Harvard Business Review Volume 82, Issue 10, October 2004, pages 76-84.
ISSN 0017-8012
STRATEG by W. Chan Kim and
Renee Mauborgne
76
A
stilt walker, and fire-eater, Guy Laliberte is now CEO of one of
Canada's largest cultural exports, Cirque du
Solei\. FOW1ded in 1984 by a group of street perfonners,
Cirque has staged dozens of productions seen by some
40 million people in 90 cities around the world. In 20 years, Cirque has achieved revenues that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey-the world's leading circus-took more than a century to attain.
Cirque's rapid growth occurred in an unlikely setting.
The circus business was (and still is) in long-tenn decline.
Alternative forms of entertainment - sporting events,
TV, and video games - were casting a growing shadow.
Children, the mainstay of the circus audience, preferred
PlayStations to circus acts. There was also rising sentiment,
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fueled by animal rights groups, against the use of animals, traditionally an integral part of the circus. On the supply side, the star performers that Ringling and the other circuses relied on to draw in the crowds could often name their own terms. As a result, the industry was hit by steadily decreasing audiences and increasing costs. What's more, any new entrant to this business would be competing against a formidable incumbent that for most of the last century had set the industry standard.
How did Cirque profitably increase revenues by a factor of 22 over the last ten years in such an unattractive environment? The tagline for one of the first Cirque productions is revealing: "We reinvent the circus:' Cirque did not make its money by competing within the confines of the existing industry or by stealing customers from
Ringling and the others. Instead it created uncontested market space that made the competition irrelevant. It pulled in a whole new group of customers who were traditionally noncustomers of the industry - adults and cor-
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OCTOBER 2004
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porate clients who had turned to theater, opera, or ballet and were, therefore, prepared to pay several times more than the price of a conventional circus ticket for an unprecedented entertainment experience.
To understand the nature of Cirque's achievement, you have to realize that the business universe consists of two distinct kinds of space, which we think of as red and blue oceans. Red oceans represent all the industries in existence today-the known market space. In red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are well understood. Here, companies try to outperform their rivals in order to grab a greater share of existing demand. As the space gets more and more crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Products turn into commodities, and increasing competition turns the water bloody.
Blue oceans denote all the industries not in existence today - the unknown market space, untainted by competition. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than
77
Blue Ocean Strategy
fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. There are two ways to create blue oceans. In a few cases, companies can give rise to completely new industries, as eBay did with the online auction industry. But in most cases, a blue ocean is created from within a red ocean when a company alters the boundaries of an existing industry. As will become evident later, this is what Cirque did. In breaking through the boundary traditionally separating circus and theater, it made a new and profitable blue ocean from within the red ocean of the circus industry.
Cirque is just one of more than 150 blue ocean creations that we have studied in over 30
