W. CHAN KIM and RENÉE MAUBORGNE are professors of strategy at INSEAD, which is consistently ranked in the world’s top business schools, and co-directors of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute in Fontainebleau, France. They are fellows of the World Economic Forum and were named among the world’s top five best business school professors by MBA Rankings. Kim is an advisory member for the European Union and serves as an advisor to several countries. Mauborgne served on President Barack Obama’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) for the president’s two terms. They advise, consult, and speak to governments and companies worldwide, and have published numerous bestselling articles in Harvard Business Review and Academy of Management Journal, Management Science, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of International Business Studies, MIT Sloan Management Review, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Financial Times, among others.
They are the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant (Harvard Business Review Press). Blue Ocean Strategy has sold over 3.6 million copies and is recognized as one of the most iconic and impactful strategy books ever written. It is being published in a record-breaking 44 languages and is a bestseller across five continents. Blue Ocean Strategy has won numerous awards including “The Best Business Book of 2005” Prize at the Frankfurt Book Fair, was selected as a “Top Ten Business Book of 2005” by Amazon.com, and was chosen as one of the 40 most influential books in the History of the People’s Republic of China (1949–2009) along with Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and Milton and Rose Friedman’s Free to Choose.
Kim and Mauborgne are ranked in the top three management gurus in the world in the Thinkers50 global list of thought leaders and Mauborgne is the highest placed woman ever on the list. They have received numerous academic and management awards around the globe, including the Carl S. Sloane Award for Excellence from the Association of Management Consulting Firms, the Leadership Hall of Fame by Fast Company magazine, the Nobels Colloquia Prize for Leadership on Business and Economic Thinking, and the Eldridge Haynes Prize by the Academy of International Business for the best original paper in the field of international business. They are the winners of the Prix DCF 2009 (Prix des Dirigeants Commerciaux de France 2009) in the category of “Stratégie d’entreprise.” L’Expansion also named Kim and Mauborgne as “the number one gurus of the future.” The Sunday Times (London) called them “two of Europe’s brightest business thinkers.” The Observer called Kim and Mauborgne “the next big gurus to hit the business world.” Kim and Mauborgne won several Case Centre awards including “The Global Top 10 Bestselling Case Writers (2015/2016),” “All-Time Top 40 Bestselling Cases” in 2014, “Best Overall Case” in 2009 across all disciplines, and “Best Case in Strategy” in 2008.
They are the founders of the Blue Ocean Global Network (BOGN), a global community of practice on the Blue Ocean family of concepts that they created. BOGN embraces academics, consultants, executives, and government officers. For more about the authors and BOGN see www.blueoceanshift.com.