"The erosion of barriers to forming and pursuing a business venture [Moi ici: A democratização da produção levará a um mundo muito diferente daquele que o século XX formatou] will lead to increasing fragmentation in certain parts of the economy.Trechos retirados de "The hero’s journey through the landscape of the future" do Deloitte Center for the Edge" de 2014.
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For individuals and small entities, the barriers to forming and pursuing a business venture are rapidly being dismantled. As barriers fall, many small yet viable players will emerge, with increasing influence on the economy, via three primary pathways:
- Freelancers, empowered by online staffing platforms, will begin as individual contractors, but will quickly transition to forming flexible teams—colloquially called “hives”—comprised of other freelancers with complementary skill sets. Gradually, these hives will move from just accepting work from other businesses to collectively creating their own products and services, and ultimately forming their own small companies.
...
- Hobbyists will transition from “moonlighting”— working full-time for someone else while pursuing their passion projects during off-hours—to being fully dedicated business owners.
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- “Star” performers within big companies— confident of their value and frustrated by a lack of autonomy—will increasingly choose to leave employers in favor of building businesses that use their full range of talents.
Fragmentation (within a domain) is defined by the following characteristics:
- Each player within the domain has a small, addressable market and is focused on a specific niche
- Collectively, players address a diverse spectrum of customer and market needs
- Both players and niches are proliferating within the domain
- No single player has enough market share to influence the direction of the domain long term
- A relatively modest level of investment is sufficient to enter and sustain position
- “Diseconomies of scale” are in play—it is more challenging for large players to stay in business"
"I asked travel veterans for predictions on what the future of travel will be.
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Most foresee a lasting decline in business travel, but think leisure travel will bounce back robustly. That means airlines and hotels will have to change their business plans, being unable to rely as much on rich revenue from corporate travelers. Expect higher ticket prices and room rates for vacationers to cover the costs with fewer high-dollar customers to subsidize bargain-seekers. [Moi ici: Vantagem para as companhias aéreas focadas no low-cost e nos turistas]
“The airline industry is going to have to examine its business plan,” [Moi ici: Excepto as companhias que vivem penduradas nos impostos cobrados aos saxões] says Robert Crandall, former chief executive of American Airlines. “You are never going to see the volume of business travel that you’ve seen in the past.” [Moi ici: Se a UE não nos proteger teremos de torrar uns 4 mil milhões de euros a alimentar o monstro nos próxios dois anos]
He estimates one-third to one-half of business travel will go away. More meetings will take
place electronically. Trips once thought necessary will be seen as superfluous. “Everybody who depends on business travel is going to have to rethink their game plan,” Mr. Crandall says.
The pandemic has forced widespread, rapid adoption of videoconferencing technology. The technology is mature, easy to use and available on any device.
“Will it be as necessary to send road warriors out? I have serious doubts about that,” says David Tait, a founding architect of Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic Airways. “The business market is seriously endangered.”
"1.Which parts of the economy are fragmenting?With fragmentation, we see a proliferation of small players in a domain, each with a small addressable market within a specific niche. Collectively, these players address a diverse spectrum of client and market needs. Crucially, both the number of players and the number of niches are increasing within the domain. No one player has enough market share to influence the direction of the domain over the long term, and only a modest level of investment is required to enter the market and maintain a viable business. These players are marked by “diseconomies of scale”: The bigger they get, the more challenging it is to stay in the business. Where is this happening? We expect increased fragmentation in those areas of the economy that are focused on product innovation and commercialization. It should be especially prevalent in markets and industries where technological advances and public policy liberalization have reduced barriers to the means of production, commercialization, and learning.Analisemos o conteúdo em mais pormenor
2. Which parts of the economy are concentrating?Concentration refers to the emergence of large-scale players that are focused on a single business activity or function. Because of significant economies of scale and scope as well as the potential for network effects, certain business roles will tend to become concentrated: infrastructure providers, aggregation platforms, and agent businesses. Concentration will occur in areas of the economy focused on infrastructure and customer relationship businesses where scale and scope provide an advantage."
"Every WGA [whole government accounts] release is a reminder of how expensive they are, how the young are having to mortgage their futures to pay for benefits most will never enjoy, and how reform is vital. The latest update, for 2018-19, has some startling revelations. For the first time, the payroll cost of the 5.3 million public sector workers is the largest single government expense. At £256 billion it is bigger than the £230 billion social security bill for state pensions and welfare. Two fifths of that, £96 billion, is the cost of servicing the 5.3 million pensions....[Moi ici: Depois vem um trecho completamente alien para a cultura portuguesa] There is no pot of money to cover the cost; taxpayers will simply have to pick up the bill. What makes the schemes so expensive is that they tie pensions to salaries. [Moi ici: Em Portugal ainda é pior, todos os anos são dadas benesses a pensionistas e reformados que não descontaram para as ter]...An employer may pay 10 per cent of an employee’s salary towards their pension but, the WGA reveals, the promises to public sector workers are equivalent to 40 per cent of their wage. For a worker on £30,000, that’s an extra £9,000 a year. An unrecognised wage top-up for the public sector worker. All covered by future taxpayers."
"Algumas vezes é-me penoso visitar uma empresa. Um outsider consegue abstrair-se da espuma dos dias e, numa atitude racional, olhar para aquela azáfama e perceber que são como perús na antevéspera do Natal. E escrevo isto sem arrogância, até com algum melindre. Basta-me olhar para os produtos que fabricam, para o seu valor acrescentado, para a dependência das quantidades, quando o contexto é de encomendas mais pequenas e de salários mais altos."Hoje, ao olhar para a primeira página do Wall Street Journal sinto que estou a ler um texto dedicado a este blogue, "Grocers Bottle Their Own Milk And Shake Up Dairy Industry.
"Americans’ thirst for cheap milk—and grocers’ rush to provide it—are remaking the centuries-old dairy industry. [Moi ici: Recordar "Milk is the ultimate low-involvement category"] When supermarket shoppers reach for white gallon jugs these days, most of the time they grab a low-priced store brand. To expand those offerings, major grocery retailers, including Kroger Co., Walmart Inc. and Albertsons Cos., have built their own milk bottling plants.
Grocers’ move into the bottling business is threatening some of the biggest operators in the $40 billion U.S. milk industry, the purveyors of national brands.
Dean Foods Co., which until last year was the largest U.S. milk processor by sales, and Borden Dairy Co., another big producer, were sold this year after filing for bankruptcy in November and January. Executives of both had blamed some of their struggles on grocers’ focus on cheap milk, often used as a loss leader.
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Adding to the industry’s pressures, milk’s luster has been slowly fading for years in an increasingly crowded beverage market. Many consumers have switched to bottled water and juice, or dairy alternatives made from almonds or oats; breakfast cereal has fallen out of favor. At the farmer level, about 3,300 dairy-cow herds disappeared in 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, following low milk prices, tensions with export customers and processing plant closures across the
country. Wisconsin alone lost about 600 herds over the 12 months up to June 1, the cows typically either sold to another farmer or sent to slaughter.
Although overall dairy demand, factoring in products such as yogurt, butter and cheese, continues to grow, annual per capita U.S. milk consumption has dropped about 40% over four decades.
...
Bigger farms all the while, the dairy farms and milk cooperatives that supply milk to the processors were getting bigger and more professional. [Moi ici: Recordar a vacaria com mais de 33 mil vacas numa exploração] By 2017, the eight largest dairy cooperatives were marketing 54% of the country’s milk. To Walmart, buying milk directly from them, then processing and bottling the milk itself, started to look like a feasible cost-saving move. Walmart announced in March 2016 it would build a milk-processing plant of its own in Fort Wayne, Ind., to supply more than 600 Walmart and Sam’s Club stores in the eastern Midwest."
"As empresas de calçado devem manter e tirar o máximo partido da actividade que conseguem ter através do modelo de negócio actual. Paralelamente, devem criar uma empresa, ainda que virtual, dedicada a desenvolver o negócio do futuro. E para desenvolver o negócio do futuro essa empresa tem de se comportar como uma startup: sem clientes, sem negócios, apenas com hipóteses de produtos e de clientes."
"Most writers and bloggers take the music industry as a prime example for an industry that failed to innovate its core business model. But there are many other industries where failure to innovate its core business lead to their decline.Trechos retirados de "Karstadt: Death of a legend (business model)"
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[Moi ici: Uma reacção típica que aqui chamo de "defender o passado em vez de abraçar a mudança"] Instead of rejuvenating its business model or finding new business ideas the old business model is defended and by consolidating the industry even reinforced.
...
[Moi ici: O trecho que se segue é precioso e certeiro] The next lesson is that all activities at corporate level like selling non-core assets do not solve your problems of an ailing business model. The solution must be found on the business level not on a corporate level. If you cannot fix it, than sell or close it early. Success in business is not defined on corporate level but by its business model!...
The retail market is perfect example for Schumpeter’s creative destruction. While entrepreneurs with creative solutions gain in the markets old business models fail and disappear.
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[Moi ici: O trecho que se segue relata outra reacção típica. A crença de que mais eficiência vai salvar o actual modelo de negócio] When the market for department stores deteriorated, a typical behavior could be observed in saturated, stagnating or even declining markets. Instead of reinventing the business managers defended the traditional business model and optimized it. Their focus shifted towards process innovation particularly into more efficient purchasing."
"there’s a problem – actually, many problems. Efficiency is a diminishing returns proposition. The more efficient we become, the longer and harder we need to work to get the next increment of efficiency. Diminishing returns is a problem on its own, but it’s compounded by the fact that we live in a Big Shift world of mounting performance pressure – competition is intensifying, change is accelerating, and extreme disruptive events occur with increasing frequency.Acerca de Mongo, no mesmo artigo, algo que parece retirado aqui do blogue acerca da profusão de tribos e do bailado entre oferta e procura:
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We’re already starting to see some of that start to happen in the gig economy. Individual workers are discovering that there are others who share their passion and coming together so that they can work on projects as a group, rather than individuals.
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On the other side, institutions are going to begin to see that the real value of contract workers is the diversity of experience and expertise that they bring to the work. These contract workers can help the institution’s employees to learn faster by exposing them to different perspectives and approaches to addressing work. These institutions will begin to expand their focus beyond just cost savings and see gig workers as an opportunity to learn faster.
...
We’re going to begin to see impact groups forming and coming together into broader networks that will help them to learn even faster.
That’s where guilds come in.
...
As independent workers become more aware of the imperative for accelerating learning, they will tend to affiliate into guilds that will help to connect them with others who might become part of their impact group and, more broadly, with other impact groups that share their passion for increasing impact in a particular set of activities. These guilds can help to knit together larger and larger networks of impact groups, generating something that I call “creation spaces,” to help scale and accelerate learning."
"Beyond the gig economy, there’s another area that will see the re-emergence of guilds. That’s in product and service businesses that will increasingly fragment as customers demand more and more tailored products and services to serve their specific needs. The participants in these small, but very profitable, product and service businesses will see value in connecting with others in their particular domains so that they can all learn faster and create even more value with less resource. For example, think of a guild for craft chocolate companies that are serving very specific customer niches.
...
To address the opportunity to help participants to learn faster, these guilds need to find a way to move beyond fear of competition and foster the excitement that can come from addressing the exponentially expanding opportunities created by the Big Shift. Rather than embracing a scarcity mindset, these guilds need to cultivate an abundance mindset. They need to recognize that, the more people that come together, driven by a commitment to learn faster, the more opportunity there will be for value creation. It’s a very different heartset and mindset from the ones generated by the fear that is engulfing more and more of the world’s population.
The bottom line
The imperative to learn faster is going to motivate individuals to come together in very different ways. In at least one dimension, our future may represent a return to the past, when we see the re-emergence of guilds. Rather than isolated individuals driven by fear as they confront mounting performance pressures, we are likely to see people coming together, excited about the opportunity to learn faster and embrace exponentially expanding opportunity."
"Não seria melhor guardar os sete mil milhões de euros de fundos comunitários que estão destinados a este projeto da economia não transacionável - a maior parte dos quais voltará para os cofres da Holanda e da Alemanha, países que nos vão vender a tecnologia do hidrogénio e assim conseguem o retorno dos fundos que cederam – não seria melhor guardar esse dinheiro para ajudar os exportadores de frutos vermelhos de Trás-os-Montes, os exportadores de móveis de Paços de Ferreira, os produtores de tomate e hortaliças do Ribatejo e do Alentejo, os produtores de moldes da Marinha Grande, os produtores de vinhos do Dão e do Alentejo, todos os que trabalham na economia transacionável e fomentam as exportações?
Não seria melhor destinar esses sete mil milhões a atividades de exportação de bens transacionáveis, agora que o turismo praticamente desapareceu e será muito difícil recompor-se a curto prazo?
O plano do Governo é desviar esse dinheiro da economia transacionável para a economia protegida dos amigos das rendas garantidas.
Aos meus colegas jornalistas e analistas económicos e políticos deixo um desafio: procurem na lista dos nomes de empresários e empresas já posicionados para se candidatar ao mega projeto do hidrogénio em Portugal os nomes de empresários e grupos de empresas que ficaram a dever centenas e milhares de milhões de euros ao Novo Banco, CGD, BCP e outros grandes bancos nacionais. Não são poucos os que lá estão, à espera de nos sugar de novo os bolsos, desta vez através das faturas da eletricidade.
Daqui a poucos anos estaremos todos a abrir a boca de espanto com as notícias sobre indícios de corrupção no mega projeto do hidrogénio. Os suspeitos, alguns políticos atuais e empresários corruptores do regime, estarão novamente a recorrer aos dez maiores escritórios de advocacia em Portugal para se proteger. Um qualquer juiz de instrução estará a subscrever uma duríssima acusação do Ministério Público.
E os comentadores habituais, completamente desfocados, estarão a atacar o juiz de instrução por ser um radical, quando alguns políticos corruptos e os empresários corruptores já estarão ricos, provavelmente a gozar os milhões no estrangeiro.
É assim Portugal.
Podia não ser assim?
Podia. Se o Presidente da República e o líder da oposição impedissem de imediato este crime económico do hidrogénio alegadamente verde e obrigassem os promotores do projeto, o Governo, o ministro do Ambiente e o secretário de Estado da Energia a reduzi-lo à sua justa dimensão: a de um projeto piloto que só deveria crescer futuramente em função dos resultados obtidos noutros países mais ricos da Europa.
Infelizmente, Presidente, Governo e Oposição, estão todos muito mais preocupados com taticismos eleitorais do que com o futuro de Portugal."
"The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically raised the stakes for corporate transformations. Many companies will need to launch a transformation to remain competitive, yet the risks associated with failure are now higher. Unfortunately, transformation outcomes vary widely; ... Our research shows that companies must accomplish three goals to create superior value from a crisis transformation: deliver near-term improvements to profit margins, strengthen the core operating and business models, and rigorously manage the change.
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Margin improvement is measured as the average growth rate of the EBITDA margin over the three-year period.
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But not all change can be measured in terms of financial performance and stock price movement. That’s where the third and most critical aspect comes in: transformations require rigorous execution and change management.
...
Set a clear vision, and keep the communication simple and straightforward. Getting all employees to have the same understanding of the vision and objectives for the transformation is crucial, and companies can accomplish this through clear and vivid communication.
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Launch a formal, structured program. Because a large-scale transformation is complex and has multiple interdependencies, it can succeed only if it is structured as a formal program with well-defined work streams and initiatives."
Prof. Lero-Lero: "Eu tenho o vício de pensar em tudo". pic.twitter.com/i4fGPxsIMF— Telmo A Fernandes (@ordemespontanea) July 23, 2020
"We live in a world of radical uncertainty in which our understanding of the present is imperfect, our understanding of the future even more limited, and in which no one person or organisation can hold the range of information required to arrive at the ‘best explanation’. Narrative reasoning is the most powerful mechanism available for organising our imperfect knowledge. Understanding the complex world is a matter of constructing the best explanation – a narrative account – from a myriad of little details and the knowledge of context derived from personal experience and the experience of others.Sintomas de que nada de bom virá por aí. Preparem-se para mais uma vez terem de suster a respiração.
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There is no more salutary example of the need to ask ‘What is going on here?’, or of the wilful blindness which fails to look behind reported numbers. If it seems too good to be true, it generally is.
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Decision-making under radical uncertainty requires a multiplicity of skills, and rarely will all these skills be found in a single individual. Successful leaders have benefited from advisers who could assist in problem framing.
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Successful decision-making under uncertainty is a collaborative process. Having arrived at the best explanation, it is important to open that explanation to challenge and be ready to change the guiding narrative when new information emerges. The mistakes made by people who enjoyed the flattery of supportive sycophants"
"Each time I take the stage at a conference or sales summit, I can pretty much count on someone telling me how their business is different. They feel they are the only people who face pricing pressure. They often tell me that it is OK to discount a deal if it gets them the sale....Remember that if you discount without changing the deliverable, then every amount you offer as a discount would have been profit. If you run a 30% profit margin, and you discount by 10%, then you are discounting 33% of your profit...."The biggest fear of procurement people is not overpaying. Rather, our biggest fear is purchasing something that does not deliver the desired results....No matter how much the client pays, it's not a good deal if they don't get results.Once you know that results matter most, then when faced with pricing pressure, counter with a discussion about results. If procurement is treating you like a commodity, it's your job to illustrate what makes you worth the additional investment....I see a common line of questioning that leads to pricing discussions. Professionals will often enter a competitive situation, and ask questions like, "How much are you currently paying?" Or they might ask, "What's your budget?" In both cases, these questions open a dialog that is centered on price."
"Políticos e banqueiros trabalham com o dinheiro dos outros, uns extraindo os impostos da sociedade, outros aplicando os depósitos dos clientes. Se os primeiros não conseguem formular políticas de crescimento económico e políticas sociais que sejam financiadas sem terem de recorrer ao endividamento e se os segundos não conseguem gerar margem financeira sustentada no tempo, haverá sempre o risco do abraço de cumplicidade entre a dívida pública e a dívida privada, uma circularidade que é uma ilusão de desesperados."
"Even in a historic downturn, Buffett’s instinct is worth keeping in mind. Many managers underestimate the power of pricing, and the unanimous advice from pricing experts in this troubled economy is to price with courage and creativity. In businesses where demand has plunged, slashing prices may be a terrible idea—and it may not be necessary at all....For the vast majority of businesses—those facing strapped customers and shrunken demand—the No. 1 imperative is to avoid cutting prices if at all possible, what experts in the field call “maintaining price integrity.” In the B2B world, “you get a lot of pressure back from your customers to reduce price, which can manifest itself as hesitancy to move forward with the purchase,” says Ron Kermisch, a Bain consultant who leads the firm’s global pricing practice. “Companies too quickly move to price as the lever, without really understanding what’s driving the customer hesitancy.”...If you cut prices 20%, you have to sell 25% more units just to maintain revenue. In a severe downturn, how likely is that? And if a competitor matches your price cut, the pain will be much worse. The economics of every business are different, but McKinsey research has found that in a typical S&P 1500 company, a 5% price cut would have to spark a 19% volume increase just to pay for itself, and that hardly ever happens. Even if holding prices steady reduces sales and profits, price cuts may reduce them even more.The long-term effects can be more harmful. Price cuts, even temporary ones, train customers to behave badly, always waiting for the next sale. Perhaps worse, they destroy brand equity."
"The American economy is in a double bind. On the one hand, Covid-19 has made it necessary to reduce American dependence on China’s economy, and Chinese manufactured imports in particular. The alarm over China’s stranglehold on America’s access to important pharmaceuticals and health-care goods like ventilators is only the leading edge of this concern.According to the Los Angeles Times, there are no fewer than 62 bills pending in Congress to alter one aspect or another of our economic relationship with China. Yet at the same time, if the U.S. isn’t prepared to deploy a reshoring strategy to restore itself as a manufacturing and industrial power, decoupling won’t do any good. In the 1960s, manufacturing made up 25% of U.S. gross domestic product. It’s barely 11% today. More than five million American manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000."
"The European Union Recovery Fund cannot be used as an excuse to perpetuate bloated political spending and create a transfer union where governments use taxpayers’ money to increase bureaucracy, because it would be the end of the European project.A union based on excess spending, debt and extractive policies would be destroyed in a few years. The strength of a unified group of countries comes from diversity and responsibility....If we want a united Europe we must listen more to the most dynamic countries and stop using the bureaucratic steamroller to turn all the member states into interventionist satellites.The European Union faces a deep crisis. It cannot become a depression by using important funds that should boost competitiveness and strengthen the recovery to finance massive political transfer plans that serve as a political tool to keep bloated administration and political budgets."
“Effects on travel and tourism, hospitality, entertainment, retail, aerospace and even the automotive industry [Moi ici: Turismo, aviação e automóvel. Nos primeiros 5 meses de 2019 o sector aeronáutico aumentava as exportações em 70%, o automóvel em 17% e o turismo batia recordes por cá]The ways in which consumers interact with each other as well as what and how they consume have been significantly affected by the pandemic. Consequently, the ensuing reset in different industries will vary fundamentally depending on the nature of the economic transaction involved. In those industries where consumers transact socially and in person, the first months and possibly years of the post-pandemic era will be much tougher than for those where the transaction can be at a greater physical distance or even virtual. In modern economies, a large amount of what we consume happens through social interaction: travel and vacations, bars and restaurants, sporting events and retail, cinemas and theatres, concerts and festivals, conventions and conferences, museums and libraries, education: they all correspond to social forms of consumption that represent a significant portion of total economic activity and employment (services represent about 80% of total jobs in the US, most of which are “social” by nature). [Moi ici: 80% nos Estados Unidos!!! Quanto será por cá?]...Industries that have social interaction at their core have been hit the hardest by the lockdowns. Among them are many sectors that add up to a very significant proportion of total economic activity and employment: travel and tourism, leisure, sport, events and entertainment. For months and possibly years, they will be forced to operate at reduced capacity, hit by the double whammy of fears about the virus restraining consumption and the imposition of regulations aimed at countering these fears by creating more physical space between consumers....In many of these industries, but particularly in hospitality and retail, small businesses will suffer disproportionately, having to walk a very fine line between surviving the closures imposed by the lockdowns (or sharply reduced business) and bankruptcy. Operating at reduced capacity with even tighter margins means that many will not survive. The fallout from their failure will have hard-felt ramifications both for national economies and local communities. Small businesses are the main engine of employment growth and account in most advanced economies for half of all private-sector jobs. If significant numbers of them go to the wall, if there are fewer shops, restaurants and bars in a particular neighbourhood, the whole community will be impacted as unemployment rises and demand dries up, setting in motion a vicious and downward spiral and affecting ever greater numbers of small businesses in a particular community."
“We are in a race to the holy grail of precision medicine—bringing the right treatments to the right patients at the right time. Progress is being made on so many fronts—life sciences companies are developing cell therapies in cancer, artificial pancreas device systems in diabetes, apps that help battle neurodegenerative diseases and optimize nutrition, and wearables that can track everything from heart disease to fertility. Technology companies are creating algorithms to select cancer treatments....We are at the intersection of biological and technological revolution, at a point where the digitization of health and medicine is becoming a reality at the same time that medical innovation is catching up with—and possibly even exceeding the speed of—growth in computational capacity....The convergence of these digital and biological revolutions means that the next breakthrough cure—or treatment that turns a fatal condition into a chronic disease—will come from computers and algorithms working in concert with patients, physicians, and scientists.”
"The question for most of us is: What if the work you do is:
- compliance-based
- standardized
- repetitive
- not based on innovative or flexible customer interaction…
If it is, it’s pretty likely that you’ll be replaced by a combination of robots, AI and outsourcing.If they can find someone or something cheaper than you, they’re going to work overtime to do so.The alternative is to be local, creative, energetic, optimistic, trusted, innovative and hard to replace."
Some say that the 20th century in economic terms started in October 1913 with the opening of the first Ford assembly line.
"On October 7, 1913, the production of the model that was to become the classic of the classics moved to Highland Park."
The Ford founder said that the customer could choose the color of the car as long as it was black, but more, it was not just any black, it had to be Japan Black, because it was the color that dried faster.
"it was the ability of japan black to dry quickly that made it a favorite of early mass-produced automobiles such as Henry Ford's Model T. The Ford company's reliance on japan black led Henry Ford to quip" Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black ".
While other colors were available for automotive finishes, early colored variants of automotive lacquers could take up to 14 days to cure, whereas japan black would cure in 48 hours or less. "
The twentieth century, in economic terms, was a time when demand was greater than supply.
And when demand is greater than supply, the boss is the one who produces. Who produces is who establishes what is produced, what is put on the market and with what specifications. In this type of competitive universe, the critical success factor is price. Therefore, everything is done to be efficient, to increase the production rate, to reduce unit costs.
· "economics of scale;
· large, physically and temporally concentrated production facilities;
· long production runs;
· mass markets;
· task specialization; and
· standardization. "
Customers agreed to exchange variety for uniformity because they were able to access goods at a lower price. Seth Godin uses admirable metaphor to portray this world. The world in which producers treat consumers like plankton, an indistinct and homogeneous mass, without individual wishes.
When the deal is price, when the deal is dictated by efficiency, when everything produced has a way out, then it is enough to look inside, it is enough to measure performance based on financial results. So I call the 20th century economic model Magnitogorsk or Levittown.
The city of Magnitogorsk in the USSR was rebuilt during Stalinism:
"In Magnitogorsk, there were two types of apartment, named 'A' and 'B'. They were the city’s sole concession to variety."
I read somewhere that the difference between type A and type B lay in the color of the lamps, white or orange. Do not think that the Magnitogorsk were a hallmark of the communist world. No, they were a consequence of an industrial model based on mass production and with little or no care with what users intended or valued. The United States also had its version, Levittown:
"In July 1947, on potato fields 20 miles from Manhattan, William Levitt pioneered the mass production of affordable homes. Variations in the 17,477 houses were minor; each had two bedrooms, a bath, living room and kitchen on a 750-square-foot By standardizing the units, Levitt eventually was able to put up more than two dozen a day, helping fill the enormous postwar demand. Over the years, innumerable changes to the homes have transformed the community. But even now, Levittown remains a kind of shorthand for the sameness of mass production that's starting to give way to mass customization. "
When the competitive landscape begins to ripple
As the twentieth century progressed, the imbalance between supply and demand was reduced until it passed to the other side: supply became bigger than demand.
When this happens, a real epistemological shock occurs. It is not enough to produce, power passes to those who buy, not to those who produce. And that changes everything. What is the use of being very efficient if the product does not leave the warehouse?
The more the imbalance accentuated, the more power passed to the buyer, the more the producer had to get off the pedestal and try to seduce the buyer.
And it is in this context of increasing competition, increasing variety, the growing power of choice for customers and consumers translates into a growing complexity and variety with a more uncertain, faster world, with many variants, with many more strategies.
I like to use the image of a landscape that ripples over time to illustrate what happens in the economic world as we abandon the 20th century paradigm:
While the twentieth century could be represented by a landscape with a single peak, and the further up the peak, the more return organizations had. And they were all looking for the same, to climb as high as possible and as quickly as possible to the top of the same peak. Whoever climbs faster will have a competitive advantage over the rest, given the virtuous mechanism of the effect of scale in a scenario governed by efficiency. The 21st century economy, on the other hand, is progressively wrinkling and generating more and more peaks. More and more companies, despite appearing to be operating in the same economic sector, do not compete with each other, as they specialize in serving different types of customers in different circumstances. One of the phrases I often repeat is that economics is a continuation of biology. And biology gives us great lessons that can be translated into economics. One of the stories I most like to tell is that of doctoral student Robert MacArthur who discovered that five different species of warblers could feed on the same tree without competing with each other, each species fed on a different area:
An example of what the Russian biologist G. Gause published in 1934 in the book “The struggle for existence”, where he reported the conclusions of a set of experiments, he carried out with paramecia and from which I quote the principle of exclusive competition:
"Two species cannot coexist indefinitely if they feed on the same type of scarce nutrient."
Making the parallelism for organizations; in a world bursting with variety, companies cannot be managed in the same way. Different "species" serve different types of customers. So, they need to be managed differently.
I use the label Mongo to describe this world of increasing variety where effectiveness is much more important than efficiency.
"IN MANY THINGS 90% is just fine; in an economy it is miserable, and China shows why. The country started to end its lockdown in February. Factories are busy and the streets are no longer empty. The result is the 90% economy. It is better than a severe lockdown, but it is far from normal. The missing bits include large chunks of everyday life....Discretionary consumer spending, on such things as restaurants, has fallen by 40% and hotel stays are a third of normal. People are weighed down by financial hardship and the fear of a second wave of covid-19. Bankruptcies are rising and unemployment, one broker has said, is three times the official level, at around 20%..If the post-lockdown rich world suffers its own brand of the 90% economy, life will be hard...Many businesses will emerge from lockdown short of money, with strained balance-sheets and facing weak demand....The longer the world has to endure a 90% economy, the less likely it is to snap back after the pandemic."
“Models should not be judged by the sophistication of the mathematics – in itself neither good nor bad – but by the insights which that model provides into a particular problem that we are trying to solve....Models are tools like those in the van of the professional plumber, which can be helpful in one context and irrelevant in others. As with the tools in the van, there may be several models which contribute to the solution of a specific problem. And there are times when there is no good model to explain what we see. But we still have to make decisions. So the test of a model is therefore whether it is useful in making the decisions which need to be made in government, business and finance, and in households, in a world of radical uncertainty.The pursuit of practical knowledge which gives useful advice to policy-makers begins from the question ‘What is going on here?’ The plumber looks first for the origin of the leak. A doctor conducts a consultation by observing symptoms and taking readings until he or she can begin to formulate a diagnosis and prescribe a treatment. An engineer or architect begins by scoping the project, and a dentist makes an examination and assessment before recommending a course of action. All these approaches are distinct from the search for abstract knowledge of ‘the world as it really is’ which characterises the work of physicists and philosophers. But the crucial contribution of economics to the world is defined by its role as practical knowledge, not as scientific theory.”
“In the post-COVID-19 era, apart from those few sectors in which companies will benefit on average from strong tailwinds (most notably tech, health and wellness), the journey will be challenging and sometimes treacherous. For some, like entertainment, travel or hospitality, a return to a pre-pandemic environment is unimaginable in the foreseeable future (and maybe never in some cases…). For others, namely manufacturing or food, it is more about finding ways to adjust to the shock and capitalize on some new trends (like digital) to thrive in the post-pandemic era. Size also makes a difference. The difficulties tend to be greater for small businesses that, on average, operate on smaller cash reserves and thinner profit margins than large companies. Moving forward, most of them will be dealing with cost–revenue ratios that put them at a disadvantage compared to bigger rivals. But being small can offer some advantages in today’s world where flexibility and celerity can make all the difference in terms of adaptation. Being nimble is easier for a small structure than for an industrial behemoth.”
“the lesson of experience is that there is no single approach to financial markets which makes money or explains ‘what is going on here’, no single narrative of ‘the financial world as it really is’. There is a multiplicity of valid approaches, and the appropriate tools, model-based or narrative, are specific to context and to the skills and judgement of the investor. We can indeed benefit from the insights of both Thales of Miletus and Harry Markowitz, and learn from both of the contradictory narratives of the world of finance propagated by Gene Fama and Bob Shiller. But we must also recognise the limits to the insights we derive from their small-world models....Radical uncertainty precludes optimising behaviour. In the world as it is, we cope rather than optimise.”
“The green economy spans a range of possibilities from greener energy to ecotourism to the circular economy. For example, shifting from the “take-make-dispose” approach to production and consumption to a model that is “restorative and regenerative by design” can preserve resources and minimize waste by using a product again when it reaches the end of its useful life, thus creating further value that can in turn generate economic benefits by contributing to innovation, job creation and, ultimately, growth. Companies and strategies that favour reparable products with longer lifespans (from phones and cars to fashion) that even offer free repairs (like Patagonia outdoor wear) and platforms for trading used products are all expanding fast.”
"O líder do setor do vestuário e confeção considera que o Estado português deve “investir em salvar o emprego” nesta indústria, que corre o risco de perder um saber-fazer que é difícil de recuperar....Há uma mais-valia que o vestuário português tem a nível mundial. Temos uma indústria excelente, amiga do ambiente, um ecossistema do melhor que há. Sem o lay-off simplificado, com os termos que tinha ou até melhorados para não penalizar tanto a empresa, corremos o risco de perder este ecossistema e o saber-fazer, que é difícil de criar novamente. O Estado tem de fazer um plano agressivo para evitar o colapso das empresas e de investir na manutenção dos postos de trabalho nos próximos meses, até ao final do ano. Não é em equipamento; é em salvar o emprego."
"when you get what you want but not what you need"
"César Araújo propõe que 60% dos artigos consumidos sejam fabricados na Europa...Tudo tem de partir da consciência dos nossos governantes em Bruxelas. Não vale a pena só injetar dinheiro. A Europa tem de fazer um Plano Marshall e dizer que 60% dos produtos consumidos têm de ser manufaturados na Europa."
"Vocacionada para a produção de vestuário para marcas da gama média-alta e luxo, a Calvelex exporta as cerca de 800 mil peças que fabrica anualmente para os quatro cantos do mundo, com enfoque especial na Europa e nos EUA....Quais vão ser os principais mercados da Calvelex em 2018?.Vão ser toda a Europa, que é o nosso mercado doméstico, os EUA, o Canadá, a Coreia do Sul e o Japão."
