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​Renée Mauborgne

Economist and business theorist, The INSEAD Distinguished Fellow of Strategy and International Management and the Co-Director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute. Mauborgne is the co-author 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. 

Meet Renee Mauborgne

Renée Mauborgne is The INSEAD Distinguished Fellow and a professor of strategy at INSEAD, the world’s second largest business school. She is also Co-Director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute. She was born in the United States.

Mauborgne is a member of President Barack Obama’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). She is also a Fellow of the World Economic Forum.

Mauborgne has published numerous articles on strategy and management which can be found in The Academy of Management Journal, Management Science, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of International Business Studies, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and others. She also has published numerous articles in The Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The New York Times, and The Financial Times, among others.

Mauborgne is the co-author of Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant (Harvard Business School Press). Blue Ocean Strategy has sold over 3.5 million copies and is being published in a record-breaking 43 languages. It 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. It was also selected as a “Top Ten Business Book of 2005″ by Amazon.com, and 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 Friedman’s Free to Choose.

Mauborgne ranked No. 2 in The Thinkers50 listing of the World’s Top Management Gurus, in 2011 and 2013. She is the highest placed woman ever on Thinkers50. In 2014, Mauborgne, along with her colleague W. Chan Kim, received the Carl S. Sloane Award for Excellence from the Association of Management Consulting Firms due to the impact their management research has made on the global consulting industry. She also won the 2011 Thinkers50 Strategy Award. Mauborgne was selected for the 2011 Leadership Hall of Fame by Fast Company magazine and as one of the World’s 50 Best Business School Professors in 2012 by Fortune.com. She was also named among the world’s top five best business school professors in 2013 by MBA Rankings.

Mauborgne received the Nobel Colloquia Prize for Leadership on Business and Economic Thinking 2008 and is the winner of the Eldridge Haynes Prize, awarded by the Academy of International Business and the Eldridge Haynes Memorial Trust of Business International, for the best original paper in the field of international business. She is the winner of the Prix DCF 2009 (Prix des Dirigeants Commerciaux de France 2009) in the category of “Stratégie d’entreprise.” L’Expansion named Mauborgne along with her colleague W. Chan Kim as “the number one gurus of the future.” The Sunday Times (London) called them “two of Europe’s brightest business thinkers,” and noted, “Kim and Mauborgne provide a sizeable challenge to the way managers think about and practice strategy.” The Observer called Kim and Mauborgne, “the next big gurus to hit the business world.” She won the 2007 Asia Brand Leadership Award. Mauborgne is the winner of several Case Centre awards including “All-Time Top 40 Bestselling Cases” in 2014, “Best Overall Case” in 2009 across all disciplines and “Best Case in Strategy” in 2008.

Mauborgne co-founded the Blue Ocean Strategy Network (BOSN), a global community of practice on the blue ocean strategy family of concepts that they created. BOSN embraces academics, consultants, executives, and government officers.

Speaking Topics

Renée tailors each presentation to the needs of her audience and is not limited to the topics we have listed below. These are subjects that have proven valuable to customers in the past and are meant only to suggest her range and interests. Please ask us about any subject that interests you; we are sure that we can accommodate you.

How to build businesses with fans, not just customers
How is it that some companies are able to innovate and create products and services that really break the mold? Much time and energy is spent on managing known businesses and me-too products, yet Renée Mauborgne and her colleague Chan Kim’s research shows that the small 14% of firms that Value Innovate capture 36% of revenues and 63% of profits in their markets. ‘Value Innovation’ is their term for the strategic moves they’ve identified that capture ‘blue ocean market space’—new, untapped market space free of competition. So what do great innovative brands like Southwest Airlines and Swatch have in common? What do they do differently and what can we learn from them?

In this presentation, Renée Mauborgne identifies 6 paths to Value Innovation and creating new market space:
    • Assess your product not only compared to your competitors but also compared to alternatives for your customer. Southwest airlines decided its competition was the car and not other airlines and developed its offer accordingly.
    • Don’t just look at competition in your market segment but look at what other segments are offering. Formule 1 hotels offered 2 star cleanliness, quiet and comfort at 1 star prices, cutting out the other unnecessary frills.
    • Every product has users, purchasers and influencers. Why not target a different category from your competitors ? Canon won copier market share from Xerox by focusing on the end user rather than corporate purchasing departments.
    • Define your product and services differently from competition. Branson added ground transport to his air transport offer while Dyson went beyond vacuuming to remove the hassle of finding the right bag.
    • Flip your industry from functional to emotional—or vice versa. Swatch took the watch industry from functional to fashion, while the Body shop took away the glitter, going back to simple basics.
    • Integrate the time factor: how will current trends affect the industry and what does your business need to do differently in the future? Everyone in the room agreed that eliminating ironing had to be a big idea with the current irreversible trend to working families!
    • Once you have come up with new business ideas, how can you judge which may be the winner? First, you have to be able to sell it in three minutes! Second, the customer must have a compelling reason to buy it, and be able to afford the price you set. Third, can you execute it and make money from it?
Renée then explains why fair process is important in ensuring that everyone in the organization supports innovative new ideas, since resistance to change comes mostly from within. She outlines a process for ensuring acceptance and rapid execution of new initiatives by instituting fair process in cross-functional teams.

Other Topics Include:
    • Blue Ocean Strategy
    • Knowing a Winning Business Idea When You See One
    • Innovation—The Key-Driver of Growth
    • Value Innovation—How to Make It Happen
    • Wealth Creation

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