Um pouco de história

Já por mais de uma vez fiz o paralelismo entre o choque da invasão dos produtos japoneses no mercado americano na década de 70 e 80 do século passado e, o choque da invasão de produtos chineses e leste-europeus nos mercados onde operavam as empresas portuguesas na primeira década do século XXI.

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Encontrei um artigo que ajuda a perspectivar a história desses tempos "Survival Strategies in a Hostile Environment" de William Hall, publicado em Setembro de 1980 (há 30 anos) na Harvard Business Review e, do qual saliento alguns trechos:

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"Great success is possible, even in a hostile environment

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is easy to slip into generalizations by extrapolating from aggregate industry problems to the individual companies within the industry."

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(Moi ici: e acerca dos títulos dos media que generalizam o que se passam em todo um sector económico e não percebem como um sector é heterogéneo...)

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"typical of those that tend to project adverse trends uniformly onto all competitors in the industry. In fact, however, nothing could be further from the truth. Some of the most vibrant, successful companies in the world reside and prosper in these seemingly hostile industry environments."

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"survival and prosperity are possible even when the business environment turns hostile and industry trends change from favorable to unfavorable."

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"Strategies leading to success share common characteristics

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all 16 of these leading companies have demonstrated a continuous, single-minded determination
to achieve one or both of the following competitive positions within their respective industries:

• Achieve the lowest delivered cost position relative to competition, coupled with both an acceptable delivered quality and a pricing policy to gain profitable volume and market share growth.
• Achieve the highest product/service/quality differentiated position relative to competition, coupled with both an acceptable delivered cost structure and a pricing policy to gain margins sufficient to fund reinvestment in product/service differentiation."

(Moi ici: recordo, um artigo com 30 anos. E o que vem já a seguir)

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"the industry growth and profit leaders chose only one of the two strategic approaches, on the basis that the skills and resources necessary to invest in a low-cost position are insufficient or incompatible with those needed to simultaneously invest in a strongly differentiated position."

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(Moi ici: quando penso em estratégia, penso logo num termo que aprendi no ramo da psicologia: situacional. A estratégia é sempre situacional, depende sempre do ambiente competitivo em torno da organização. E o que é verdade hoje... amanhã, é mentira!!!)

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"For general managers guiding their companies into the economic environment of the 1980s, the implications of these findings are clear. The laws of the jungle change as maturity comes and hostility intensifies. In such a jungle, the range of strategic options narrows, requiring both an early warning of the coming hostility and an early strategic repositioning for a company to survive and prosper."

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Um esquema interessante que adoptei do artigo é o que se segue:

Permite, por exemplo, posicionar os intervenientes num espaço competitivo.