"intra-industry differences are sometimes far more dramatic than those among sectors"

"Uma das coisas que aprendi em 2008 foi a da variabilidade da distribuição de produtividades. Existem mais variabilidade da produtividade entre as empresas de um mesmo sector de actividade económica do que entre sectores de actividade económica. Percebem as implicações disto? No mesmo país, com as mesmas leis, com o mesmo povo, dentro de um mesmo sector, a variabilidade da produtividade é enorme. E isto quer dizer que o factor mais importante para a produtividade é o ADN que está numa empresa." (fonte)

Uma mensagem clássica deste blogue, a primeira vez que usei o marcador "distribuição de produtividades" foi em Maio de 2010.

Ontem, li um texto de 2006, "A long-term look at ROIC", onde aparece escarrapachada esta verdade desconhecida por muitos:

"historical ROICs can vary widely by industry. In the United States, the pharmaceutical and consumer packaged-goods industries, among others, have sustainable barriers, such as patents and brands, that reduce competitive pressure and contribute to consistently high ROICs. Conversely, capital-intensive sectors (such as basic materials) and highly competitive sectors (including retailing) tend to generate low ROICs.

...

we found that the median or mean returns of general, broadly defined industry groups can be downright misleading. Executives who look at the mean or median ROIC of an industry without understanding the distribution of ROIC performance within it may not have sufficient information to assess a company or to project its ROIC accurately.

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Indeed, intra-industry differences are sometimes far more dramatic than those among sectors (Exhibit 3). Take the software and services industry. Its median ROIC from 1963 to 2004 was 18 percent, but the spread between the top and bottom quartile of companies averaged 31 percent. In fact, the industry’s performance was so uneven as to render this metric meaningless. These wide variations suggest that the industry comprises many distinct subgroups that have very different structures and are subject to very different competitive forces."