Book Review: Blue Ocean Strategy

I'm posting this one rapidly in hopes that I can cover up my last post before anyone sees it. :) "Blue Ocean Strategy" is a very thought provoking book that puts structure behind strategic planning. It reminds me a lot of "Purple Cow" type of thinking and is definitely worth a read. My only real complaint is the authors don't make the book all that exciting or entertaining. It did a good job putting me asleep on more than one occasion.

The sub-title of the book is "How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant." The focus of the majority of the book is strategies for discovering your Blue Ocean. I liked their ideas on how to put a process around strategic thinking.

Damn, too late, AMartin is already on my case for the Martha post.... :)

So, what is a Blue Ocean? Just think about how instead of one-upping your competition with the next big feature, how can you make the competition irrelevant by creating a new market space where there is no competition. For example, "Curves for Women" created a new type of health club aimed at the millions of women who hated working out at home, but also hated spending hours at a high priced, intimidating health club. Typical health clubs want you to spend a lot of time there, spend a lot of money, and use equipment that is complicated. On top of that, there are a ton of bulky guys there starring. Curves created a new environment that had equipment that was easy to use and didn't require a lot of time to workout. Curves made regular health clubs and home workout equipment irrelevant by moving into this uncontested market space.

Damn, second comment on my blog, I can tell I'm in trouble so I'll go ahead and post this one!

Book Review: Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook

The sub-title of this book is "The Essential Guide to Caring for Everything in Your Home". I think the key word in that statement is "Everything". This book is huge and covers every topic you could ever imagine with regards to caring for your home.

I'm sure I will get a hard time from some of my co-workers for even picking up this book, much less reading it from cover to cover, but I am definitely a huge Martha fan after reading this book.

A word of warning though, this book reads like an encyclopedia. Martha has a lot of talents, but don't expect her to crack a joke or two when discussing the proper way to clean your sink.

You can see why Martha has been so successful in her life (going to jail aside), she doesn't do anything unless she does it 100%. Anything worth doing is worth doing right, even if it is cleaning a toilet, you should know the right way to clean it. Another lesson from the book that can be applied to any area of life is being organized. It's amazing how much better you feel after you clean and organize a room in your home. Over Christmas break I spent almost a full day with Velvet organizing our garage. It's gone from being an eye-sore to my favorite room in the house.

Being a home owner (well, the bank technically owns it, but in 26 more years it will be all mine) I want to do everything I can to maintain my home and make it a place where I enjoy returning to after a long days work. I learned a lot from reading this book and I would recommend it to anyone.