Executive Interviews: Interview with Daniel Lamarre on Blue Ocean Strategy
December 2008 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary

Daniel Lamarre
President and CEO of Cirque du Soleil

He believes in taking risks and likes his team to think "outside the box". He believes in diversifying the type of shows we do and that proved to be the right thing to do to bring us where we are almost 25 years later.

• What were the vision/philosophy/ corporate values espoused by Guy Laliberte? How do you ensure employees stay connected with the founder's vision, philosophy and values? How do you ensure continuity of that illustrious legacy? Generally it is observed that, with founders gone, the successors find it difficult if not impossible to carry the mantle having to rally the forces around a vision? Do you think Guy Laliberte is a visionary?
  Guy Laliberte is definitely a visionary. As stated above, his strategies to find the right balance between business and creativity have been successful. The corporate values of Cirque are often what attract people to work for the company. It is not difficult to have the employees stay connected with those values. Guy Laliberte has built a great team of leaders around him to ensure that the people who will come after himshare the samemanagement philosophy and pass it along. The culture at Cirque du Soleil is strongly integrated in all functions or sectors of the company because of Guy.

• What does Blue Ocean Strategy mean to you and Cirque Du Soleil? Surely, you wouldn't have known that you were creating a Blue Ocean in 1984.
  As I expressed in your first question, it is interesting to see 20 years after its creation that very competent University professors have analyzed the work of a group of Street performers... who applied rules of the University of the Street!

• WChan Kim and Renee Mauborgne in their celebrated article (Blue Ocean Strategy, HBR, October 2004) observed that, "Instead of following the conventional logic of outpacing the competition by offering a better solution to the given problem creating a circus with even greater fun and thrills it (Cirque Du Soleil) redefined the problem itself by offering people the fun and thrill of the circus and the intellectual sophistication and artistic richness of the theater". What is this intellectual sophistication and artistic richness of the theater? How could you blend them with a highly commoditized entertainment element like circus?
  Right at the beginning in 1984, and even before then, Gilles Ste Croix had his troup of stilt walkers and street performers called Le Club des Talons Hauts and they were doing theatre on stilts in the street, combining music dance, theatre and acrobatics. That really is at the roots of Cirque du Soleil. The sophistication was present even before the company was named Cirque du Soleil. They then brought under a tent what they were actually doing in the streets. The theatrical elements were always part of Cirque du Soleil, only the means got bigger but the intention to touch the audience, to provoke emotions by combining some artistic disciplines was there and is still our motto today. The difference is that in North America, no one had done this or seen this before. It was perceived as something totally new and sophisticated.

• How could you bump into such a powerful business model? What was the trigger point? What prompted you to marry the best of both the worlds circus and theatre? Did you make any changes to the business model in the last five years?
  Maybe our geographical situation is part of the answer: living in Quebec and having been influenced by Europeans who knew about that type of circus arts called "new or contemporary circus"in which we took some of our inspiration, and living in North America where marketing is very strong helped us create a kind of entertainment that could be artistically very strong and sophisticated and, at the same time, profitable.

• What do you attribute Cirque Du Soleils success to? In 20 years, Cirque Du Soleil has achieved revenues that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey the worlds leading circus took more than a century to attain. If you have to list out five critical success factors, what would they be? What were the lessons learnt along the 24 year journey?
  There is no recipe for our success, really. One thing has not changed throughout the 24 years of our short history and that is the intention of touching the audience, to make the public remember a song, an act, a character from our shows because it meant something to them. Our shows have a strong evocative power and that could be why they are successful worldwide. The storyline is not obvious, we do not wish to impose it on the public; we want the public to make their own interpretation ofwhat they see. We also strongly believe in the power of art and creativity. We make no artistic compromises. My way of describing our model is by saying that in the expression show business, the word show comes before business or if you prefer, if you have a good show, you will have a good financial model you will sell tickets.

• How do you describe Cirque Du Soleil's business a stable business with fickle customers or stable customers with fickle business?
  Like any business that depends on an audience for its revenue flow, you absolutely need to ALWAYS take into account that audience. You need to remain humble and not take it for granted. You always need to be on top of things and never sit on your past successes. You have to keep your audience interested and amazed.

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