Cirque du Soleil

Cirque du Soleil is a Montréal-based live entertainment company that grew from a Québec street-performance troupe founded in 1984. Its productions combined acrobatics with costumes, lighting, original music and theatrical staging while leaving live animals out of the show. The company has developed both touring productions and resident shows.

Cirque du Soleil is a useful example of market creation through deliberate choices. In the blue ocean strategy authors’ account, its approach appealed to adults and corporate clients willing to pay more than traditional circus audiences. The point is not simply that Cirque offered something novel: it chose a different audience and assembled a different kind of performance for that audience.

The example also has a limit. Pandemic closures shut down Cirque’s operations in 2020, when the company entered creditor protection; it relaunched under new owners in 2021. That external shock does not show its original strategy failed or that rivals copied it. It does show why a celebrated market-creation case should not be treated as proof of permanent advantage.