Works
- Fair Process: Managing in the Knowledge Economy, Harvard Business Review, 1997
- Value Innovation: The Strategic Logic of High Growth, Harvard Business Review, 1997
- Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, 2005
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
Fair process. Drawing on their research into trust, idea sharing, and performance, Kim and Mauborgne argue that people will commit to a decision, even one they disagree with, if they believe the process that produced it was fair. Fair process has three elements: engagement (asking for people's input and letting them challenge ideas), explanation (making clear why the final decision was made), and expectation clarity (stating the new rules and standards once the decision is set).
What it explains
Kim and Mauborgne explain why the way a decision is reached shapes whether people carry it out. A sponsor who consults genuinely, explains the outcome, and states what happens next can win cooperation from people who argued for something else.
Tactics that draw on W. Chan Kim (1)
In Thinking Tools
Known for
A professor of strategy at INSEAD who, with Renée Mauborgne, introduced value innovation and the value curve in 1997 and later the strategy canvas and blue ocean strategy, the argument that firms grow by creating uncontested market space.