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Shadowing practice: The Explainer: Blue Ocean Strategy

Listen to the line, then say it out loud
Line 1

Full transcript

  1. In 1984, Gila Liberté co -founded Cirque du Soleil.0:02
  2. Soon, Cirque was bringing in revenues that incumbents like Ringling Brothers had taken more than a century to attain, even though the circus business was in long -term decline.0:06
  3. How did Cirque thrive in such a dismal environment?0:15
  4. The answer can be found in the theory that the business universe consists of two kinds of markets, red oceans and blue oceans, a concept pioneered by insid professors W.0:18
  5. Chan Kim and Rene Boborn.0:29
  6. Red oceans represent existing industries and markets, where industry boundaries and the rules of competition are well -defined.0:31
  7. Companies strive to outperform rivals and grab a bigger share of existing demand.0:38
  8. As the space gets crowded, fierce competition turns the water bloody.0:42
  9. Competitive or market competing strategy is about how to occupy red oceans.0:46
  10. By contrast, blue ocean or market creating strategy is about how to create and capture unknown markets where demand is created rather than fought over.0:51
  11. In some cases, this spawns entirely new industries.1:01
  12. But most blue oceans emerge when a company alters the boundaries of an existing industry, as when Cirque du Soleil blurred the line between circus and theatre.1:04
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  1. Cirque made the act more artistic and sophisticated, attracting a whole new group of customers, adults who are prepared to pay premium ticket prices as they would for the theatre1:13
  2. or the opera.1:22
  3. Cirque also eliminated several elements of the traditional circus like costly animal acts and star performers.1:23
  4. Cirque invented a new and profitable market space without making the typical trade -off between value and cost.1:30
  5. Cirque pursued both differentiation and low cost in what Kim and Boborn call value innovation.1:37
  6. The simultaneous pursuit of value and cost is the logic of blue ocean strategy.1:43
  7. Based on their study of more than 30 industries, companies that can create blue oceans usually reap the benefits for 10 to 15 years because they are hard for rivals1:48
  8. to copy.1:57
  9. To realise blue ocean potential like Cirque did, companies should chart a strategic course past traditional industry boundaries to create new market space.1:58

American Accent Training with an HBR Explainer on Blue Ocean Strategy

This clip is a Harvard Business Review explainer on Blue Ocean Strategy, narrated by a native speaker in a clear American accent at 183 words per minute, a pace ahead of 47 percent of the catalogue. It sits at C1, so it rewards learners who already handle business English and want english speaking practice with dense, idea driven sentences rather than small talk.

The 21 lines trace the argument from Cirque du Soleil's founding in 1984 through the economics of what the narrator calls red oceans and blue oceans, closing on what companies that create a blue ocean can expect to gain from it. Nothing here is casual banter. Every line carries a term or a claim, which is exactly the density that makes speaking it aloud, not just listening to it, worth the extra effort.

The Business Vocabulary in This English Listening Practice Clip

Three lines are worth slowing down for. The opening line, "In 1984, Gila Liberté co -founded Cirque du Soleil.", packs a date, a proper name and a compound verb into one breath group, a good test of how steady your pace stays under pressure. Line seven, "Companies strive to outperform rivals and grab a bigger share of existing demand.", is built from stacked verb phrases with no pauses between them, so the stress has to carry the meaning instead of the punctuation.

Line twelve does the same with a longer clause: Cirque "blurred the line between circus and theatre", a phrase that only lands if "blurred" gets its full weight and the sentence does not collapse into a flat run. None of these lines lean on casual reductions, so the challenge is not fast, blended speech, it is holding a long, formal sentence together at speed, which is its own kind of speaking practice.

  • "In 1984, Gila Liberté co -founded Cirque du Soleil." a date and a name in one clause
  • "Companies strive to outperform rivals and grab a bigger share of existing demand." stacked verbs with no pause
  • "blurred the line between circus and theatre" a formal clause that needs full word stress to stay clear
  • "attracting a whole new group of customers" a participle phrase that keeps the sentence moving forward

How to Shadow This C1 Business Lecture Line by Line

This is shadowing english speaking practice for a C1 listener, so work in short stretches rather than trying to keep up with the whole 21 lines at once. The order below follows the clip's own structure: setup, theory, contrast, payoff.

  • Shadow line 1 alone first, on the date and the name, until "co -founded Cirque du Soleil" comes out in one clean breath
  • Take lines 6 to 8 together as the red ocean block and repeat them until "fierce competition turns the water bloody" keeps its rhythm
  • Contrast that with line 10, the blue ocean definition, and say the two blocks back to back to hear how the tone shifts between them
  • Isolate line 12 on its own, since "blurred the line between circus and theatre" is the clip's key sentence and the hardest to keep level
  • Finish on lines 19 and 20, where the numbers land: read "more than 30 industries" and "10 to 15 years" until the figures do not slow you down
  • Once each block is steady, run all 21 lines straight through and compare your own recording to the narrator's to improve english speaking pace, not just accuracy
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