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Napoleon was a blue ocean strategist ahead of his time. With his innovative approach to military warfare, he reshaped conventional war strategies. But despite his outstanding and innovative war strategies, success eluded him in the end. His rise through victories at the battles of Lodi, Marengo, and Austerlitz contrasts with his downfall from the Russian invasion and the defeat at the Waterloo battle. This leads us to wonder, what went wrong? What factors can cause a good overall strategy to fail? Delving into the reasons behind Napoleon's rise and fall, this case suggests that the decline in the quality of his interactions with his marshals and staff in the latter part of his career led to inferior battle strategies that finally led to his downfall. The case underscores the importance of practicing fair process at the strategy formulation stage to ensure a strategy's effectiveness in terms of both content and execution, thereby achieving successful performance outcomes.

This case describes how the Chinese company Huitongda created a B2B platform to systematically connect rural mom-and-pop shops with urban-market-based suppliers, thereby opening a brand-new market for itself and contributing to the modernizing transformation of rural retailing in China. The initial two decades of China's economic reform were marked by a distinct rural-urban divide, as urban areas experienced rapid development of a consumer economy, while rural regions continued to maintain a partially self-reliant way of life. Retail in rural areas was primarily provided by small local shops that had no systematic access to suppliers of modern industrial products. Although substantial improvements in technological conditions and physical infrastructure had been made in rural areas, companies, in general, shied away from developing long-term business there because of the perceived lack of basic business conditions, despite huge demand potential. The founders of Huitongda addressed this problem by building an innovative B2B platform serving thousands of mom-and-pop rural shops with systematic supply chain solutions in a variety of industries while empowering them with digital tools and services for uplifting their operations, logistics and sales management, thereby transforming and modernizing the landscape of rural retail, and creating a thriving blue ocean of rural B2B market for itself. The case of Huitongda is an example of blue ocean creation through an approach called "nondisruptive creation", a concept coined by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in their book Beyond Disruption (2023). This is an approach to create new markets without disrupting existing industries.

Strategy is as much for nation states as it is for companies, a point clearly demonstrated by El Salvador under President Nayib Bukele. Bukele set out to shift El Salvador from a violent red ocean of gang violence and low growth to a blue ocean of growth, prosperity, and hope as well as the start of reverse migration. The once 'homicide capital of the world' has emerged as the 'bitcoin capital of the world' and a worldclass surfing destination - gangs eradicated, peace restored after decades of violence, tourism flourishing, FDI and GDP on the rise, and citizen's earnings and well-being improved. And while some of Bukele's actions have been criticized by international organizations and media, El Salvadoran citizens' response: Bukele secured a landslide re-election victory in 2024 with 84% of the vote from across the political spectrum. The case illustrates how with a shift in perspective, strategic logic and actions, differentiation and low costs can be achieved to break out of the red ocean at a national level. It also demonstrates how, by identifying and leveraging factors of disproportionate influence, a major strategic shift can be executed fast while conserving resources. The case discusses Nayib Bukele's shift in the country's national strategy and challenges students to assess the pros and cons of the strategic shift he has forged for the country. It also asks students to reflect on possible alternative solutions to the dire national situation the country faced as the 'homicide capital of the world,' which had persisted for decades prior to Bukele.