Lidar com os Golias!

"Battling Goliath’s on their terms, in their arena, against their strengths, is a mistake many businesses make. Replicating a business model is perfectly fine (many of the most successful companies in history have done it) but that doesn’t mean battling existing companies where they are strongest. 

Create new arenas, formulate new rules and make your strengths the ones that matter. 

If you are to compete in this ever-changing digital world, don’t be afraid to be bold. Believe, change the status quo, focus, be agile and finally, be precise. 

No matter how much money they have behind them, no business is invincible. 

Take heart David’s of the world, the sling is yours."

O trecho foi retirado de "David vs. Goliath: How Small Businesses Can Compete with Giants" e parece, todo ele, baseado num postal de 2009, "Golias estava invicto até ter encontrado o pequeno David (parte II)" ou noutro de 2012, "Adeptos e promotores da concorrência imperfeita!!!"

Promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas pornográficas - sempre

Há anos que escrevo aqui sobre o truque alemão e a doença anglo-saxónica. Interessante apanhar isto em "The Visionary Realism of German Economics: From the Thirty Years' War to the Cold War". 

"The point of divergence between neoclassical economics and evolutionary economics can be traced back to pre- 19th Century philosophy. The Plato- Cusanus- Bruno- Leibniz- Wolff tradition has a dynamic world view emphasizing new knowledge and production— cast in the mode of ‘werden’, or becoming. The modern Anglo- American tradition is cast around the concept of ‘sein’— being. It emphasises a mechanical division of labour, and at its core we find the process of barter and exchange rather than production.[Moi ici: Interessante esta hipótese para a génese da diferença]

…

In the Plato- to- Wolff tradition, Man is different from animals because of his ability to think rationally according to principles, e.g. abstraction. Economics in this tradition becomes an optimistic science, because of Man’s seemingly unlimited capacity to invent. Economics in the English barter- centered tradition becomes a dismal science because, following up in Adam Smith’s metaphor, it is not clear why and how more dog bones, not to speak of canned dog food, would suddenly appear among a society of bartering dogs. The failure of neo-classical economics to incorporate technical change is deeply rooted in this tradition of seeing Man essentially as a bartering animal, and not as a creative and inventing one. Smith’s crucial insight on the ‘division of labour’, which in the end could not be attributable to barter alone, has not been incorporated into present mainstream economics. Mainstream economics focuses on ‘Man the Consumer’, whereas in the Wolff tradition focus is on ‘Man the Producer’.[Moi ici: Percebo agora o ponto de vista de Vera Gouveia Barros]

.

Another sign of Smith’s failure to see the importance of new ideas is his view that the rate of profit will have to fall. It is not well known that this idea, which was later to gain much prominence with Marx, actually originates with Adam Smith. In the absence of new ideas and inventions, the rate of profit will fall for three reasons, and it is not clear which of the three, or all, Smith refers to52. First, the rate of profit will fall because of a tendency towards a more perfect competition. Secondly, the rate of return on capital will fall because there will be more capital around, and more capital chasing the same number of investment opportunities will lead to a falling rate of profit. Thirdly, continuing progress would depend on a further division of labour. This Smith saw as tied to geographically expanding markets, which eventually will be saturated. Both Smith and Ricardo fail to understand that all these tendencies will be counteracted by a flow of new ideas and inventions which will both a) Increase the demand for capital in a growing economy, and b) Add new products which initially will be traded under conditions of temporary monopolies. This mechanism, whereby capitalists continuously have to seek new ideas and innovations in order to keep up the profit rate, is at the core of the Schumpeterian system. In this system, the fall of nations is accompanied by capital flight which starts when the national system fails to produce innovations.

…

In the English- based mainstream economics, under the assumption of perfect information, new learning is absent— or must be seen as ‘manna from heaven’. It is not clear that human will— in the form of inventions, business strategies, or economic policies— in any way can affect the size of the flow of manna. The connection between learning and welfare is here, at best, indirect through mechanical forces which are not consciously created. In neoclassical economics, all economic activities, for all practical purposes, tend to become ‘alike’. The world is populated by cloned ‘representative firms’, and government policy is supposed not to differentiate between firms or industries. In the Leibniz- Wolff cameralist tradition, as well as today’s evolutionary economics, the variety and uniqueness of human economic activities are central to the system. Canadian economist John Rae (1834) was the first to point out the connection between a society’s propensity to save and its propensity to invent: Savings were to Rae basically not a result of thrift, but of retained earnings from imperfect competition created by inventions and technical change."

 

A ratoeira

Imaginem um país em que a política tem como prioridade a distribuição em vez da criação de riqueza e, ao mesmo tempo, preso nesta ratoeira.

Aquele segundo passo: "Perfect International Competition, Reversible Wages, Productivity Increases Taken Out As Lowered Prices" é letal. A paranóia da concorrência perfeita e o jogo do gato e do rato. E não é porque um governo decide aumentar o salário mínimo que o ciclo vicioso se quebra, apenas serve para mandar mais gente para o desemprego porque as empresas fecham. Só a aposta na concorrência imperfeita serve de activador de uma nova realidade.

Recordar o Evangelho do Valor, o gráfico de Marn e Rosiello. Estar atento ao texto de Ricardo Reis na Caderno de Economia do Expresso desta semana, "O sucesso das empresas"... parece que finalmente viu a luz... quem terá sido o seu Ananias?

Sim, há a via do valor, a via da concorrência imperfeita, o truque alemão.

Imagens retiradas de "The Visionary Realism of German Economics: From the Thirty Years' War to the Cold War". 

"the search for new knowledge which creates imperfect competition"

 Outro trecho sobre a concorrência imperfeita:

"In both Adam Smith and in neo - classical theory there is in some fundamental way a contradiction between the notion of perfect markets and the way the economy adds knowledge. This problem spills over to how economic theory today explains profits. There is no incentive to produce new knowledge in perfect markets – the possibility of appropriating the fruits of new knowledge is absent. By letting new knowledge enter the system like ‘‘manna from heaven’’, the very engine of growth – the search for new knowledge which creates imperfect competition – is excluded from mainstream theory. For this reason, an understanding of how different degrees of imperfect competition is caused by conditions of production is at the very core of any understanding of economic growth. Economic theory, however, does not have a relevant theory of production, and of the role of human knowledge in this process."

Trecho retirado de "The Visionary Realism of German Economics: From the Thirty Years' War to the Cold War". 

Consequências da concorrência imperfeita

E continuava eu a minha leitura de "The Visionary Realism of German Economics: From the Thirty Years' War to the Cold War" durante a caminhada matinal de ontem quando tropeço nisto:

"Looking at history from a simple perspective of barter, not production, [Moi ici: Como não recordar as palavras de Vera Gouveia Barros sobre concorrência perfeita] and under diminishing returns/ single equilibrium/ perfect information, the importance of these policies is lost. In the diminishing return/ equilibrium perspective, any and all factors causing unequal economic growth are lost, creating the world of artificial harmony and world- wide factor- price equalisation. As we shall attempt to show later, a most important historical role of Adam Smith’s was precisely that of laying the ground for ‘‘perfect markets’’ and ‘‘natural harmony’’ by making the quest for knowledge into a zero- sum game – using the metaphor of a lottery – from the point of view of both the individual and the State. In this way Adam Smith effectively removed the quest for imperfect competition through new knowledge which was so important to Renaissance thinking. This is the root of why new knowledge and new technology hits today’s mainstream  economics as ‘‘manna from heaven’’.

...

Just as we today would see a career of washing dishes in a restaurant as having a limited potential for creating income compared with a career as a lawyer, the Renaissance economists extended this argument to apply to the common weal as well. In other words, they believed that the factors which created differences in welfare within an economy were the same factors which created differences in income between nations. As a result of the process of pre- Ricardian common sense, no factor- price equalisation would be achieved by putting all the people washing dishes in one nation and all the lawyers in another and open up for free trade between the two nations. In these theories economic growth is ‘‘activity- specific’’; it is only available in some economic activities subject to dynamic imperfect competition, and not in others.

...

What, then, are the characteristics of growth inducing – ‘‘good’’ – economic activities? We have, in several publications, provided a ‘‘quality index’’ of economic activities, listing the characteristics which, in a system of dynamic imperfect competition, ranks economic activities according to their ability to provide increasing economic welfare to a nation. This ‘‘quality index’’ is reproduced in Figure 2.2.

Differences in wage levels, both nationally and between nations, seem to result from varying degrees of imperfect competition – caused by both static and dynamic factors. The factors at work have long been identified both by businessmen and in industrial economics, and they are correlated. Figure 2.2 attempts to create an area from light to dark grey where ‘‘the quality’’ of economic activities at any time can be roughly plotted on a scale from white: ‘‘perfect competition’’ – to black: ‘‘monopoly’’. The latter is only a temporary state, as new technologies fall towards a lower score as they mature."

Sou um anónimo da província, mas há mais de 15 anos que descobri a virtude da concorrência imperfeita. Não porque tenha lido algo, mas porque estando do lado da produção, foi a alternativa que emergiu na minha cabeça, lá por volta de 2004 ou 2005, como sendo a única hipótese para fugir da guerra do preço onde as PMEs tugas nunca poderiam ter sucesso a competir com a China. Por que é que  os académicos tugas, membros da famosa triade, ainda lá não chegaram?

Recordo os encalhados, os paineleiros da tríade.

Promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas pornográficas

Este é o meu mote para o trabalho que desenvolvo na área da gestão com PMEs.

Ontem, ouvi o podcast do programa "Tempestade perfeita", na rádio Observador do passado dia 22 e sorri ao ouvir o início da intervenção de Vera Gouveia Barros. E recordei um livro de economia de César das Neves onde ele incluía um subcapítulo sobre a beleza da concorrência perfeita.

Pois bem, este anónimo engenheiro da província continua a assumir-se como um promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas pornográficas. 

• Fugir de eficiência (Dezembro de 2017)

Pois bem, este anónimo engenheiro da província continua a assumir-se como alguém que vê como algo interessante o fim das patentes.

• Num mundo sem patentes (Setembro de 2019)

Defendem-se as patentes com o argumento de que sem elas não haveria inovação em muitos campos. Pois eu penso exactamente o contrário. Sem patentes, o ritmo da inovação seria maior. 

Voltemos às palavras de Vera Gouveia Barros: "Em Economia Industrial nós mostramos como a solução mais próxima da concorrência perfeita é aquela que traz mais bem estar no seu total"

E ponho-me a pensar: 

• quem são os alunos formatados por Vera Gouveia Barros? Qual vai ser o seu destino? 
• o que é isto de "bem estar no seu total"?

Quem trabalha para uma PME em Portugal deve ter cuidado com este tipo de conversa. Uma PME que compita num mercado com concorrência perfeita não tem qualquer hipótese de sobrevivência num espaço aberto onde outros; à custa de um mercado doméstico de maior dimensão, à custa de mais capital, à custa de menores constrangimentos das partes interessadas, terão sempre vantagem!!!

Quem trabalha para uma PME tem uma prioridade: "Your job is to make all things unequal"

Quem trabalha para uma PME tem de se comportar como um pequeno mamífero no tempo dos dinossauros, tem de ser ágil e fugir para espaços onde possa criar algum tipo de concorrência imperfeita a seu favor. 

Como é possível continuar a encher mentes susceptíveis com estas doutrinas? David tem tudo a ganhar em fugir de um confronto de igual para igual com Golias. 

Num mundo de concorrência perfeita:

Num mundo de concorrência imperfeita:

Live and let live!

"we do not live in a world of perfect competition" (parte III)

Parte I and part II.

Mais uns trechos de "Windows of Opportunity: How Nations Make Wealth".  

"Finally, I will argue that there is a ladder of economic development, the rungs of which represent products that require increasing amounts of organisational and technological capability, and which produce increasing amounts of value-added per capita due to fewer companies being able to produce them.

...

How, then, do firms increase their value-added per capita? Assuming they are not overmanned they can do it in two ways. They can increase their production efficiency by innovation or they can create a competitive advantage over their rivals based on a capabilities/market-opportunity dynamic. The first will reduce the denominator, and the second will increase the nominator in the calculation of value-added per capita.[Moi ici: Olha, olha, a minha referência ao denominador e ao numerador.] 

...

Where there is perfect competition, as in neoclassical growth theory, it is not possible for firms to gain a competitive advantage over their rivals, enabling them to raise the willingness of their customers to pay for their product or service. The entrepreneur cannot influence the price of what he produces. He or she sees or reads on their mobile phone what the market is willing to pay and is a price-taker rather than a price-maker. This situation, however, is only found in a few commodity markets for agricultural or mining products. Business-people will often refer to a product becoming a commodity, meaning it should be avoided because it is not possible to create a competitive advantage and achieve a high level of value-added.

In most markets, however, competition is not the perfect competition of neoclassical economics, and in any country at any one time, opportunities will exist in specific industries for a firm to create a competitive advantage by differentiating its product or service andmaking it more attractive to its customers.

It should be noted, however, that when an entrepreneur creates a competitive advantage, and increases value-added per capita for a firm, he also creates a disequilibrium, which as soon as it is established sets in motion the competitive process that leads to its destruction.

...

Standard textbook economics to understand economic development in terms of frictionless "perfect markets" totally misses the point. Perfect markets are for the poor."

Um mundo com concorrência perfeita

Ao ver este pequeno filme "System Error" e estas imagens:

Não pude deixar de pensar no paraíso dos crentes ou defensores da concorrência perfeita, seguidores de cromos como Chamberlin que queria proíbir as marcas.

"we do not live in a world of perfect competition" (parte II)

Parte I.

Mais uns trechos de "Windows of Opportunity: How Nations Make Wealth". 

"Very few countries have ever developed by means other than innovation, learning [Moi ici: The race to the top] and the growth exceptions to this rule have been of industrial production.

...

it is the production-capability school of thought that has proved most to policy-makers trying to increase the growth rates of their countries; while a harsh assessment would conclude that the market-efficiency school of thought, including neoclassical economics, proved most useful to policy-makers trying to stop other countries from catching them up and competing against them.

...

Starting at the beginning of the twentieth century, neoclassic economists came to view the economic problem as being the optimal allocation of scarce resources rather than one of generating productivity to overcome conditions of scarcity. [Moi ici: Era outro tempo. Recordar isto] 

...

The premise of neoclassical theory is that, if the investments are made, the acquisition and mastery of new ways of doing things is relatively easy, even automatic. [Moi ici: Recordar isto acerca do plano de recuperação e resiliência. Macacos trepam, não voam] 

...

[neo-classical economic theory] It does not see production as it in the observable world; that is, as a complex process which involves innovation and the creation of competitive advantage, and which needs an entrepreneeur to make it happen.

Secondly, it underestimates heterogeneity of production activities within and across production sectors. It ignores the issue of both what is being produced (i.e. the product) and how it is being produced i.e. the technologies and organisation used). [Moi ici: Este foi um dos temas que sempre me fez espécie, ninguém fala da variabilidade intersectorial]

...

The third element is the capability of a firm, which enables it to apply the activity-specific technology to producing the product or service in order to meet market demand, thus creating a capability/market-opportunity dynamic.  [Moi ici: É sempre mais fácil culpar o contexto externo]

The fourth element is the institutions of the country where the firm is located, which enable the capability/market-opportunity dynamic to operate effectively.  [Moi ici: Recordar "Why Nations fail". Recordar que o futuro tem um custo, se as empresas não se podem capitalizar, não podem enfrentar o futuro de forma séria e proactiva... viram zombies]

...

Because neoclassical economists have not been able to quantify these four elements and so include them in their mathematical models, they have not been able to explain why different sectors in an economy have different levels of value-added growing at different rates. 

...

the growth rate of country depends on what is happening to the value-added per capita in each of its different sectors as a result of the capability/market-opportunity dynamic, and on any shift in the distribution of economic activity across sectors. [Moi ici: Racional perfeito para fugir aos mitos]

...

[the dynamic capability school] does not assume the market economy is one of perfect competition, in which every firm is selling the same product at the same price as its competitors. This is a completely unrealistic view of the world, as can be seen by a quick trip to any shopping centre or car showroom. Instead, the dynamic capability theory assumes that, in a competitive market economy, firms compete by trying to gain a competitive advantage over their rivals, [Moi ici: Aqui torço o nariz a este trecho. Sim, mas! É outra vez o fenómeno da obliquidade, mas mais ainda. A economia não é necessariamente um jogo de soma nula. A economia não é uma guerra para eliminar o advsersário, o sucesso das empresas passa por satisfazer os clientes. Cuidado com o Dick Dastardly] as this is what enables them to grow and their profitability. It also assumes that this same type of competition exists between firms in different countries and is what determines in the long term what goods and services a country exports and imports.

The essential question that economic growth theory raises, therefore, is how do firms gain a competitive advantage over their rivals? There are two ways they can do this. Firms can either reduce the cost of their product or service through innovations in their production methods, or use innovation to make their product more attractive to their customers by better meeting their needs through enhanced performance, more functionality or improved design." [Moi ici: Recordar as três regras]

"we do not live in a world of perfect competition"

Apesar do pouco tempo livre, comecei a ler "Windows of Opportunity: How Nations Make Wealth". Está a ser uma excelente leitura e dá para fazer várias pontos co o que fui escrevendo aqui no blogue ao longo dos anos.

"We also need to understand that there is no economic law that says that all advanced countries will see their economies grow indefinitely, especially when they are being challenged by the rise of countries such as China today.

...

The market-efficiency school of thought includes the Physiocrats, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Alfred Marshall, Paul Samuelson and Paul Krugman. The production-capability school of thought includes such figures as Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List, the German Historical School and Joseph Schumpeter.

...

According to the production-capability school, however, wealth originates from innovation and creativity, with the accumulation of assets taking place as a result of discoveries and innovations changing people's stock of knowledge and their tools.

...

Secondly, the analytical focus of the two schools of thought is different. In the market-efficiency school, the focus of analysis is on barter and men and women as traders. In the production-capability school, the focus is on production and men and women as innovative producers.

.

Thirdly, because the market-efficiency school of thought was based on the trade and commerce conducted by the English, the English economists who played a large part in developing it came to see all economic activities as being qualitatively alike.[Moi ici: BINGO!!! Recordar o lead deste postal]

...

As a result, while the production-capability school of thought sees different economic activities as offering different 'windows of opportunity' for achieving national welfare, the market-efficiency school of thought sees all economic activities as having the same potential.

...

Finally, the production-capability school of thought sees no limits to progress, believing in the 'never-ending frontier of human knowledge.

...

[Friedrich] List also understood that innovation is the engine of economic growth

...

[Schumpeter] saw competition as a dynamic process of moving from one disequilibrium to another, rather than a process of moving towards equilibrium.

Secondly, he understood that we do not live in a world of perfect competition,  [Moi ici: BINGO!!!] and that the traditional theorist's focus solely on price is wrong. As he said:

In the capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not [price] competition that counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organisation (the largest-scale unit of control for instance)."

Thirdly, he saw the process of innovation as the engine of economic growth, remarking, "without innovation, no entrepreneurs, without entrepreneurial achievement, no capitalist returns and no capitalist propulsion?"

Value from imperfection - Decommoditize

Há tempos criei um site para começar a alimentar o que dentro de anos poderá ser um mercado mais relevante para a minha actividade profissional. Chamei a esse site "Value From Imperfection".

Muitos perguntam-me o porquê deste nome.

Há minutos encontrei no Twitter uma boa introdução à explicação do nome:

Commodify is the shift from social to economic value (i.e. the first commercial instance of something)

Commoditise is the shift from imperfect to perfect competition (i.e. creation of a commodity or a utility market)

The two are very different. Don't mix them.

— Simon Wardley (@swardley) December 5, 2020

Reparem naquele "Commoditise is the shift from imperfect to perfect competition".

Quem são os meus clientes-alvo? PMEs industriais que procuram servir clientes com bens e serviços transaccionáveis. Estamos a falar de empresas que não podem competir pelo preço mais baixo, empresas que têm de arranjar outra vantagem competitiva que não o preço. Empresas que têm de subir na escala de valor, empresas que têm de fugir da comoditização: um mercado comoditizado é um mercado em que o que conta é o preço mais baixo. 

O que aprendi há anos e está ali ao lado na coluna das citações é: 

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

Quando um mercado fica comoditizado entra a competência perfeita, reina a eficiência pura e dura, o sucesso é para quem é maior e consegue economias de escala. Recordo o maluco académico americano que até queria acabar com as marcas para promover a concorrência perfeita. Segundo ele, Camberlin, o valor de marcas como a Apple acontece por causa de ""ignorance" or the "imperfect knowledge" that results from "the reprehensible creation by businessmen of purely fictitious differences between products which are by nature fundamentally uniform"." 

Qualquer PME deve fugir da concorrência perfeita como o diabo da Cruz, daí a minha assinatura de anos: promotor da concorrência imperfeita e dos monopólios informais.

As PMEs devem estar sempre à procura das imperfeições no mercado, é delas que se pode retirar mais valor. Até porque é inevitável. A imperfeição de hoje mais tarde ou mais cedo deixa de ser mistério e transforma-se em algoritmo e reina a comoditização:

Acredita que o preço é a única forma de competir?

"Not so very long ago, almonds were grown in a number of places in America and across the world. But some places are better than others for growing almonds, and as with most production contexts, there are economies of scale to consolidation. In this case, the Central Valley of California is perfect—totally perfect—for growing almonds. Consequently, over 80 percent of the world’s almonds are now produced in this one valley. This is what agricultural scientists would call a monoculture, and they are a common outcome in systems that maximize efficiency. A factory produces a single product, a single company dominates an industry, a single piece of software dominates computer systems. We remove unhelpful inefficiencies and get more productive.
.
But with that high efficiency comes an inherent vulnerability to shocks, with potentially catastrophic results: one extreme local event—a wind-swept fire, say, or a pernicious virus—could wipe out 80 percent of global almond production all at once. And there are knock-on effects. All of the almond blossoms need to be pollinated in the same narrow window of time, because all the almond trees grow in the same soil and experience the same weather. The huge volume of simultaneous pollination necessitates shipping in beehives from all over America for the short pollination window. There is an epidemic of honeybees dying in America, creating concerns about the US honeybee population’s ability to pollinate the wide variety of plants that need the bees’ busy work. One theory for the elevated honeybee mortality rates is that beehives are trucked around America for these monoculture pollinations like never before, and that this is stressful for the bees.
.
Rather than producing resilient ecosystems, our obsession with efficiency proxies is producing fragile monocultures, potentially vulnerable to catastrophic failure. No doubt the monocultures are efficient in a narrow sense, but that efficiency has a dark side."

Dois temas:

• o risco das monoculturas; e
• como fugir à guerra da eficiência?

Acerca do risco das monoculturas - "Quando a Xylela lá chegar vai ser rápido (parte II)"

Acerca do risco das monoculturas e de fugir à guerra da eficiência - ""E sem intenção, e sem querer, apareceu na minha mente a decisão de pôr de lado o azeite alentejano"". 

Neste texto, sobre o azeite alentejano, escrevo sobre a marca "azeite not-intensivo", como escrevo sobre Monção e Melgaço aqui sobre a marca.

Como se consegue combater quem, à custa da eficiência da monocultura, tem o preço mais baixo? Com uma marca que se diferencie. Por exemplo, Portugal em 2019 importou 801 milhões de euros de cereais e... exportou 98 milhões de euros. Como é que este país consegue exportar cereais? Então não é o preço o factor decisivo? Como é que podemos ter preço?

"Os chamados cereais btp (baixo teor de pesticidas) têm como finalidade a produção de baby food. O nosso país tem condições climatéricas e de solos que permitem a produção em condições competitivas deste tipo de cereal, que tem um valor de mercado superior ao do trigo panificável corrente. A produção nacional representa 25% das necessidades do mercado interno.
A cadeia de valor tem dois clientes principais, a Nestlé e a Danone, e a procura tem aumentado. Trigo e cevada são os principais cereais btp, com um prémio associado de +30 €/t, mas a certificação é obrigatória para comercializar junto da indústria."(fonte)

E voltando ao texto inicial sobre a produção intensiva de amêndoas? Reparar neste exemplo, "To Protect its Supply, Kind Speaks for the Bees", como as conservas de atum que ostentam a certificação quanto aos métodos de captura.

Recordo Malcolm Gladwell no seu livro extraordinário livro (adjectivo atribuido de forma consciente) "David & Goliath":

"Why has there been so much misunderstanding around that day in the Valley of Elah? On one level, the duel reveals the folly of our assumptions about power. The reason King Saul is skeptical of David's chances is that David is small and Goliath is large. Saul thinks of power in terms of physical might. He doesn't appreciate that power can come in other forms as well - in breaking rules, in substituting speed and surprise for strength. Saul is not alone in making this mistake."

A concorrência imperfeita passa por esta capacidade de quebrar as regras cristalizadas nas mentes dos incumbentes.

O preço não é a única forma de competir!

Promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas pornográficas

Em Julho de 2011 escrevi aqui:

"Os mercados não se regem por leis imortais, imutáveis, talhadas na pedra. Os mercados não existem, emergem, vão emergindo da relação entre os intervenientes. Mentes conservadoras podem crer que os mercados são como os reagentes de uma reacção química e que o tempo não os influencia, por mais vezes que se repita a experiência. Tolos!!! Os mercados são seres vivos que aprendem e desaprendem não podendo ser encarcerados numa lógica newtoniana"

Ontem, durante a caminhada matinal encontrei:

"And although Newtonian mechanics is not a description of ‘the world as it really is’, it is extremely useful in a wide variety of situations. It makes sense to live our lives under the assumption that physical laws hold and do not change, but it does not make sense to live our lives under the assumption that the world of human affairs is stationary."

Em Dezembro passado escrevi:

"Estão a ver aqueles que acreditam que os académicos, ou os políticos sabem quais as decisões a tomar para gerir uma empresa?

...

O salto sem rede! O abandono da navegação de cabotagem! Nadar na zona sem pé! Apostar no optimismo não documentado. Ah! "Following the bliss"."

Na mesma caminhada matinal encontrei:

"Although most profit opportunities have been taken, it is those that have not been taken which provide rewards to entrepreneurs and which drive innovation in technology and business practice. Paradoxically, the desire of the Chicago School to treat the economy as if markets were perfectly competitive [Moi ici: Promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas pornográficas] left it blind to the earlier Chicago insight which emphasised the capacity for innovation arising from the search for profit in an uncertain and constantly changing environment. The innovative success of a market economy does not result from individuals or firms trying to ‘optimise’ but from their attempts by trial and error to navigate a world of radical uncertainty. In practice, successful people work out how to cope with and manage uncertainty, not how to optimise."

Trechos retirados de “Radical Uncertainty” de John Kay e Mervyn King

Criação de nichos (parte I)

Para um crente e praticante da concorrência imperfeita que se sente, qual João Baptista, como uma voz que clama no deserto, é um bálsamo encontrar:

"The theory of opportunity creation sets a new framework for the analysis of entrepreneurial strategic action. Opportunities are seen as a product of competitive imperfection in the industry or the market. The origin of this imperfection, in the creation theory, is in the transformation of entrepreneurial beliefs into social constructs that guide actions of entrepreneurs and other constituents in the industry or market.
...
opportunities may also be created when entrepreneurs set to induce governed changes to their environment. By taking the proactive position in constructing their niches, entrepreneurs or organizations can choose or modify the relevant threats and possibilities.
...
For a long time, the theory of biological evolution has been dominated by approaches that stressed adaptation and selection as the main drivers of evolutionary processes. These approaches emphasized the unidirectional causal power of the environment—that forces evolving entities to climb fitness landscape peaks as they evolve—and implied that disruptions to the fitness landscape were  exogenous. Yet, in recent years, it has been recognized that evolving entities, too, can play a remarkable role in modifying fitness landscapes, as they change their habitats.
...
the idea of niche construction may provide useful insights for the dynamics of organizational and entrepreneurial strategies. In particular, it may help to recognize how competitive imperfections can emerge within industries and markets, as a process governed by the focal organization or entrepreneur.
...
that particular organizational strategies can alter the conditions of an organizational environment. To do so, organizations may develop specific capabilities related to the task of modification and manipulation of their environments. In particular, for political environments, organizations develop dynamic capabilities that allow them to alter between these reactive and proactive strategies depending on the pace and complexity of organizational environments.
.
These three approaches (coevolutionary, cognitive, and political action theories) are not mutually exclusive."

As organizações não estão condenadas a uma postura passiva, elas podem iniciar a mudança do contexto relevante em que operam. Sim, mesmo uma PME o pode iniciar.


Trechos retirados de "Niche Construction: The Process of Opportunity Creation in the Environment" de Pavel Luksha, Strat. Entrepreneurship J., 2: 269–283 (2008)

Estados Unidos terra do liberalismo?

Há sempre uma forma rápida, simples e ... errada de encarar os Estados Unidos.

Entretanto, na terra da saúde totalmente privada entregue à eficiência do mercado das seguradoras, onde os cidadãos têm a "liberdade de escolha" que os liberais prometem, há manifs por causa de insulina. Estranho, não é? https://t.co/RIjjQ6Q4Ev

— Vega9000 (@Vega9000) September 15, 2019

Uma dessas formas é a de os tratar como o paradigma do liberalismo.

Já ligaram para a CMTV ou para outro canal de televisão e apanharam com 2 ou 3 anúncios de aparelhos para melhorar a audição? E já viram desses anúncios nas DICAs do LIDL?

E nos Estados Unidos?
Os Estados Unidos são o "paraíso" das empresas grandes. As empresas grandes não gostam da concorrência, ou antes, não gostam da concorrência livre, gostam da concorrência que podem controlar ou, sobretudo, se o campo estiver inclinado a seu favor.

Quem é que tem o poder para inclinar o campo a favor de um interveniente?

Ou os clientes, ou o poder do estado.

Por isso, é que as empresas grandes gostam sempre de ter o poder do estado do seu lado. Por isso, é que as empresas grandes gostam de estados com muito poder. E quando um político é eleito com uma agenda que não interessa às empresas grandes, não há problema para elas. Um goa'uld entra dentro desse político e, passada uma legislatura é o candidato apoiado pelas empresas grandes.

Voltemos aos Estados Unidos e ao negócio dos aparelhos para melhorar a audição:

“For starters, hearing aids are expensive. In 2017, the New York Times reported prices ranging from $1,500 to $2,000 or more per ear. Medicare does not cover hearing aids. Barbara Kelley, executive director of the Hearing Loss Association of America, reports that “the number one complaint we get in phone calls every day is, ‘I need help, I can’t afford hearing aids.’
...
But that isn’t the only problem. The traditional hearing aid business is regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and access to the technology is tightly controlled by incumbents. Audiologists, their lobbying associations, and the few (six—actually, soon to be five) companies that manufacture hearing aids have strictly limited the options available to patients. The incumbents insist that what all patients want is the “gold standard.” As one observer described it, this involves buying a hearing aid only after a thorough diagnostic evaluation that includes otoscopy and bone conduction testing, speech-in-noise testing, real-ear measurement/speech mapping, aural rehabilitation, and hands-on hearing aid fitting. Even if they have the means, for many people this seems like overkill."

Recomendo a 1ª Lei de Arroja e a 1ª Lei de Pereira da Cruz - A minha primeira lei sobre a concorrência?

Trechos retirados de “Seeing Around Corners” de Rita McGrath.

"niche retailers with strong identities"

Tão interessante, tão em sintonia com a visão de Mongo como um mundo de tribos de interesses assimétricos, tão de acordo com "tu não és do meu sangue", tão de acordo com a ambivalência face a Bieber. Ninguém quer ser tratado como plancton. Trechos retirados de "The global village needs walls":

"Facebook has been a giant experiment in understanding humanity. It has proven that we actually don’t want to be part of a global community — we are instead a species of small groups and tribes. If you’re part of everything, you’re not invested in anything, and that feels bad. “Everyone, no exception, must have a tribe, an alliance with which to jockey for power and territory, to demonize the enemy, to organize rallies, and raise flags,”
...
So what does this mean for business? For one, it creates an opening for a smorgasbord of social networks and social businesses.
.
“There should be social networks around every conceivable interest,” [Moi ici: Como não recordar o que escrevi, ao arrepio do mainstream, sobre as plataformas universais, não é winner-take-all]
...
“The really exciting model is not one company to rule them all, but distributed companies and distributed wealth and revenue, and a social experience built around these supernodes,” said Bianchini, whose company is making a big bet that we’re headed in this direction. Some recent trends seem to bear it out. The number of niche social networks is exploding,
...
Such fracturing of the online world is a headwind even Amazon will eventually have to battle. The bigger Amazon gets, the less it feels like it connects with your personal identity — even with algorithms that figure out what you’re most likely to buy.[Moi ici: Recordar o que escrevo sobre o big data e a miudagem]
.
Just as microbrews stole customers from giant, least-common-denominator brands such as Budweiser, niche retailers with strong identities are likely to be more of a challenge to Amazon than some other centralized behemoth.[Moi ici: O que escrevo neste blogue desde sempre... cuidado com os gurus da Junqueira]"

"brand feedback mechanism"

“we felt uneasy buying something that cost a few hundred pounds without the reassurance of a recognizable name.
...
Without the brand feedback mechanism, there was no incentive for any one manufacturer to make a safer, better version of the board, since they were not positioned to reap the gains. As a result, the market became a commoditised race to the bottom, in which both innovation and quality control fail. Why make a better product if no one knows it was you who made it? So no one did make a better board, and the whole category more or less died as a result. It may correct itself if better boards arise, or if a shrewd company such as Samsung cannily attaches its name to the best.
...
Branding isn’t just something to add to great products – it’s essential to their existence.”

Uma marca é o princípio da concorrência imperfeita, como bem sabia o totó do Chamberlin.

Mais do que o custo

"The ability to create an advantage for the buyer is dependent on a seller’s competitive strength. This strength is reflected in its ability to offer better exchange ratios.
...
At equal prices, a seller with a cost advantage will gain greater profits than its competitors. At lower prices, the seller will increase its market share and strengthen its cost advantage, creating the basis for higher profits in later periods. A seller that provides its buyers with a greater net benefit is valued more highly by them; it strengthens its reputation, and buyers satisfied with its performance will become repeat customers. These are the conditions for profits being greater than competitors’ and for increased market share.

Profits that are the outcome of an advantageous position can be used by the seller as additional investments that competitors can only finance from other sources. The effects are as follows: a competitive advantage facilitates investment and thereby it helps to protect existing advantages and/or create new ones. Hence, it is vital for every competitor to create, find, or extend its competitively advantageous position. It is the very nature of competition that success or failure depends on the firm’s competitive position and every action has to be analyzed in terms of its effects on this position—how it improves or degrades it and how it utilizes it."

Lembram-se dos economistas da Junqueira? Julgo que eles ainda pensam com as redes neurais que foram criadas na sua mente quando aprenderam as regras de funcionamento do Normalistão, afinal o mundo onde nasceram. Para eles só existem duas posições: vantagem de custo ou desvantagem de custo.

Uma pregação em prol da ... concorrência imperfeita

Continuo a minha leitura matinal de "Fundamentals of Business-to-Business Marketing - Mastering Business Markets" editado por Michael Kleinaltenkamp, Wulff Plinke, Ian Wilkinson e Ingmar Geiger.

Estão a ver o choradinho e a falta de noção deste senhor, "Boas notícias, Portugal a ser abandonado pelo negócio do preço (parte II)"?

Imaginem o que diria desta linguagem:

"We have come to understand the market process as a never-ending process of learning for all involved, a process that is kept running by the entrepreneur who detects profit opportunities. Entrepreneurs sense differences in the market, they discover the possibility to sell something at a higher price than they can buy it for, and they disperse this knowledge—voluntarily or involuntarily—to other market participants. This process is a competitive one that rewards the capable and punishes the less able. Competition among sellers, therefore, has a selection function that creates better problem solutions for the buyer.
The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises described the situation in the following way: “The entrepreneur can only act a step ahead of his competitors if he strives toward serving the market more cheaply and better. More cheaply means richer supply; better means supply with products not yet in the market”"

Depois, o livro apresenta esta figura:

Sabem o que vem aí?
Uma pregação em prol da ... concorrência imperfeita.

"Homogeneity: The offers in a market are homogeneous if they resemble each other in all aspects, so that the buyer perceives no difference among them. Offers are heterogeneous if they differ either objectively or as perceived by the buyer.
• Knowledge: Buyers have complete market knowledge if they know without delay about all offers in the market.
• Barriers: Barriers hinder free market entry: new sellers cannot enter the market without entry costs or constraints, and sellers already in the market cannot imitate the characteristics and behavior of other sellers.
...
Information shortages and quality differences that initially exist will tend to disappear, and the temporary profits of cases 2–4 will disappear, shifting the situation to case 1.
.
Cases 5 and 6 differ from cases 1 to 4 because barriers exist. Barriers act as an obstacle to competition for new entrants as well as for those already in the market. Market entry barriers are always disadvantageous for new entrants compared to incumbent sellers, because the latter can approach buyers more easily than new entrants. And if a seller has a first mover advantage compared to its competitors then others cannot catch up—either because they are unable to (the advantage is too great) or because they do not want to (e.g., they are afraid of the first movers’ response).
...
Hence, barriers are, among other things, the reason for sellers earning profits significantly higher than competitors.
...
The picture of competition created in cases 5 and 6 provides the basis for an analysis of competitive advantage. Dynamic seller competition means that sellers are permanently searching for and experimenting with new products or services in order to find or create ones that distinguish themselves from those of other sellers, in terms of value to the buyer and/or the costs they incur. If a competitor succeeds in operating with lower costs than its competitors, then it can offer lower prices to buyers, which can increase its market share and profits. If a seller succeeds in offering a better product or service without higher costs, then it can increase prices and earn higher profits. This never-ending search and experimentation has only one aim: By differentiation, the seller wants to avoid being substitutable. Furthermore, a seller strives to establish a difference that is sustainable; it wants to avoid being imitated."

Construir monopólios informais

Este blogue é o blogue da "Concorrência imperfeita e dos monopólios informais".

É tão esquisito, a palavra monopólio é uma palavra proscrita, é uma palavra que representa o pior que há no mundo económico-político. No entanto, quando lhe acrescento a palavra informal, "monopólio informal" tudo muda de figura e passa a ser o meu objectivo primordial quando trabalho estratégia com as empresas.

Em Agosto de 2004 fiz um trabalho com uma empresa do sector da construção onde usando o balanced scorecard e o conceito de ecossistema de partes interessadas desenvolvemos um monopólio informal para fugir da competição pelo preço. Passados estes anos todos é interessante, no mesmo sector, num outro país, encontrar a mesma terminologia em "Compete as 1 of 1":

"Some years ago, the founder and CEO of a small custom-engineered structural components company (based around a core technology of precast-prestressed concrete) recognized that his industry was undergoing consolidation. He lacked the capital to acquire other firms and wanted to remain independent. So he approached Plantes Company to help him find a way to become, in his words, “a monopoly.” He wisely recognized the advantages of creating a unique market position: being 1 of 1 instead of 1 of many. [Moi ici: Como não recordar a biologia, as paramécias de Gause ou os rouxinóis de MacArthur] Developing a differentiated and hard-to-copy market position could lead to attractive returns, profitable growth opportunities, and freedom to remain independent during industry consolidation.
.
Kay worked closely with the leadership team to identify current and potential competencies, [Moi ici: Como não recordar "Do concreto para o abstracto e não o contrário"] the benefits they could provide, and which kinds of current or potential customers would most benefit from these competencies. She also helped the leadership team understand that the company’s direct customers — general contractors — were, in fact, competitors. Why? Because they could and often did fill the needs of end customers by backwards-integrating into structural components using cast-in-place concrete, a substitute technology.
.
Kay recommended the company redesign its business model to become a design-build contractor vertically integrated around the precast-prestressed concrete core technology. Its value promise would be “more building for your dollar, faster, and without schedule and cost overrun risks.” As a general contractor, the firm could control the design of the project and the precast, making this promise feasible and hard for general contractors to copy. Execution required specializing initially in parking decks, where precast is a high percent of cost-of-goods-sold and the company could sell directly to owners who needed new parking decks quickly.
.
Today, the company, which used to win business on price, does all its work on a negotiated basis."