Blue Ocean Strategy

Authors: W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

A close friend, who’s judgement I respect a lot, just finished reading this book and told me that I must read it. I quickly dowloaded the audio book from the library and started listening to it. In case you choose to listen to this in audio format, I must warn you that I have not encountered a more unemotional and robotic narrator. Nevertheless, the material is interesting and there are a lot of interesting case studies and lessons that I learnt from this book.

It starts out by contrasting red oceans, where companies fight their competitors on price and product features, to blue oceans that define new market spaces that are uncontested by virtue of them being uncharted territory. 

The first example the authors cite is Cirque du Soleil and how they reinvented the traditional circus. The traditional circus were 3 ring acts with animal sets and star performers and their audience were mainly children and their parents.  Cirque du Soleil created a novel entertainment concept that combined the elements of circus, theater, dance and music and were thus able to create a new value proposition that expanded the market. Their target audience were adults and corporate clients who are more willing to pay premium prices for entertainment. Additionally managing animal sets and employing star performers drove up the costs of the traditional circus. Eliminating these improved the profitability of the enterprise.

There are many similar examples the authors cite in the book like the Ford Model T, JCDecaux signboards, Bloomberg Business terminals, NYPD crime fighting, Curves weight loss, novo nordisk diabetes care, cemex cement gifting and others. Each of these are fascinating stories in their own right and you can find a good summary of the case studies at https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/blue-ocean-strategy-examples/. 

Since this is a business book, it must include some nuggets of wisdom that it extracts from these case studies. These are packaged in nice little sets of 3 (or more) bullet points that the  reader can tuck away.  I have read many such books of late and must confess that I am now jaded with the generous advice doled out by management consultants trying to extract principles from case studies. This book is no exception to that well worn path. Nevertheless, it is a good framing of the problem statement and forced me to think differently about some of the business challenges that I face in every day work life.

The Troublemaker

Author: Mark L. Clifford

I knew that democracy had been snuffed out of Hong Kong after the British handed the reins to China. I had no idea of how it all played out and the story of the larger than life businessman, Jimmy Lai, who was at the center of all the protests. This book describes the struggles of Jimmy’s early years, followed by his move to Hong Kong at an early age with just the shirt on his back. With a key knack for business and a strong work ethic Jimmy built several very successful businesses. For me it was fun and nostalgic to read about JC Penny and Montgomery Ward and Jimmy Lai’s success selling them sweaters and shirts.  

The author, Mark L. Clifford, has known and worked withJimmy for many years and also served on the board of one of his companies. While Jimmy’s fight for democracy in Hong Kong is truly inspiring, the book reads like a hagiography.

Bad Girl

Author: Mario Vargas Llosa

Since I was visiting Peru during the Christmas break of 2024, I was eager to read something set in Peru. Mario Vargas Llosa is a highly decorated Peruvian author and this came up as a suggestion. While it starts out in Peru, the protagonist, Ricardo moves to Paris and seems to like it there. So most of the action is set in Europe. 

The story is a common trope the most famous being Gustave Falubert’s Madame Bovary. Guy falls head over heels in love with a girl, who doesn’t give a hoot about him. The girl disappears and re-appears multiple times in the book. They see each other for very short durations, but enjoy everyone of them so much that it makes up for the lost time. This pattern gets repetitive and you are just waiting to see how Mario is going to portray it the next time. 

The predictability notwithstanding, Mario’s description of people and their interaction with each other is simply wonderful. His reflections on the hippie movement and the rock music scene in the seventies in England is welcome additiona. The book is effortless to read and very enjoyable.

The Neighborhood

Author: Mario Vargas Llosa

This is a whodunit thriller set in 1990s Lima during the regime of Alberto Fujimori. The story revolves around two wealthy men and their wives. I don’t want to reveal any of the storyline as it will ruin your enjoyment of the book. 

Suffice it to say that the book is filled with erotic tension, murder mystery, political intrigue and social commentary. Mario Vargas skillfully interplays the opulent lives of the twoelite couples with the struggles of Peru’s poorer socio-economic masses. 

I love Mario Vargas' writing style and found myself eagerly turning the pages to discover what happens next. The book was panned for its “third-rate erotica” and critics said that the murder mystery lacks much depth and sophistication. I found it quite engaging and a good way to pass the time while I was flying into Lima Peru.

Patriot: A Memoir

Author: Alexei Navalny

A couple of years ago I watched the HBO Max documentary on Alexei Navalny. It features the details behind the poisoning of Navalny and his recovery in Berlin. I expected this to be a dark movie filled with hatred for his oppressors, but was pleasantly surprised to see what an upbeat and funny guy Navalny was. Imagine the impact he could have had on the world. I hope he didn’t give up his life in vain, and we do see the fruits of his struggle finally being realized in a democratic Russia. 

This book is divided into two distinct parts. The first is a narrative account of Navalny’s life moving between small garrison towns in the vicinity of Moscow. He identifies as being half Russian and half Ukrainian and until he was 8 years old he regularly visited with his grandmother in Ukraine. However the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 put an end to his Ukrainian visits. He describes the Soviets attempts at downplaying the severity of the nuclear fallout. 

His childhood was also marked by the economic realities of the late Soviet Era. He fondly recalls queuing up for milk and yearning for American Chewing gum. But then with the glasnost period under Gorbachev he found out that “being poor was much more bearable when everybody else was, but it was intolerable once you could see your neighbor was far richer.” 

Reading some of his early experiences, reminded me of my time in growing up in India. While it was nowhere as oppressive as the Soviet Union, we too had very few luxuries and would look forward to the trinkets that we sometimes received from western visitors. 

I didn’t quite finish the second section which is his prison memoir. The few pages that I read were quite difficult to get through. Overall, Navalny is an amazing hero!

The Vegetarian

Author: Han Kang

Translated by: Deborah Smith

When I found out that the 2024 Nobel prize was awarded to Han Kang, I was surprised to learn that she was the first Asian woman to win the prize. I quickly looked up her books and found that “The Vegetarian” was 49th in the New York Times’s 100 best books of the 21st century. 

The novel is set in modern day South Korea and starts out by describing the mundane life of Mr. Cheong and his young wife Yeong-Hye in Seoul.  Yong-hye is the central character and we learn about her from different family members. The book is organized in 3 sections:

• The first section is narrated by Yeong-hye’s husband, Mr. Cheong and he describes their early years of marriage and some of the awkwardness of their relationship. One day she suddenly turns vegetarian and her husband has no idea what is going on. When she goes to visit her family, who are traditional Korean, her parents find it hard to fathom how their daughter is now refusing to eat the meat dishes that she adored as a child. There’s some drama here that I won’t describe so as not to spoil the story.
• The second section is told from her brother-in-law’s perspective. He is the artist type and is initially sympathetic to Yeong-hye’s condition. The story gets more interesting here.
• The third and final section is narrated by her sister, In-hye who is initially supportive and eventually becomes her care-taker.

You will find yourself glued to the book and eager to learn about what happens next. But be warned that some of the scenes are not easy to stomach. However, it is an amazing piece of literature that will make you stop and think about the underlying tensions between people from different walks of life. 

Nexus

Author: Yuval Noah Harari

“Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari is one of my all-time favorites. Since then, I have eagerly read almost every book that he has published, hoping to relive the joy I encountered with Sapiens.

In typical style, Yuval opens with the provocative, “Why are we so good at accumulating more information and power, but far less successful at acquiring wisdom?” To answer this he traces the evolution of information networks from ancient times to the present day. The book “explores key dilemmas that people in all eras faced when trying to construct information networks, and it examines how different answers to these dilemmas shaped contrasting human societies.”

Harari’s signature style is to blend historical analysis with philosophical musing. He points out that “populism posits that there is no objective truth at all and that everyone has their own truth, which they wield to vanquish rivals”. Or more directly “truth is something that brings our attention to certain aspects of reality while inevitably ignoring other aspects.”

He seems to be very fond of the term “intersubjective reality” and uses it repeatedly throughout the book. The best way to define it is a complex belonging story that binds a large number of people together. He uses it to explore the many different kinds of people and the activities that go into building a complex information network. 

Until I read it here, I must confess that I hadn't appreciated the important role that bureaucracy plays in collecting data that is the foundation on which many innovations stand on.  “Without the diligence that bureaucrats put into painstakingly gathering and classifying the relevant data we wouldn’t have most of our  breakthroughs.”  

Yuval argues how no matter how rational we think we are, we are ultimately in the service of some myth maker. He attributes this declaration to John Maynard Keynes and points out how even nuclear physicists obey the commands of Shiite Ayatullahs or communist apparatchiks. He uses this argument to make the case that computers could be just as dangerous as the best of us.

He makes an interesting argument on what people should train for to acquire a job in the 2050s. He gives the example of doctors versus nurses or dishwashing versus playing chess and makes the case for how motor skills are a lot harder for AI to replace than intellectual capabilities. 

In summary, Yuval has written another engaging and thought provoking book. While there are flashes of brilliance, many of the points seem forced. Unless you are big fan, I recommend skipping this one.