Quantas variantes dum produto?

Um tema que deve interessar a quem se preocupa com posicionamento, proposta de valor e perceber o cliente-alvo:

"Consumers almost always tell researchers that they prefer to have many versions of a product from which to choose. But, in fact, consumers’ perceptions of how many choices they prefer change depending on whether they intend to use an item for pleasure or to meet a functional need. (Think of a swimsuit desired for beachwear versus swimming laps.) For retailers, that difference has big implications for the problem of assortment — how many variations of a single product to offer.
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Consumers motivated by pleasure believe that what pleases them differs greatly from what pleases most other people. They will therefore prefer a large assortment. But when seeking to meet a utilitarian need with the same product, they are less inclined to see their preferences as being greatly different from those of other people. They will then be satisfied by a smaller assortment from which to choose."

O texto competo pode ser encontrado em "How Many Versions of a Product Do Consumers Really Want?"

Rumo ao socialismo

Ontem fui reler umas páginas de "Inovação e Gestão" de Peter Drucker (neste postal de 2006 pode ver-se como foi um livro importante para mim) e choquei contra este trecho:

"A actividade empresarial assenta numa teoria económica e social. Essa teoria encara a mudança como algo normal e até saudável. E crê que a principal tarefa da sociedade - e especialmente da economia - é fazer-se algo diferente e não fazer-se algo melhor do que aquilo que já foi feito ... o empresário perturba e desorganiza."

E fiquei a pensar como neste país de incumbentes ... pensando melhor o mal não é luso, está a generalizar-se, como neste mundo há cada vez mais empresários preocupados em manter o status quo, que querem no fundo ser funcionários públicos encapotados, por exemplo, aqui.

"porque o mundo está a mudar "

Interessante:

"No âmbito desta aposta nas exportações, a AORP acaba de lançar uma nova campanha de promoção internacional da joalharia portuguesa - intitulada "Portuguese Jewellery À La Carte" -- cujo objetivo é "criar um formato de promoção paralelo ao das feiras", mais "intimista", e através do qual "se consegue transmitir mais eficazmente a essência e o universo de valores que distinguem a joalharia portuguesa, como a manualidade".
...
Segundo Fátima Santos, "a China revelou-se interessante porque, apesar daqueles chavões de produto massificado, de copiadores e de baixo preço e baixa qualidade, o setor está a fazer vendas para galerias e lojas de posicionamento muito elevado de Xangai e da China continental, que procuram um produto de excelência e encontram-no no mercado português".
.
Os planos da associação passam depois por replicar este modelo em França, um dos principais mercados de exportação do setor, nos EUA (onde tem também em curso "uma investida interessante"), na Holanda e em Espanha.
.
"Sentimos que há esta necessidade porque o mundo está a mudar e as feiras cada vez mais resultam menos. São momentos mais difíceis, que requerem investimentos muito grandes e têm uma lógica mais passiva, de esperar pelo contacto do comprador, e muitas vezes o sucesso de uma empresa é determinado por um comprador que conseguiu seduzir num ambiente mais intimista através de uma abordagem direta ao consumidor final", afirmou a responsável."

Trechos retirados de "Exportações portuguesas de ourivesaria e joalharia atingem os 100 ME em 2017"

A evolução do papel da loja física

O amigo Rui Moreira fez-me chegar este artigo "La jefa de venta ‘online’ de Mango: “En las tiendas han de pasar cosas, no pueden seguir igual otros 100 años”" de onde sublinho:

"P. Según un estudio, las mujeres prefieren la tienda física por probar la prenda y apreciar su calidad.
.
R. No lo he leído, pero en Europa lo veo difícil, quizá en España... La tendencia dice lo contrario. La discusión hoy en día es cuánto, qué porcentaje de la venta de moda será online. Algunos apuestan por un 30%, otros por un 50%...
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P. Ahora mismo en España estamos en un 4-5%. Usted, ¿qué prevé?
.
R. Dependerá de cómo asignemos la venta. La venta, ¿qué es? ¿La transacción? Si al final se paga todo con móvil, ¿toda la venta será online? Pero te aseguro que ese 5% no se va a quedar ahí. Yo calculo que España llegará en breve al 20-30%, y los más maduros, 50%.
.
P. ¿Y la tienda?
.
R. Va a seguir existiendo, claro que sí. Otra cosa es que la función de la tienda a lo mejor ha de ser diferente. Ahí estamos todos trabajando. En qué te puedo ofrecer para que salgas de la comodidad de tu casa y vengas a nuestras tiendas. Probablemente irá por el entorno de lo social, de lo sensorial... Han de suceder cosas. No podemos pretender que las tiendas vuelvan a estar 100 años más igual. Apple, por ejemplo, está haciendo cosas en ese sentido. En sus tiendas pasan cosas y no están relacionadas con la transacción pura y dura."

Difícil para muita gente abandonar a postura tradicional: eu é que sei o que é que os clientes querem.

Como não recordar a Papelaria Fernandes.

"highly focused on serving a particular kind of customer"

“The decline of brands could be devastating for mass-market national media, especially television. Big-store retailers, whether Walmart or Safeway or Best Buy, will see traffic dwindle as more purchases move online and to AI-driven subscription services. [Moi ici: Ler isto]
.
In short, the consumer experience built on scale over the past century is about to get disassembled and unscaled. The advantages of big are waning. In this new era small, focused companies that put the consumer at the center will beat big, mass-market operations most of the time.
...
The great opportunities in the consumer market will revolve around giving every individual exactly what he wants, when he wants it. It reflects the constant theme in unscaling: scaled-up, mass-market products have long made us conform to them, but unscaled products and services conform to us. They will seem like they are built just for each one of us—customization built with automation. Over the next decade we’ll see innovators transform one kind of product after another, moving them from mass markets to markets of one. [Moi ici: Recordar isto]
...
UNBUNDLING THE GIANTS: Consumer product companies from P&G to Nestlé to Samsung were built on the mass market. A hit product was one that appealed to the greatest number of people—one size fits most. But mass-market products are a compromise for most consumers. They’re not exactly what we might want, but it’s good enough and easily available. And that leaves an opening for small, new companies that can use technology to create products that hold great appeal for narrow slices of the consumer market—consumers who will feel like that product was created especially for them.
...
And these new companies will have the opportunity to rebundle groups of narrow-market products into the new P&Gs, as we’re seeing with Honest. These new companies might get big, but they will always be more of a collection of businesses highly focused on serving a particular kind of customer.”

Excerto de: Taneja, Hemant,Maney, Kevin. “Unscaled”

Mais outro exemplo: Provinciano, mas muito à frente

Há anos que escrevo sobre o futuro do trabalho, sobretudo acerca do fim do emprego estabelecido como paradigma pelo século XX, e que a maioria acredita ser algo milenar, algo eterno. Sobretudo, acerca da ascensão do artesão, do artesão apoiado na tecnologia e dedicado à criação de arte e a trabalhar em co-criação com os seus clientes.

Por isso, isto faz todo o sentido, "(Re)naissance de l’Homo Faber : le travailleur de demain sera un artiste ou un artisan rompu aux nouvelles technologies":

"Les sociétés européennes ont toujours tenu pour acquis que la transmission de compétences se ferait de génération en génération : le développement d’un talent d’artiste ou d’artisan se faisait par les enseignements des maîtres précédents. On pourrait penser que ce paradigme a disparu avec la société industrielle, mais ce serait faux : l’avenir du travail pourrait bien revenir aux fondamentaux même de l’histoire du travail, et ce grâce à nos nouvelles technologies. [Moi ici: Tenho escrito sobre isto vezes sem conta, o regresso ao trabalho pré-Revolução Industrial, cooperativas de artesãos]
...
La fabrication numérique assistée par ordinateur fonctionne différemment. Elle ne requiert aucun moule et ne nécessite donc pas de répéter une même forme indéfiniment. Chaque pièce peut-être unique, telle une œuvre d’art. Là où les problématiques d’espace et de quantité dominaient le monde industriel, aujourd’hui, un petit atelier ou un studio peuvent concurrencer une grande usine. La production ne se résume plus à une question de volume.
...
L’émergence d’une économie sans échelle, une économie à taille humaine.
Dans ce nouvel environnement, le plus grand défi pour un travailleur est de penser en artiste tout en exploitant les possibilités des nouvelles technologies. [Moi ici: Outro tema tipo deste blogue, a ascensão da arte]
...
C’est la raison pour laquelle l’apprentissage doit évoluer : il ne s’agit plus de commencer par se former pour ensuite trouver un travail correspondant, mais bien de travailler d’abord, pour trouver par la suite les enseignements qui nous correspondent. [Moi ici: Tão bom!!! A ascensão da arte dita que tudo comece pelo fuçar, pela experimentação - "Não começamos a fazer arte assim que nos tornamos artistas. Ou seja, não é por sermos artistas que fazemos arte, é por fazermos arte que nos tornamos artistas."] Que les nouvelles technologies privent leurs utilisateurs de formations pratiques serait un désastre.
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Le futur du travail que dessinent ces nouvelles technologies, c’est celui de « l’Homo Faber » : un homme qui sera son propre créateur, qui se réalisera à travers les gestes  du quotidien. Le travail permet d’écrire une histoire dans laquelle chaque projet est un chapitre de vie qui s’additionne aux autres et de ce point de vue, chacun pourra constater que sa vie est plus qu’une série aléatoire de jobs déconnectés – y compris pour les petits boulots rémunérés à la tâche. [Moi ici: Como não recordar o recente "Aproveitei o meu percurso"] 

Para reflexão séria - é a vida!

Faz hoje 8 dias que os meus amigos da Olifel me convidaram para dizer umas palavras sobre a Indústria 4.0 no âmbito do lançamento do novo Visualgest

Nesse mesmo evento tive oportunidade de ouvir o presidente da câmara de Felgueiras dizer, sem papas na língua, que o calçado atravessa um momento difícil, um momento de mudança.

Entretanto, os remendos feitos no tempo da troika continuam a ser desmantelados. Por exemplo "Alexandra Leitão: Mexer na idade da reforma dos professores "é um caminho possível"".

Entretanto, as empresas grandes continuam a fazer o seu trabalho de liquidar as pequenas e médias e de desertificar o interior, "Governo abre a porta a salário mínimo acima dos 600 euros".

Sabem como defendo aqui no blogue, há mais de 10 anos, que Portugal não pode competir com a China nos custos e teria de apostar nas vantagens da proximidade e rapidez (postal de 2007). Por exemplo, neste postal de 2015 apresento esta tabela para o sector do têxtil e vestuário:

Mas o mundo económico é uma continuação da biologia, um eterno subir e descer do espaço competitivo enrugado que obriga as empresas a estarem atentos às outras empresas concorrentes, aos clientes e ao habitat.

Há dias escrevi este "Desabafo", hoje olhei para estes números:

Olhem para o mapa:

Proximidade e rapidez... quanto tempo para a Roménia e Hungria ditarem cartas?

Ontem estive numa empresa que já está a competir no nível seguinte do jogo: de igual para igual com os italianos. No entanto, isso não é campeonato para empresas com muitos trabalhadores, nem é para produção em massa.

A vida não é nem justa nem injusta, nem moral nem imoral. A vida é ajusta e amoral.

Não pense que isto só acontece aos outros

A propósito de "The Risks and Costs of Cyber-Attacks" nos últimos 12 meses entre as empresas com que trabalho/trabalhei:

• uma multinacional muuuuito grande;
• uma PME com 20 trabalhadores;
• uma micro empresa com 7 trabalhadores;
• uma PME com 60 trabalhadores (em 2016)

Sofreram ataques informáticos violentos.

Não pense que isto só acontece aos outros. O que pode fazer para se proteger?

"The market is poised to take off"

"Mass customization.
This model takes product variation to the extreme. It entails creating one-off products that are precisely adjusted to the needs or whims of individual buyers—adjustments that can be carried out by simply uploading each customer’s digital file into a 3-D printer. Thanks to the efficiency and precision of digital technology, these products cost less than conventionally manufactured items but fit individuals’ specifications more exactly.
.
Mass customization is suitable for any large market in which customers are dissatisfied with standardized, conventionally produced offerings and it’s easy to collect customer information. ...
This model can rapidly and significantly affect an entire industry. With hearing aids the shift happened in a year and a half, forcing some manufacturers into bankruptcy.
.
The main competitive challenge is to reduce the cost of acquiring individual customers’ information. Hearing-aid companies first needed a scanning device that audiologists could easily use. In this case, customers were willing to go to an audiologist to be measured. In contrast, buyers of custom orthotics and insoles didn’t want to visit an expensive podiatrist to be measured. That’s why SOLS Systems, which innovated in this area, couldn’t make it on its own; it was acquired in 2017 by another footwear company, Aetrex Worldwide. But the development of smartphone apps that allow people to measure their own feet is overcoming the information-collection obstacle. And HP Inc. has devised a 3-D scanning solution, FitStation, that can be placed in stores. The market is poised to take off."

Trecho retirado de "The 3-D Printing Playbook"

"people organize their brains with conversation"

Com quem conversa sobre a estratégia da sua empresa?

"The fact is important enough to bear repeating: people organize their brains with conversation. If they don’t have anyone to tell their story to, they lose their minds. Like hoarders, they cannot unclutter themselves. The input of the community is required for the integrity of the individual psyche. To put it another way: It takes a village to organize a mind. Much of what we consider healthy mental function is the result of our ability to use the reactions of others to keep our complex selves functional. We outsource the problem of our sanity."

Ler isto e recordar de imediato Popper e Espinosa:

"Popper tinha razão ao criticar Espinosa, de que vale a liberdade de pensamento se não há com quem conversar, discutir e aprender"

Peterson, Jordan B.. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

Anónimo da província, mas à frente

Volta e meia ouvimos representantes da produção - as marcas - queixarem-se do poder da distribuição grande. Aqui no blogue basta pesquisar: Centromarca (por exemplo este postal de 2009 e este outro de 2015)

Sempre aconselhei as marcas a concentrarem-se em seduzir os que mandam nos donos das prateleiras, os consumidores, através de produtos e experiências inovadoras (por exemplo este postal de 2012 e este outro de 2016)

Agora, via "Big box retailers aren’t always able to squeeze small suppliers" chego a um artigo interessante, "Are Supermarkets Squeezing Small Suppliers? Evidence from Negotiated Wholesale Prices" de Carlos Noton e Andrés Elberg, publicado por The Economic Journal. Interessa-me sobretudo o tema de como é que os pequenos produtores pode lidar com a distribuição muito concentrada:

"Combining data on prices at the retail and wholesale levels, quantities and estimated coffee production costs, we find that while the largest supplier, Nestlé, is able to secure a large fraction of the pie (around 65 per cent) the median fraction of the surplus obtained by other smaller suppliers is a sizeable 41 per cent. This indicates that it is not necessarily the case that small suppliers bargaining with large supermarket chains are doomed to earn negligible profits. Some are able to secure relatively large fractions of the surplus at stake in negotiations with retailers in spite of their small market sizes.
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What explains the ability of small suppliers to earn such a large share of the channel surplus?
...
the researchers estimate a demand system and use these demand estimates to compute a measure of the profits that the supermarket would obtain if a given supplier’s products were taken off its shelves. The less substitutable (more differentiated) the product is, the lower the profits a supermarket would obtain in the event of a disagreement in their negotiations with the supplier. In this case, the supplier is in a better bargaining position.
...
The study finds that the relatively large share of the surplus earned by small coffee manufacturers can be rationalised by retailers’ low ‘outside options’ (disagreement profits are about 27 per cent of agreement profits). The results suggest that the most likely explanation for small manufacturers’ ability to capture value is that they provide differentiated products to a small but highly loyal group of customers."

Do artigo sublinhamos:

"Our finding that small manufacturers are able to capture a sizable share of the channel surplus runs contrary to the conventional wisdom that market size is a primary driver of bargaining outcomes. Along these lines, Nestlé’s large payoffs may not be solely driven by its market size. The strong brand loyalty of Nestlé’s customers, as supported by our demand estimations, are an important source of bargaining leverage. Thus, our evidence suggests that the most likely explanation to small manufacturers capturing value is that they provide differentiated products to small groups of loyal consumers. This finding has profound implications for the public debate on the profit-sharing between big-box retailers and small manufacturers, stressing the role played by brand loyalty as a counteracting force to market size. Recall that market size is endogenous in our model and that the exogenous sources of bargaining leverage are the size of the outside options of players and their relative firm specific characteristics such as bargaining skills, patience rate, risk aversion, etc.
...
Our results support the hypothesis that brand loyalty plays a key role in profit-sharing between retailers and manufacturers"

"Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte XV)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI, parte VII, parte VIII, parte IX, parte X, parte XI, parte XII, parte XIII e parte XIV.

“By the end of the twentieth century P&G had scaled up to a behemoth, offering more than three hundred brands and raking in yearly revenue of $37 billion. P&G was one of the world’s corporate superpowers.
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In 2016 analyst firm CB Insights published a graphic showing all the ways unscaled companies were attacking P&G. [Moi ici: Por que não gostamos de ser tratados como plancton] It looks like a swarm of bees taking down a bear. In that rendering P&G no longer appears to be a monolithic scaled-up company that has built up powerful defenses against upstarts; instead, it is depicted as a series of individual products, each vulnerable to small, unscaled, agile, AI-driven, product-focused, entrepreneurial companies.
...
CBI called the overall phenomenon the “unbundling of P&G.” It is as clear an indication as any of what big corporations face in an era that favors economies of unscale over economies of scale. Small unscaled companies can challenge every piece of a big company, often with products or services more perfectly targeted to a certain kind of buyer—products that can win against mass-appeal offerings. If unscaled competitors can lure away enough customers, economies of scale will work against the incumbents as fewer units move through expensive, large-scale factories and distribution systems—a cost burden not borne by unscaled companies.
...
Over the past hundred years, as the era of scale unfolded, small companies of course continued to exist, and many prospered even as they stayed small. Small business was the US economy’s underlying strength throughout the scaling age. In 2010, according to the US Census, the nation had about 30 million small businesses and only 18,500 companies that employed more than five hundred people.
However, in an era when economies of scale usually prevailed, when a scaled-up company competed directly against a small business, the small business usually lost. Just think of all the small-town Main Street retailers Walmart bulldozed over the past twenty-five years.
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We will see the big-beats-small dynamic reverse as we unscale. Over the next ten to twenty years companies that relied on scale as a competitive advantage will increasingly find themselves defanged. They will be at a disadvantage against focused unscaled businesses. Large corporations won’t disappear, just as small business didn’t disappear in the last era. But the big companies that don’t change their model will see their businesses erode, and some of today’s giants will fall. [Moi ici: Nada podem fazer contra a suckiness, têm de a abandonar]”

Excerto de: Taneja, Hemant, Maney, Kevin. “Unscaled”.

Trabalho 4.0

Assim como o governo alemão lançou o tema da Indústria 4.0, também lançou recentemente um documento para discutir o Trabalho 4.0 sobre como será o trabalho do futuro.

Penso que é um documento demasiado preso ao paradigma do emprego criado pelo século XX, deixando por isso para segundo ou terceiro plano a "gig economy", mas não deixa de ser interessante:

"Whilst decent work and income remain fundamentally important, a new balance will permanently have to be struck between security and flexibility. Social security and the integration of all citizens into occupation will continue to be a key goal. However, increasingly pluralistic life and work styles call for a stronger element of self-determination and flexibility in, for example, where and when people decide to work.
...
The predominant assumption is that the witnessed transformations will not lead to mass job losses but a massive change in occupations and job profiles. This makes skills development and life-long learning even more important than it already is.
...
[Moi ici: Desconfio que muitos partidários do status quo, em ambos os lados do balcão, não vão gostar disto] Why should social security systems only kick-in when people approach the end of their working lives or risk losing their jobs? The whitepaper instead turns to an idea of preventative social policy and suggests gradually expanding the currently existing unemployment insurance into an employment insurance, with an individual right to independent vocational guidance and continuing education and training. This should also transform the agency managing unemployment into a more pro-active qualification agency.
...
Issues that will most likely become even more relevant in coming years are around working time and flexibility. Whereas a lot of employees still prefer fixed working hours and don’t want to check their emails on their weekends, more and more people value the flexibility modern forms of communication can provide and would rather leave the office early to spend time with their children and catch up on emails later in the evening.
...
Suggestions also include the establishment of long-term personal accounts that each individual sets up at the start of their working life, equipped with a basic “capital” and then earning credits through employment or individual contributions. These credits could then be used for education, skill enhancement or career breaks."

Trechos retirados de "Work 4.0: How Germany is shaping the future of work"

"True thinking is rare"

"The people I listen to need to talk, because that’s how people think. People need to think. Otherwise they wander blindly into pits. When people think, they simulate the world, and plan how to act in it. If they do a good job of simulating, they can figure out what stupid things they shouldn’t do. Then they can not do them. Then they don’t have to suffer the consequences. That’s the purpose of thinking. But we can’t do it alone. We simulate the world, and plan our actions in it. Only human beings do this. That’s how brilliant we are. We make little avatars of ourselves. We place those avatars in fictional worlds. Then we watch what happens. If our avatar thrives, then we act like he does, in the real world. Then we thrive (we hope). If our avatar fails, we don’t go there, if we have any sense. We let him die in the fictional world, so that we don’t have to really die in the present.
...
People think they think, but it’s not true. It’s mostly self-criticism that passes for thinking. True thinking is rare— just like true listening.
...
Thinking is listening to yourself. It’s difficult. To think, you have to be at least two people at the same time. Then you have to let those people disagree. Thinking is an internal dialogue between two or more different views of the world. Viewpoint One is an avatar in a simulated world. It has its own representations of past, present and future, and its own ideas about how to act. So do Viewpoints Two, and Three, and Four. Thinking is the process by which these internal avatars imagine and articulate their worlds to one another."

E pensar para além do dia a dia? E pensar para além do que se está a fazer sobre o que se deverá estar a fazer depois de amanhã? E pensar para além do apagar o fogo que irrompeu esta noite? E pensar sobre se o que se está a fazer é o que deve ser feito mesmo?

Peterson, Jordan B.. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

Em vez de copiar, o truque é diferenciar

"For all the panic in the retail sector about Amazon replacing traditional sales, I don’t see the person-to-person experience going away anytime soon. With a few exceptions, people like leaving the house. They like the experience of shopping, discovery, and interacting with each other."

Quando um modelo de negócio está em ascensão, recebe a luz e a atenção dos holofotes. Por isso, toda a gente está condenada a ser bombardeada pelos media com a sua mensagem de que "a nova única via para o sucesso é esta". Os incautos caem na armadilha e tentam combater no terreno onde o concorrente é mais forte, tentam copiá-lo e tramam-se, inevitavelmente.

Nunca esquecer a frase:

"When something is commoditized, an adjacent market becomes valuable"

Em vez de copiar o truque é diferenciar. Ok, talvez tenha de começar por encolher a organização (grande exemplo da Apple de 1997), mas depois há que procurar fugir o mais possível do espaço competitivo em que o outro modelo de negócio está a ter sucesso.

Trecho retirado de "Retailers can’t out-Amazon Amazon, but they can change the rules"

"Truth makes the past truly past"

"Things fall apart. What worked yesterday will not necessarily work today. We have inherited the great machinery of state and culture from our forefathers, but they are dead, and cannot deal with the changes of the day. The living can. We can open our eyes and modify what we have where necessary and keep the machinery running smoothly. Or we can pretend that everything is alright, fail to make the necessary repairs, and then curse fate when nothing goes our way. Things fall apart: this is one of the great discoveries of humanity. And we speed the natural deterioration of great things through blindness, inaction and deceit. Without attention, culture degenerates and dies, and evil prevails.
...
To tell the truth is to bring the most habitable reality into Being. Truth builds edifices that can stand a thousand years. Truth feeds and clothes the poor, and makes nations wealthy and safe. Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word, so that he can become a partner, rather than an enemy. Truth makes the past truly past, and makes the best use of the future’s possibilities. [Moi ici: Como não recordar Joaquim Aguiar, enquanto a verdade for escondida estamos condenados a repetir os erros do passado... o FMI já veio 3 vezes] Truth is the ultimate, inexhaustible natural resource. It’s the light in the darkness. See the truth. Tell the truth.
...
If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth. In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise."

Peterson, Jordan B.. "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos"

Autenticidade

"The relentless rise of globalisation has seen our world, on and offline, become homogenised. Many local touchpoints from within our communities are disappearing. The local pub, the library, the sports club, the playing fields, these focal points and hubs for community involvement and interaction are being lost. 27 pubs close in the UK every single week.
.
For every trend, there is a counter-trend and so with globalisation swings back localisation. The reaction to globalisation has been for people to become more protective of their communities and the signifiers of ‘local’. As 'local' becomes increasingly scarce, demand for 'local' increases. A more global, connected and homogenised experience of the world means people long to discover the original and unique again. A strong sense of place gives identity and meaning to people, and offers a sense of belonging.
.
Inevitably, brands are changing their own habits and behaviours to reflect this desire. Today, many brands display a marked emphasis on provenance. Some leverage the cachet of being 'local', but many also challenge existing business models, and can become valued pillars of the community they serve."

Trecho retirado de "How brands use 'local' as a source of competitive advantage"

Acerca do bombeirismo

"Make no mistake, a firefighting mentality starts at the top of the organization. If managers see their senior leaders constantly reacting to every issue that comes across their desk, they too will adopt this behavior. Fire-fighting then becomes embedded in the culture and those that are seen as the most reactive, oddly enough, garner the greatest recognition. Managers who thoughtfully consider each issue before responding don't seem to be doing as much as the firefighters, when in reality, they're exponentially more productive.
.
"Let's think about that," is a simple but powerful phrase that can eliminate reactivity within your business and culture. The next time you receive an e-mail marked urgent or someone comes charging into your office with how to react to a competitor's activity or a new flavor-of-the-month project, reply with "Let's think about that. "Then stop and consider how this helps you achieve your goals and supports your strategic focus. To do so, determine the probability of success, impact on the business, and resources required. If after this analysis, the new task doesn't appear to support your goals and strategies, kindly inform the relevant parties that, relative to the other initiatives you're working on, this doesn't warrant resource allocation."

Recordar Setembro de 2006 e "Não adianta chorar sobre leite derramado (I)"

Trecho retirado de "The Strategic Thinking Manifesto" de Rich Horwath

Desabafo

Num desabafo pouco habitual neste blogue que se quer optimista.

Receio que Portugal no médio prazo se torne novamente num país ideal para o low-cost e as respectivas estratégias eficientistas:

#Hungary Gross Wage year-on-year at 12.6% https://t.co/pMc8dPXHyN pic.twitter.com/wCG6nfwyUw

— Trading Economics (@tEconomics) June 21, 2018

E a Roménia... meu Deus!!!

Recordo as instituições extractivas de Acemoglu e imagino 44 anos de perseguição normanda saqueadora, comparando com o tenho visto nos últimos anos sobre o alojamento local.

A tendência crescente

"The great opportunities in the consumer market will revolve around giving every individual exactly what he wants, when he wants it. It reflects the constant theme in unscaling: scaled-up, mass-market products have long made us conform to them, but unscaled products and services conform to us. They will seem like they are built just for each one of us—customization built with automation. Over the next decade we’ll see innovators transform one kind of product after another, moving them from mass markets to markets of one.
Here are some of the opportunities I see:
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“UNBUNDLING THE GIANTS: Consumer product companies from P&G to Nestlé to Samsung were built on the mass market. A hit product was one that appealed to the greatest number of people—one size fits most. But mass-market products are a compromise for most consumers. They’re not exactly what we might want, but it’s good enough and easily available. And that leaves an opening for small, new companies that can use technology to create products that hold great appeal for narrow slices of the consumer market—consumers who will feel like that product was created especially for them.
...
OMNI-CHANNEL STORES: Through the history of civilization people have been drawn to markets. We like to shop. For many people it’s a social and entertainment experience as much as a search for a product. So no matter how much commerce moves online, it’s not likely that retail stores will disappear. But retail will certainly change. Successful retail stores will be part of a complete experience that connects online and offline shopping.
...
LOCAL FARMING: Scaled-up farming has fed the world, but it’s also given us “fresh” tomatoes that taste like plastic. A host of technologies, from AI-controlled grow lamps to IoT sensors that can constantly measure nutrients in soil, are making it feasible to profitably grow food indoors near customers—the farming equivalent of distributed manufacturing."

Excerto de: Taneja, Hemant,Maney, Kevin. “Unscaled”. iBooks.

Para reflexão

"Poor preparation is a lousy excuse for a last-minute selfish frenzy. That frenzy distracts us from doing it right the next time.
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If you want to understand where mastery and success come from, take a look at the inputs and the journey, not simply the outputs."

Trecho retirado de "Cold yeast"

Testar rapidamente

"But today’s pop-up is hardly about smashing annual revenue numbers. Much as a Silicon Valley start-up might release a prototype or beta version to study user feedback, many retailers are treating their pop-up stores as a way to test, learn and iterate on new ideas.
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To some, it’s about testing a hypothesis or validating a new concept. To others, it’s about evaluating new markets, studying consumer behaviour or collecting actionable data to inform marketing strategy, R&D and business decisions. But for most, it’s still about building brand recognition, engaging new and loyal customers, and igniting social media and PR buzz."

Trecho retirado de "The Pop-Up Has Grown Up"

"o destino é este constante subir, crescer e, depois, ser suplantado por outros"

"Zara fue pionera en el concepto de moda rápida en la década de 1980. Fue la primera en desarrollar un método de reacción rápida a las tendencias cambiantes, utilizando cadenas de suministro ágiles basadas en la producción de abastecimiento cerca de la sede para acelerar sus "plazos de entrega" que desde el comienzo del proceso de diseño hasta llegar a las tiendas tardaba semanas.
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Pero los nuevos competidores crecen rápidamente, sin presión por la propiedad de las tiendas físicas, acercan la producción a la distribución y a la constante renovación de la mercancía.
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Boohoo.com, fundada en la ciudad británica de Manchester en 2006, opera en un modelo de "prueba y repetición" por el cual produce pequeños lotes y aumenta la producción de los que mejor se venden. Más de la mitad de sus productos se fabrican en Gran Bretaña.
.
La compañía, cuyas ventas se duplicaron el año pasado, dijo que tenía plazos de entrega tan cortos como dos semanas. Missguided, que también tiene su sede en Manchester, ha dicho que sus plazos de entrega pueden ser de tan solo una semana."

Esta é a beleza da história da evolução da vida na Terra. Quando os governos não protegem os incumbentes, o destino é este constante subir, crescer e, depois, ser suplantado por outros:


Trecho retirado de "Así utiliza Zara la tecnología para mantenerse líder en la industria de la moda"

Pobres gigantes... não vão ter qualquer hipótese

“The power of the unscale dynamic can be seen as Warby Parker developed its business model by renting scale instead of building and owning it and, in a flash, competed against Luxottica for a slice of the entrenched company’s global market. The company can rent computing power on cloud services like AWS and Microsoft Azure, rent manufacturing from contract factories in Asia, rent access to consumers via the internet and social media, rent distribution from delivery companies like UPS and the US Postal Service. Warby today can succeed against an entrenched player with fewer than eight hundred employees. The company as I write this is worth well north of $1 billion and has become a fixture in the market for hip eyeglasses.
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Warby is also part of a trend that is changing consumers’ relationships with brands. Brands were created to convey information about products at a time when it was hard for consumers to get information. But our hypernetworked and data-engorged era is killing the very reason for mass-market branding. We can find out everything about some gadget or shirt or hockey stick from a maker we never heard of. We can read reviews, Google the company, ask about it on social networks. As we get better information about small-scale products, people feel safe seeking out the unique, the undiscovered, the unbrands—giving a company like Warby an opening against a Luxottica.
...
We used to want the brands everybody else had. But now we’re moving toward mass individualism, wanting stuff “nobody else has. This leaves big brands vulnerable to hordes of quirky little unbrands.
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All the dynamics of mass-market consumerism reinforced one another. For instance, big producers could claim more shelf space at big outlets, making it difficult for niche products to reach consumers. And economies of scale ruled. The bigger the retailer, the harder it could bargain for lower prices and the more efficiently it could operate. Walmart especially gained an advantage in this way. The bigger the consumer product maker, the more it could spend on advertising while gaining efficiencies from mass production and massive distribution. Here, P&G took the lead ahead of other manufacturers.
But when you think about it, the mass-market consumer companies made each of us conform to the experience that was best for them, not us.
...
On top of that, the products we wind up with probably don’t conform to our specific taste. We’re often buying a compromise product—Budweiser beer, Levi’s jeans—designed to appeal to as many people as possible. The experience most of us really want is to easily find exactly the product we’re looking for, no matter where we are at the moment, and “have it delivered into our hands within a couple of hours. That’s an unscaled consumer experience.”

Pobres gigantes... não vão ter qualquer hipótese... a menos que os políticos, com medo das alterações a nível da sociedade entrem em campo e reforcem o apoio que já dão aos incumbentes.

Excerto de: Taneja, Hemant,Maney, Kevin. “Unscaled”.

As quatro estratégias-base para o retalho (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

“2. Lead on Experiential: Offer Enhanced Customer ExperienceRetailers in the Experiential quadrant offer a physical customer experience that provides more pleasure, more excitement, and more fun than other retailers can provide.
...
Here, the customer journey is more experiential, and is seen as a lifestyle choice, not a chore. This is a high-touch, social experience.
...
excitement and discovery in-store.
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Other retailers augment the customer experience in-store by becoming community centers and hosting events such as book readings, celebrity talks, and community get-togethers. Lifestyle brands often offer aerobic classes, rock climbing walls, and basketball courts. Pop-up stores within stores offer excitement, “newness,” and innovation.
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3. Lead on Low Price: Offer Operational Excellence, Lowest-Cost EfficienciesRetailers in the Low Price quadrant provide reliable products or services at the lowest prices, and therefore offer customers the best savings. Retailers who can consistently offer the lowest prices have developed operating models that can efficiently manage inventory, keep overhead costs down, eliminate unnecessary intermediary steps, and reduce transaction costs at every step.
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are companies that look for creative ways to minimize overhead costs and to eliminate unnecessary transaction costs. They also offer reliability and efficiency, excellent customer service, and strong customer-focused policies for returns. These retailers build their entire business models around these goals.
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4. Lead on Frictionless: Offer Comprehensive Customer Understanding and Total ConvenienceRetailers in the Frictionless quadrant prioritize providing a frictionless customer experience that eliminates all pain points and offers the customer the easiest and most convenient way to shop. The key deliverable here is a simple, seamless integration of the shopping experience across all touchpoints. This requires the collection, capture, and analysis of all available customer data. Constantly analyzing the data allows for customization and personalization.
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In order to succeed here, retailers must identify the current pain points in the shopping experience.”

E para terminar esta introdução:

“A company’s choice in strategy will depend upon that retailers’ inherent strengths and the culture of the organization, and ultimately will set priorities for future allocation of resources. Customers are attracted to different retailers depending upon their own needs, so the choice of strategy will inevitably attract specific customer segments—and, by extension, inevitably turn away others.”

Excerto de: Barbara E. Kahn. “The Shopping Revolution”

A dispersão de desempenho intra-sectorial a explodir

Costumo usar esta figura para ilustrar a evolução que acredito ter acontecido desde meados do século XX até aos nossos dias.

O século XX valorizava a uniformização para tirar partido da vantagem da escala. Assim, basicamente havia uma estratégia única para o sucesso, crescer mais depressa que os outros e via escala e eficiência conquistar os clientes e aumentar a quota de mercado. Mongo, terra de tribos apaixonadas, permite a coexistência de cada vez mais estratégias. Recordar McArthur:

Esta narrativa pode ser traduzida numericamente a:

"Corporate strategy is increasingly challenging for today’s leaders. Business environments are becoming more and more varied, which requires companies to actively choose strategic approaches that match their own specific situations. External forces such as political pressures, social expectations and macroeconomic circumstances are having greater impacts, adding to the complexity of strategy. And the increasing pace of change means that strategic assumptions must be re-evaluated constantly.
At the same time, corporate strategy is also becoming more important. With aggregate growth trending downward globally and new competitors presenting a constant threat of disruption, companies can no longer count on merely extending and exploiting historical strategies over the long term. This means that strategy has become a more important source of differentiation between firms: Within a given industry, the average dispersion of performance has doubled since the 1980s."

Trecho e imagens retirados de "The Board’s Role in Strategy in a Changing Environment"

As quatro estratégias-base para o retalho (parte II)

Parte I.

"“1. Lead on Brand: Offer Branded Product SuperiorityRetailers in the Product Brand quadrant offer branded products that provide more differentiation, more value, more pleasure, and ultimately more confidence to a particular customer segment, as compared to other products on the market. Here I am specifically referring to the value that comes from branded product. It is the product’s brand equity that brings the customer into the store.
There are several ways retailers can leverage the value offered through products that have strong brand equity. First, there are multibrand retailers who carry multiple lines of strong branded products that “pull” the customer into the store.
...
Other retailers in this quadrant will include high-quality brands that are sold directly to the end user. These are known as vertical brands and the product brand name is the same as the retailer’s brand name. Examples include luxury brands like Louis Vuitton or Hermès, specialty retailers such as Lululemon or Zara, or the newer digitally native vertical brands such as Warby Parker or Glossier.
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In all of these cases, these brands have developed deep emotional connections with consumers and a strong narrative; their customers frequently become brand advocates. In the luxury markets, these brands have heritage, exclusivity, and prestige. For the nonluxury brands, they have strong identity and values that resonate with their devotees.
...
Retailers in this quadrant also excel in design and style. ... Finally, leaders in this quadrant may also compete on state-of-the art technology. All in all, the leaders here succeed in developing an innovative culture where new ideas are embraced and commercialized quickly.”

Excerto de: Barbara E. Kahn. “The Shopping Revolution”

"formulate clear problem statements" (parte VI)

Parte I, parte II, parte III e parte IV.

Em "The Most Underrated Skill in Management" propõe-se o uso do A3 como forma de sistematizar o desenvolvimento de uma acção de melhoria:

"To track problem-solving projects, we have modified the A3, a famous form developed by Toyota, to better enable its use for tracking problem- solving in settings other than manufacturing. The A3 form divides the structured problem-solving process into four main steps, represented by the big quadrants, and each big step has smaller subphases, captured by the portions below the dotted lines.

...
Though the form may often have supporting documentation, restricting the project summary to a single page forces the user to be very clear in his or her thinking. The A3 divides the structured problem-solving process into four main steps, represented by the big quadrants, and each big step has smaller subphases, captured by the portions below the dotted lines. The first step (represented by the box at the upper left) is to formulate a clear problem statement. [Moi ici: 1.1 Qual é o problema que temos de resolver] In the Background section (in the bottom part of the Problem Statement box), you should provide enough information to clearly link the problem statement to the organization’s larger mission and objectives. [Moi ici: 1.2 Porque temos de trabalhar neste projecto? Qual o contexto. Qual a importância deste projecto. Que objectivo queremos atingir?] The Background section gives you the opportunity to articulate the why for your problem-solving effort."

2.1 - Como é que que funciona o processo actual? Qual o fluxograma? Que resultados temos? Que segmentação é possível fazer? Pareto(s)? Histograma(s)?

2.1 - Que suspeitas? Que hipóteses de causas mais prováveis? Que análises/testes devem ser feitos para despistar hipóteses irrelevantes? Espinha-de-peixe? Diagramas de correlação? 5 Porquês

"asking the “5 whys,” meaning that for each observed problem, the investigator should ask “why” five times in the hope that five levels of inquiry will reveal a problem’s true cause. Later, Kaoru Ishikawa developed the “fishbone” diagram to provide a visual representation of the multiple chains of inquiry that might be required to dig into the fundamental cause of a problem.
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The purpose of all root-cause approaches is to help the user understand how the observed problem is rooted in the existing design of the work system. Unfortunately, this type of systems thinking does not come naturally. When we see a problem (again, thanks to pattern matching) we have a strong tendency to attribute it to an easily identifiable, proximate cause. This might be the person closest to the problem or the most obvious technical cause, such as a broken bracket. Our brains are far less likely to see that there is an underlying system that generated that poorly trained individual or the broken bracket. Solving the immediate problem will do nothing to prevent future manifestations unless we address the system-level cause.
A good root-cause analysis should build on your investigation to show how the work system you are analyzing generates the problem you are studying as a part of normal operations."

3.1 - Que acções vão ser implementadas? Que processo futuro vai ser implementado?

"to propose an updated system to address the problem. Often the necessary changes will be simple. In the Target Design section, you should map out the structure of an updated work system that will function more effectively. ... The needed changes will rarely be an entirely new program or initiative. Instead, they should be specific, targeted modifications emerging from the root-cause analysis. Don’t try to solve everything at once; propose the minimum set of changes that will help you make rapid progress toward your goal.

3.2 - Que resultados pretendemos atingir?

"First, create an improvement goal — a prediction about how much improvement your proposed changes will generate. A good goal statement builds directly from the problem statement by predicting both how much of the gap you are going to close and how long it will take you to do it. If your problem is “24% of our service interactions do not generate a positive response from our customers, greatly exceeding our target of 5% or less,” then an improvement goal might be “reduce the number of negative service interactions by 50% in 60 days.” Clear goals are highly motivating, and articulating a prediction facilitates effective learning.
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Finally, set the leadership guidelines. Guidelines are the “guardrails” for executing the project; they represent boundaries or constraints that cannot be violated. For example, the leadership guidelines for a project focused on cost reduction might specify that the project should identify an innovation that reduces cost without making trade-offs in quality."

4.1 - Qual o plano de implementação?

"lay out a plan for implementing your proposed design. Be sure that the plan is broken into a set of clear and distinct activities (for example, have the invoice form reprinted with the general ledger code or hold a daily meeting to review quality issues) and that each activity has both an owner and a delivery date.
Now execute your plan and meet your target. But, even as you start executing, you are not done engaging in conscious learning."

4.2 - Resultados atingidos? Projecto eficaz? O que se aprendeu? Qual o próximo desafio?

As quatro estratégias-base para o retalho

“Most classic frameworks of retail strategy are missing a critical dimension: the customer perspective. It is a significant and startling omission.
After all, when customers go shopping, they want to buy something they value (product benefits) from someone they trust (customer experience). Whether customers buy these products offline or online is a function of where they are, who they are with, and how much time they have.
A related insight that many retail strategies seemingly forget is that today, more than ever, customers have lots of choices and they gravitate to the retailers who offer them the best value on the dimensions they care about. In other words, retailers have to provide some kind of superior competitive advantage beyond what is being offered by the competition. This superior value can be delivered either by providing more pleasure and benefits for their customers or by removing pain and inconvenience from the retail experience.”
...

...
“The “Retail Proposition,” the horizontal axis of this 2 × 2 matrix, represents the first principle: Customers want to “buy something they want (product benefits) from someone they trust (customer experience). “Superior Competitive Advantage,” the vertical axis, represents the second principle: In order to win customers, retailers must offer products and experiences that are better than the competition’s.
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This matrix spells out four basic strategies. The first two strategies, illustrated on the top row, differentiate themselves by offering more pleasure and more benefits; the second two strategies, illustrated on the bottom row, differentiate by eliminating pain points.”

Excerto de: Barbara E. Kahn. “The Shopping Revolution”. iBooks.

Matéria-prima para ...

Ontem estive numa empresa de calçado que recentemente adquiriu uma máquina para classificar e preparar pele e outra para a cortar.

A empresa agora anda a ver como pode avaliar o antes versus o depois para ver qual o retorno efectivo das máquinas. O que me meteu impressão foi a postura tão arcaica do vendedor da máquina: venderam a máquina, instalaram-na, deram umas horitas de formação e adieu.

Se eu fosse vendedor da máquina era o primeiro interessado em fazer o que a SKF faz tão bem: calcular o Total Cost of Ownership:

Matéria-prima para justificar um preço superior, por causa da redução do custo total na vida do comprador.

Matéria-prima para ajudar o próximo cliente a decidir com mais segurança:

Mongo é sintonizar e responder rapidamente (Parte II)

Parte I.

“One of the keys to both Amazon’s success now and Walmart’s success in disrupting retail in the mid-nineties is a fierce understanding of what customers want. Winning retailers have to be completely customer-centric. This means they need to be mindful not only of what products customers want, but also of the importance of convenience—of removing the pain of shopping.” (1)

Saber claramente quem é o cliente-alvo e ter uma oferta desenhada para ele. Parece simples:

"Five Below sells items for $5 and under. Adults may be unfamiliar with the brand but the youth-focused discount chain has emerged as one of the brightest stars in the retail sector over the past 12 months.
...
Unlike traditional discounters Dollar General or Dollar Tree, which sell cheap staples such as bread, soda and cleaning products to budget conscious households, Five Below chases pocket-money. It peddles $3 slime and $5 giant unicorn pool floaties to teens and pre-teens. This has turned out to be something of a retail sweet spot. A bet on fidget spinners helped Five Below deliver a 28 per cent rise in sales during its most recent fiscal year. Same-store sales were up 6.5 per cent — a feat few were able to match in the bombed out US retail sector.
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Five Below’s merchandise mix, one-third of which are in-house exclusives, helps protect its sales from Amazon." (2)

O complicado é o sacrificio de ter de considerar a blasfémia de chamar a uma parte do mercado não-clientes. Pois, o teste do algodão na estratégia ... todos querem ser simultaneamente ricos e com saúde.

(1) Excerto de: Barbara E. Kahn. “The Shopping Revolution”
(2) Trecho retirado de "Five Below/US retail: slime of the times"

"formulate clear problem statements" (parte V)

Parte I, parte II, parte III e parte IV.

"3. Lack of a Clear GapA third common mistake is failing to articulate a clear gap. These problem statements sound like “We need to improve our brand” or “Sales have to go up.” The lack of a clear gap means that people are not engaging in clear mental contrasting and creates two related problems. First, people don’t know when they have achieved the goal, making it difficult for them to feel good about their efforts. Second, when people address poorly formulated problems, they tend to do so with large, one-size-fits-all solutions that rarely produce the desired results.
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4. The Problem Is Too BigMany problem statements are too big. Broadly scoped problem formulations lead to large, costly, and slow initiatives; problem statements focused on an acute and specific manifestation lead to quick results, increasing both learning and confidence."

Como nascem as decisões de melhoria nas empresas? Que ferramentas são usadas para clarificar os problemas e que ferramentas são usadas para focar o âmbito dos problemas?

Quantas empresas usam gráficos e vez de tabelas?
Quantas usam cartas de controlo, diagramas de Pareto e histogramas?

Mongo é sintonizar e responder rapidamente

O século XX foi o século da concentração e da escala, assim que Mongo arrasa e fecha com os dinossauros logo aparecem as pequenas e ágeis criaturas que tornam, o que parecia ser um cemitério, num campo de experimentação e diversidade

"It looks like the bankruptcy of RadioShack has actually been good for independently-owned stores, who are now able to open in new locations partly by focusing on the DIY/maker movement (or young robotics enthusiasts). One store owner admits that on some supplies they’re actually getting cheaper prices than they got from RadioShack, while another points out that RadioShack’s bankruptcy has finally removed restrictions on where they could be located. (“The corporate store had all of the big towns… Now they’ve encouraged the ma and pop stores to take over in those areas.”)
...
These locally-owned RadioShack stores now actually hope to compete with Amazon, which has sucked up 90% of the growth in all consumer electronics sales, by offering personal (and in-person) customer service on electronics. “The world will always need somebody that will help them with a question…” Vern says philosophically. “I don’t think anybody will ever get rich off it again — I think those days are gone. But I think there will always be a spot for someone who can solder a wire or just answer a question, put a battery in a cordless phone for somebody who’s elderly, a battery for a key fob in a car…”" (1)

"In the last three years, RadioShack has filed for bankruptcy twice and closed nearly all of its corporate stores. But in the wake of the former retail giant’s death, independently owned franchise versions of the store have reinvented the brand and are actually doing pretty well—they’re even expanding.
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Rather than focusing on landline phones and remote-control toys that lined the shelves of RadioShack’s past, many of the independently-owned stores have shifted focus to offer supplies for makers and DIY enthusiasts. [Moi ici: Lojas que têm de obedecer a um centro que supostamente cria valor comprando bem, comprando barato por causa do volume, não conseguem influenciar e mostrar o quanto o mercado está a mudar. Loja dependente do centro é um instrumento para despachar, vomitar mercadoria. Loja independente está centrada na procura e cria valor quando vai ao encontro dessa procura, responde e muda muito mais rapidamente] As maker and hacker culture has expanded, along with the right-to-repair movement, more average consumers are interested in buying esoteric parts like tiny screws and solder. As our editor-in-chief noted back in 2014, RadioShack can actually compete with online retailers like Amazon on this front because of the immediacy (you don’t want to wait days to get that final part you need to finish your project) and the collaborative nature of maker culture. [Moi ici: E imagino a quantidade de eventos que podem ser animados para criar/reforçar o espírito de comunidade com estes geeks] “Do-it-yourself — that’s a big part of what Radio Shack is now,” Thad Teel, the owner of a Radio Shack in Claremore, Ohio that opened in April, told the Claremore Daily Progress. “Someone who tinkers in building or repairing anything electronic will find us an invaluable resource for parts and tools.”" (2)

BTW, muitas vezes acho que os liberais são os maiores inimigos do liberalismo porque falam de querer amanhã o que só poderá ser obtido ao fim de um processo. Imagino o que aconteceria ao fim de pouco tempo se acabasse a escola pública como a conhecemos, independente da procura e dependente de um centro mais preocupado em vómito, política e custo.

Fonte 1 - Can Locally-Owned Stores Save RadioShack?
Fonte 2 - The DIY Movement Is Bringing RadioShack Back From the Dead

"formulate clear problem statements" (parte IV)

Parte I, parte II e parte III.

"1. Failing to Formulate the ProblemThe most common mistake is skipping problem formulation altogether. People often assume that they all already agree on the problem and should just get busy solving it. Unfortunately, such clarity and commonality rarely exist.
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2. Problem Statement as Diagnosis or SolutionAnother frequent mistake is formulating a problem statement that presupposes either the diagnosis or the solution. A problem statement that presumes the diagnosis will often sound like “The problem is we lack the right IT capabilities,” and one that presumes a solution will sound like “The problem is that we haven’t spent the money to upgrade our IT system.”
...
Allowing diagnoses or proposed solutions to creep into problem statements means that you have skipped one or more steps in the logical chain and therefore missed an opportunity to engage in conscious cognitive processing."

Este ponto 2 fez-me lembrar este tweet:

só eu é que acho estranho, gato empreiteiro escondido com o rabo de fora, usarem as filas no aeroporto geradas pela falta de pessoal para justificar a necessidade de um novo aeroporto em Lesboa?

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) June 1, 2018

Contexto - calçado

Quando a ISO 9001 fala de contexto, de questões externas relevantes para o futuro da empresa, é de coisas como esta, por exemplo, "Consumers Want to Eat Beef, Not Wear It, Sending Leather Prices Plummeting".

Não é a APICCAPS que quer fazer dos EUA o alvo para as exportações de calçado dos próximos anos? Não é o calçado de couro a especialidade do calçado português?

Até que ponto esta tendência tem peso? Até que ponto esta tendência se pode reforçar no futuro?

"Today, shoppers have a more vegan sensibility about what goes on their feet, demanding shoes with non-animal elements like canvas, microfiber and plastic. Making the choice easier are advances in the quality of fake leather, which is now so good most buyers can’t distinguish it from the real thing.
...
That’s bad news for the leather industry because footwear makers are by far the biggest buyers, accounting for 55 percent of demand.
...
Younger consumers, in particular, prefer more casual footwear to dress shoes, and they are gravitating to non-leather products from companies with a compelling feel-good story about how they’re made,"

"formulate clear problem statements" (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

"Is your problem important? The first rule of structured problem- solving is to focus its considerable power on issues that really matter.
...
Mind the gap. Decades of research suggest that people work harder and are more focused when they face clear, easy-to-understand goals. More recently, psychologists have shown that mentally comparing a desired state with the current one, a process known as mental contrasting, is more likely to lead people to change than focusing only on the future or on current challenges. Recent work also suggests that people draw considerable motivation from the feeling of progress, the sense that their efforts are moving them toward the goal in question. A good problem statement accordingly contains a clear articulation of the gap that you are trying to close.
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Quantify even if you can’t measure. Being able to measure the gap between the current state and your target precisely will support an effective project.
...
Remain as neutral as possible. A good problem formulation presupposes as little as practically possible concerning why the problem exists or what might be the appropriate solution. That said, few problem statements are perfectly neutral.
...
Is your scope down? Finally, a good problem statement is “scoped down” to a specific manifestation of the larger issue that you care about. Our brains like to match new patterns, but we can only do so effectively when there is a short time delay between taking an action and experiencing the outcome. Well-structured problem-solving capitalizes on the natural desire for rapid feedback by breaking big problems into little ones that can be tackled quickly. You will learn more and make faster progress if you do 12 one-month projects instead of one 12-month project."

"Unscaling will leave few industries or activities untouched"

“Healthcare is on its way to becoming more preemptive instead of, as it is today, reactive. Newborns will routinely have their genome sequenced, and that data will help predict diseases. IoT devices will be able to monitor your vital signs and activity, spotting problems at a very early stage. You’ll be able to get an initial diagnosis from an AI software “doctor” app via your phone or some other device, and the AI will guide you to a specialist if needed. Healthcare will be flipped on its head, shifting from treating health problems after they arise to spotting and fixing them before they develop. That should cost a fraction of what healthcare costs today, solving one of America’s toughest financial squeezes.
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As entrepreneurs remake the energy sector, more homes and buildings will generate their own power using cheap and superefficient solar panels on roofs and high-powered batteries in basements or garages. The batteries, like those now being manufactured by Tesla, will store power generated when the sun shines for use when it doesn’t. “Each of these buildings will be connected to a two-way power line that can allow anyone to sell excess energy or buy needed energy in an eBay-style marketplace. If you do own a car, it’s likely to be electric, and your home solar panels and batteries can charge it.
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Trends suggest that you will get more of your food from small local farms or urban farms built inside old warehouses and shopping malls. The food industry spent the twentieth century scaling up agriculture, making farms bigger and more corporate, tended by enormous pieces of machinery with very few actual farmers. In the coming decades technology will help small, local farms operate at a profit, while breakthroughs in producing test-tube meat will vastly reduce the acreage needed to graze cows and raise chickens.
The technology of 3D printing is beginning to unscale and reimagine manufacturing. Within a decade, if you order a new pair of shoes or a chair, it might not come from a far-off mass-production factory; instead, many companies are going to custom produce items in small batches as they’re ordered, and the factories will operate akin to AWS—offering companies as much or as little manufacturing as they need.
Unscaling will leave few industries or activities untouched.”

Excerto de: Taneja, Hemant,Maney, Kevin. “Unscaled”.