Recommended Reading
The strategy books we recommend to every client — starting with the newly released enhanced edition of the classic that defined our practice.
New — Published 18 August 2026
Blue Ocean Strategy, Enhanced Edition
W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne
The newly released enhanced edition of the classic that defined our practice. Twenty years on, the core message is more relevant than ever for Australian leaders: stop competing in crowded markets and create uncontested market space. If you read one strategy book this year, make it this one.
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Blue Ocean Shift
W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne
The practical companion to Blue Ocean Strategy — a step-by-step guide to moving your team from red to blue oceans, with the humanness, tools and confidence-building process we draw on in our longer-form programmes.
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Good Strategy / Bad Strategy
Richard Rumelt
The sharpest book ever written on what strategy actually is — and the fluff that so often passes for it. Rumelt's 'kernel' of diagnosis, guiding policy and coherent action pairs beautifully with Blue Ocean tools.
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Playing to Win
A.G. Lafley & Roger L. Martin
How P&G turned strategy into five practical choices. An excellent framework for boards and executive teams who need a shared language for strategic decision-making.
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Competitive Strategy
Michael E. Porter
The book that defined the red ocean. Porter's five forces and generic strategies remain the essential grounding in competitive analysis — understand the game before you choose to change it.
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HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy
Harvard Business Review
The definitive anthology — Porter's 'What Is Strategy?', Kim & Mauborgne's Blue Ocean thinking, and more. The fastest way for a leadership team to build a shared strategy vocabulary.
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HBR's 10 Must Reads on Change Management
Harvard Business Review
Strategy fails in execution, not conception. Kotter's 'Leading Change' and its companions cover the organisational side of any Blue Ocean move — alignment, urgency and momentum.
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Strategy Safari
Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand & Joseph Lampel
A witty guided tour of the ten schools of strategic thought. Mintzberg keeps every practitioner honest about what strategy frameworks can and cannot do.
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Competing for the Future
Gary Hamel & C.K. Prahalad
The classic on industry foresight and core competence. Hamel and Prahalad's challenge — compete for opportunity share, not market share — is a direct ancestor of Blue Ocean thinking.
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The Innovator's Dilemma
Clayton M. Christensen
Why well-run incumbents get disrupted — essential context for understanding why creating new market space beats defending old ground, especially in Australia's concentrated markets.
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