On Books and Oceans

In their 2005 book Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne group types of business ventures into two buckets. Red oceans are intensely competitive areas, such as desktop computers à la 2006. Blue oceans are untested areas, such as Amazon Web Services à la 2006.

You weren't going to make a killing launching a new desktop fifteen years ago. Dell's net profit margins certainly weren't Prada's. Beige boxes didn't hold the appeal of sleek MacBook Pros—and they still don't.