (The Millionaire Next Door and The Millionaire Mind) had read it, there would have been a chance for this book in audio format.

Regrettably, the actual narrator (Grover Gardner)was unable to pronounce many words (DOS is not pronounced "dose"), and the stilted delivery he gave was as enthusiastic as Ben Stein's character in Ferris Beuller's Day Off, only worse.

I will studiously avoid purchasing any book he narrates in the future. There's no excuse for selling something that bad.

Bear in mind, I loved the ideas in the book, and I have a print version that I reference now and then, but I can't believe how bad the narration was. I listen to books in the car, but this one I had to take out of my collection because it was putting me to sleep, or driving me nuts with the terrible pronunciations, and inability to follow punctuation.

4 stars for the book, but only 1 for the narrator.

48 people found this helpful

Great book and narration is fine

This book is very thought provoking and excellent value. After reading the reviews that panned the narrator, I was waiting for the irregularities in narration other reviewers complained about but... sorry I thought it was very good. No pauses in unusual places, not robotic. Actually I thought the narration was seamless!! The other reviews on this are puzzling. A good audiobook in my view.

44 people found this helpful

Essential Reading

This is an excellent book for getting a fresh, 50K ft view of business strategy. Yes it is a bit dry - but the material is rock solid and should be required reading for anyone in business today to help create a broader view of your customers and your markets.

21 people found this helpful

Like a Very Good Textbook

1) Just a little bit boring.

2) Full of really important stuff.

3) Anyone with 10 years of working experience in the area (i.e., strategy) will have an initial emotional reaction along the lines of, “Yea, Yea, I know all this”, and yet if they focus a little longer (or you push them to show working proficiency) they will usually reveal that they lack deep fluency in “all this”.

4) Simple thesis explained well.

11 people found this helpful

Reads like a stale dissertation

I could not get into this book. For such an innovative concept - they chose the most non-innovative approach to deliver their findings. The dryness had me wanting to scrape my skin off. Didn't get past chapter 2.

10 people found this helpful

Good core concept, but repeated incessantly

What disappointed you about Blue Ocean Strategy?

The core concept is good, but they did not have enough content to fill a book. I believe they could have conveyed the entire premise in two chapters. They nearly verbatim repeated themselves, which became quite obnoxious.

7 people found this helpful

Hedgehog on steroids

Great concept and great examples. My thought is that the Blue Ocean Strategy is like the hedgehog concept from Jim Collin's book Good to Great - but gives a great tool (strategy map) to help determine exactly how to establish your strategy. Overall, good book and I would recommend for other looking for a way to differentiate their services from their competition's.

7 people found this helpful

Excelent book

Where does Blue Ocean Strategy rank among all the audiobooks you???ve listened to so far?

One of the best

Who was your favorite character and why?

N/A
The book has case studies and all of them are very enlightening

Have you listened to any of Grover Gardner???s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Don't remember

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Learn how to make your competition irrelevant

5 people found this helpful