"Cirque du Soleil succeeded because it realized that to win in the future, companies must stop competing with each other. The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition." Kim & Mauborgne - Blue Ocean Strategy

One of my favorite business books of last year, highly recommended. According to published reports the Cirque gang sells one million dollars a day in tickets - but wait, there's more - that's only daily ticket sales in Las Vegas.

There is no such thing as a mature industry and the brilliant Cirque du Soleil folks have proven it again period. One of the discovery learning tools we use at work involves getting everyone in a counter-intuitive frame of mind - looking and listening for what is NOT there. One of the first Cirque productions was titled "We Reinvent the Circus." Give it a try...a circus with no elephants? (My thanks to Wes Spencer). More on the book...Amazon's got it for under twenty bucks here