Email: Missing the Blue Ocean and Disruption books

An email:

Good day, malstrom. I hope you’re doing fine :)

I just read your new entries in your blog. I liked them a lot ^^ specially the one about “Microsoft is the king of vapor” and the one about the wizard of oz. Comparing journalists with Dorothy made laught out loud XD

anyway, I writing you because I have a doubt. You see, I finished my Masters in business administration some years ago but I didn’t made the thesis mainly for lack of time. But next year, I’ll start to make it and I would like to do it about Nintendo’s blue ocean/disruption strategies. Since I read your articles I became fascinated for the ways nintendo is succeeding but most of all how they are reinventing the market.

Unfortunately, I can’t find the Christensen books nor any one about Blue ocean (I went to 3 busniess libraries and everytime I asked about Blue ocean they kept looking at me as if I was talking in russian -_-). So, it seems that I have to resort to the internet. But I am not sure if I should talk about disruption or blue ocean. I am not sure if they are exactly the same or maybe both? or even if that’s a good idea? anyway, I would like your opinion, because you seem to know a lot about it, just to clear my doubts.

I hope I am not wasting your time

Stay cool and keep the good work!

How can there be a business administration class and not have these books in the library? This just amazes me. Maybe they don’t carry them because they are from the Harvard Business School.

The books also are fairly recent (which being released after 2000 could be considered recent to slow libraries). If you are serious about writing a thesis on them, I would simply just buy them. They should be available at almost any book store and I’ve seen them at Barnes and Noble. If you cannot find them there, there is always Amazon.

For Blue Ocean:

Blue Ocean Strategy

For Disruption:

Innovator’s Dilemma
Innovator’s Solution
Seeing What’s Next

And there are a handful more books written by Christensen and his apprentice teachers.

There is also a good amount of information on the web. I haven’t focused too much on Blue Ocean lately but I know there are websites out there dedicated to it. Disruption, on the other hand, became a huge hit when it came out with Christensen becoming the poster boy for start up tech companies. Bill Gates complained that every new product idea coming to him inside Microsoft was proclaimed ‘disruptive’.

Christensen started an organization called Innosight. On there, there is much information written about disruption from columns to magazines to other content they have produced. Much of it is free.

There is also the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge which contains extracts from the books as well as new articles.

Michael Urlocker was an analyst who took up disruption as he watched the Blackberry revolution. He made the Disruption Group which can be found here.

Just do a google search and you’ll find plenty more information.

I don’t know why your school doesn’t have Blue Ocean or the Christensen books. But they should be available at any bookstore. Google reader also has chunks of chapters online for free.