Unreasonable hospitality - parte IV

Há dias encontrei esta citação no livro "Unreasonable hospitality: the remarkable power of giving people more than they expect" de Will Guidara.

No capítulo 18, "Improvisational Hospitality" o autor descreve como nasceu e se desenvolveu o programa Legends. Um programa dedicado a criar experiências que ficam na memória dos clientes. 

"I hear this a lot: "Well, of course you could afford to pull those tricks at an expensive restaurant."

And I always think: Are you sure you can afford not to?

It's true-these gifts cost money, in labor if nothing else. But I'm my dad's son, and I reviewed the Dreamweaver line item in the P&L every month with an eagle eye. There was never any question: given the word-of-mouth marketing this bought us with our guests and the excitement this kind of gift-giving created among the team, the program was worth every penny.

[Moi ici: Segue-se agora o trecho que merece reflexão. É disto que falo quando penso na doença anglo-saxónica, quando menciono os Muggles, quando penso em "optimismo não documentado"] Anyway, as a leader, you can't rely solely on your spreadsheets. You have to trust your gut-and what you feel when you're in the room with people, giving and receiving these gifts. Is there a traditional return on investment with a program like this? No. Am I confident that each dollar I spent here did as much or more than the ones I spent on traditional marketing? Absolutely."

Um convite para:

• Confiar na importância de criar experiências memoráveis para os clientes.
• Pensar para além das folhas de cálculo para não perder a visão geral. Uma dependência excessiva da análise pode levar a decisões que reduzam os custos em detrimento da satisfação dos clientes ou da motivação dos trabalhadores, o que pode prejudicar o negócio a longo prazo.
• Pensar em evitar decisões tomadas unicamente com base em projecções financeiras, sob pena dos líderes tornarem-se avessos ao risco, evitando abordagens inovadoras que podem produzir ganhos a longo prazo. As PME, em particular, precisam de se manter flexíveis e abertas a estratégias criativas que as possam ajudar a competir e a crescer.

Recordo este postal sobre a Viarco - "Nós fazemos as contas ao contrário"

Parte III, Parte II e Parte I.

Puro sumo!!!

Five Feynman rules for Life: 🧠

i) Take mistakes as Lessons.
ii) Focus is the key.
iii) Study hard what interests you the most.
iv) Don't worry about what other people think.
v) Skills are more valuable than your grades.

— Prof. Feynman (@ProfFeynman) January 7, 2022

Para pessoas e para empresas. Puro sumo!!!

Acerca do i) recordo, para começar, "Managing the Unexpected - Sustained Performance in a Complex World" de Karl Weick e Kathleen Sutcliffe: 

"Preoccupation with failure, the first high-reliability organization (HRO) principle, captures the need for continuous attention to anomalies that could be symptoms of larger problems in a system."

Acerca do iii) recordo Youngme Moon e a mensagem de "Different" em "There’s nine times more to gain by elevating positive customers than by eliminating negative ones"

Acerca do iv) recordo David versus Golias em Lidar com os Golias!

Mongo é assim!

Introdução:

"Altra running has sped up. Naturally. And as the Denver-based company celebrates 10 years of natural running, the growth of the footwear company only continues.

Known on the trail for its Lone Peak and on the road for the Torin, the uniquely designed footwear has experienced steady progress over a decade and a rapid rise over the past year with 17% growth from spring 2020 to spring 2021 and 54% growth during the height of the pandemic."

As tribos apaixonadas (os assimétricos), we are all weird:

"“The brands offering uniquely different propositions, a different direction, those are the brands growing the fastest. What we are seeing is that through the pandemic we are still growing at a faster percentage than the traditional brands.”"

Skin-in-the-game, não é inovar, é resolver um problema:

"The two eventually ran the store and the self-professed shoe geeks started tinkering. Working with a nearby resoler, they started customizing off-the-shelf running shoes to reduce the wedge on the heel and open up the toe box for a more natural foot splay."

Quando David se aproxima de Golias este despreza-o. Quando a Deutsch Post fez a proposta de um veículo eléctrico à VW esta rejeitou por falta de volume:

"The co-founders went to every running brand they could to “beg them to build” shoes the way they were creating them after market, but when nobody would—and some laughed in their faces—they did it themselves.

Altra started with a road shoe, the Instinct, pre-launched in April 2011 ahead of the brand’s true August 2011 launch. “It’s just been an amazing 10 years of trying to encourage people to look at shoes differently,” Beckstead says."

Trechos retirados de "Altra, One Of The Fastest-Growing Running Footwear Brands, Celebrates Natural Running"

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!!!"

Live and let live

Se fossem crianças, no Portugal do início dos anos 70 do século passado, depois do almoço estariam em frente à televisão para ver as Corridas Loucas ou o Stop the Pigeon.

Nas Corridas Loucas, Dick Dastardly dava cabo da minha paciência por estar mais preocupado em dar cabo da concorrência do que em ganhar a corrida. Basta pesquisar Dastardly neste blogue para ver como uso a personagem na minha relação com as empresas.

Gosto de usar a metáfora de David e Golias na minha relação com as empresas, mas procuro sublinhar que a metáfora não é sobre o combate em si, o mundo dos negócios não é uma guerra para aniquilar os concorrentes, é um esforço para seduzir e servir clientes. Já agora, gosto de usar a metáfora de David e Golias por causa do "twist" na estória, tal como nesta outra estória, para transmitir a mensagem de que há uma alternativa ao pensamento dominante à espera de ser encontrada ou melhor, construída.

Por isso, recomendo muitas vezes o "Live and let live", uma deturpação do título de um antigo filme de cowboys. Outra metáfora que gosto de usar é a da relação entre economia e biologia:

A continuação da leitura de "When More Is Not Better" de Roger Martin prossegue:

"Executives dream of becoming the next John D. Rockefeller, who built a monopoly in the oil-refining business in the late nineteenth century. Eliminating the competition feels like a natural goal; it means you’ve won. ... Managers feel more secure when their customers have no alternative to the product or service they produce. Given that American monopolists from Rockefeller to Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg have become among the richest men in history, the appeal of establishing a monopoly is understandable. But it has a downside. Monopolies don’t last in the natural world, and they don’t last in business either.
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Monopolies don’t last in nature because they don’t adapt, [Moi ici: Claro que monopólios protegidos, pelo estado, têm a possibilidade de serem eternos] and the fundamental rule of nature, as posited by Charles Darwin, is survival of the fittest—by which he meant those most able to adapt to the environment and its changes. And what drives adaptation in business? It is learning from one’s customers how to provide better value for them. Customers, not those who serve them, define value. Providers can only hypothesize about what constitutes customer value. Providers learn based on customer feedback, and therefore customer feedback is the linchpin of positive adaptation. It is very difficult to become a better provider of a given product or service in the absence of real customer feedback.
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It is not the mere existence of customer feedback that produces positive adaptation. Listening to customer feedback and taking action on it are both necessary preconditions for positive adaptation. But change is never easy. It is tiring and expensive. As a consequence, most companies, most of the “time, will listen to customers only when they must, and they have to only when the customer can credibly threaten to become an ex-customer if the provider doesn’t listen and change.
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Therein lies the fundamental sustainability problem for monopolists. They don’t have to listen to their customers. ... In the end, monopolists exist to serve themselves, not to serve their customers. They don’t get the training that customers normally provide, because the monopolist doesn’t have to train.
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As a consequence, monopolies stultify over time. They may have virtually unlimited resources, but they don’t have the motivation to deploy them productively. When the environment in which they operate necessitates major adaptation, they are unable to adjust, because they are out of practice."

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.
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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.
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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!

Contra a academia, marchar, marchar! (parte II)

Parte I.

"Ultimately, strategy is a way of thinking, not a procedural exercise or a set of frameworks.
...
For a company to beat the market by capturing and retaining an economic surplus, there must be an imperfection that stops or at least slows the working of the market. An imperfection controlled by a company is a competitive advantage. These are by definition scarce and fleeting because markets drive reversion to mean performance
...
Good strategies emphasize difference—versus your direct competitors, versus potential substitutes, and versus potential entrants.
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To beat the market, therefore, advantages have to be robust and responsive in the face of onrushing market forces. Few companies, in our experience, ask themselves if they are beating the market—the pressures of “just playing along” seem intense enough. But playing along can feel safer than it is. Weaker contenders win surprisingly often in war when they deploy a divergent strategy, and the same is true in business
...
The need to beat the market begs the question of which market. Research shows that the unit of analysis used in determining strategy (essentially, the degree to which a market is segmented) significantly influences resource allocation and thus the likelihood of success: dividing the same businesses in different ways leads to strikingly different capital allocations.
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What is the right level of granularity? Push within reason for the finest possible objective segmentation of the market"

Trechos retirados de "Have you tested your strategy lately?"

Contra a academia, marchar, marchar!

“At its heart, business strategy is all about beating the market, or in other words defying the power of “perfect” markets to push economic surplus back to zero. Economic profit—the total profit after the cost of capital is subtracted—measures the success of that defiance by showing what is left on the table after the forces of competition have played out”

A concorrência imperfeita é vista como uma coisa tenebrosa a abater, como uma chatice que impede usarem-se umas formulas-maravilha, e dá azo ao lado irracional dos humanos ao fazerem escolhas. Chamberlin era um economista americano que até queria acabar com as marcas, porque elas são a base para animar a imperfeição dos mercados.

Aqui, este consultor, não quer outra coisa: fomentar, promover a concorrência imperfeita. Criar monopólios informais na mente dos clientes. Alavancar a chegada de Mongo!

Excerto de: Chris Bradley. “Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick”.

"Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte VI)

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

Quando escrevo sobre Mongo e sobre como Mongo é pouco amiga dos gigantes, quando escrevo que a mega-escala deixa de ser uma vantagem num mundo em que todos são "weirds", o Weirdistão, e em que os "extremistas" levam as coisas muito mais a sério que os pacatos consumidores do meio-termo.  é por isto, também:

"This is not news to anyone who’s been around the track a few times. An emphasis on focus, speed, streamlining processes, and finding common platforms has characterized the best companies for years.[Moi ici: O modelo herdado do século XX, de Magnitograd, de Metropolis, do Normalistão, em que volume, escala, eficiência eram palavras-chave para o sucesso] The Internet has helped cut out intermediaries and enabled direct connections, instant feedback, and more information transparency. In design, sleek looks have replaced ornamentation.
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But simplification is not the norm, and that’s a problem. The world is complex enough without human actions making it more so. We have been paying a price for too much complexity, creating — or allowing — so much variety that it is hard to sort through it, and adding so many loops to the chain that no one feels personal responsibility for the whole system or even comprehends it fully.[Moi ici: ATENÇÃO!!! As empresas não querem complexidade porque querem, são arrastadas para a criação de complexidade porque querem servir tudo e todos quando esses todos se estão a diferenciar e a abandonar uma massa anónima e receptiva ao meio-termo e se estão a integrar em tribos aguerridas e orgulhosas da sua essência. BTW, o que eu me ri ontem à noite quando vi o folheto da Aldi que ester na caixa do correio com salsichas vegan, manteiga vegan, não-sei quê vegan ...]
...
Companies sow the seeds of their own decline in adding too many things — product variations, business units, independent subsidiaries — without integrating them. They create complexity, which makes costs increase faster than the potential gains from the new parts.[Recordar: "This is the Industrialist’s Dilemma: the systems, management and assets that led to success in the industrial era are holding incumbents back today, in some cases fatally." Recordo também algo que Seth Godin me fez ver: ""The mass market — which made average products for average people  was invented by organizations that needed to keep their factories and systems running efficiently..Stop for a second and think about the backwards nature of that sentence..The factory came first. It led to the mass market. Not the other way around."]
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In good times, the temptation to accumulate can be indulged because growth masks inefficiencies. As each set of variations requires management attention, companies add administrative staff simply to handle the information and oversight. That is why companies face diseconomies of scale as they get larger — the ratio of administrative costs to production costs burgeons.
...
As companies cut the clutter and simplify their structures, some will also find business opportunities. When everyone else suffers from over-complexity, there is a market for products and services that simplify life."[Moi ici: Como não recordar "decision paralysis" quando há muita escolha.]

Nem de propósito, o que acabo de encontrar no Twitter "'Entire aisles are empty': Whole Foods reveals food shortage crisis". Será um sintoma de quando os reis da eficiência na era digital encontram a complexidade de Mongo?

Trechos retirados de "Simplicity: The Next Big Thing"

"Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte V)

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

Interessante, depois desta série com este título, encontrar este título, "How GE Went From American Icon to Astonishing Mess". 

Decididamente, Mongo não é gigantes-friendly! Apreciei sobretudo este trecho:

"Since Coffin, GE’s secret weapon—and in a way its dominant product—has been its managers. The company brought organizational rigor to the process of scientific discovery, and scientific rigor to management."

Esta é a mentalidade da tríade, a mentalidade do século XX, a lógica de Taylor.

Mongo precisa de outra abordagem de gestão.

"Giants invariably descend into suckiness"

Pretty good generalization: Giant companies focus on cost cutting/short-term earnings. SMEs focus on value creation/mid- to long-term performance. (Halfway decent generalization: Giants invariably descend into suckiness, some more slowly than others.)

— Tom Peters (@tom_peters) January 25, 2018

Recordar "De que serve a escala em Mongo?"

Recomendo a leitura do texto inicial sobre o plankton, "Are we not plankton?":

"Whales have to eat a lot of plankton. A whale needs an enormous number of these tiny creatures because, let's be honest, one plankton just doesn't make a meal.
...
It's unlikely the whale savors each plankton, relishing the value that it brings.
For most modern marketers, quantity isn't the point. What matters is to matter. Lives changed. Work that made an actual difference. Connection.
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You are not a plankton. Neither are your customers."

De que serve a escala em Mongo?

Este tema faz-me sempre recuar ao plankton e a Golias:

• Plankton? (Março 2014)
• Mongo não é um mundo gigantes-friendly (parte III) (Janeiro 2016)
• E porque não somos plankton (parte VII) (Julho 2016)
• Será o efeito de Mongo? (Outubro 2017)

Mais um exemplo como a Chobani, "Halo Top raises stakes in ice-cream wars":

"Halo Top sales grew 2,500 per cent year-on-year in 2016; it has taken a 5 per cent scoop of the US ice-cream market within two years.
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That rate of growth is enough to make multinational food producers choke, given annual sales growth was languishing at an average of 2-3 per cent last year."

Só demonstra como as empresas grandes não têm a vantagem da escala em Mongo.

"Small brands are stealing share from big brands" (parte IV)

Parte I, parte II e parte III.

"HOW GOLIATH CAN SPRING BACK TO LIFE
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David may have won a few battles, but Goliath is still Goliath. Large FMCG companies must go back to their roots and rediscover what made them great in the first place—understanding their customers’ needs, creating products that meet those needs, and building brand engagement. In the process, they will need to learn to manage complexity rather than eliminate it and to break down functional silos, which stand in the way of agility and speed. These are not new goals, but—given the new competitive dynamics—the urgency to achieve them has never been greater. Doing so requires coordinated action on four fronts."

Confesso que tenho dúvidas na capacidade de fazer este "comeback".

• Porque acredito que os consumidores mudaram mesmo, uma premissa que a BCG não aceita;
• Porque as multinacionais estão atoladas num pântano de guerras civis entre capelas;
• Porque as multinacionais são lentas num mundo que precisa de agilidade.

"Small brands are stealing share from big brands" (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

"Supply Economics.During the 50-year rule of big media, big retailers, and big brands, the FMCG playbook focused on scale in order to reduce unit costs in sourcing, manufacturing, brand marketing, trade spending, and overhead. Lower costs allowed companies to invest in innovation, key account management, and global functions, thus reinforcing their advantage over smaller players..Scale created superior economics and barriers to entry, but those advantages are now eroding. Small companies are increasingly able to access or even surpass the economics of much larger competitors in four key areas..Asset-Light Production. Small FMCG companies no longer need to own the means of production; they can effectively rent scale from a large comanufacturer. Through outsourcing, smaller companies can trade massive capital spending for more manageable variable costs at low volumes. [Moi ici: Como não recordar um nome e o que já aqui escrevemos: Font Salem]...Expanded Distribution Options. Small FMCG companies used to be stymied by a limited number of big retailers that carried a limited number of brands, plus their own private labels. Today, they find willing customers in fast-growing new retail formats, especially premium, convenience, and online. ... At Amazon and other online stores, shelf space is unlimited: small brands often have the same visibility as large ones..Some of these new channels offer small FMCG companies access to marketing and commercial tools and insights that were once the exclusive preserve of their larger peers. ...Variable-Cost Marketing. Social and digital media have given small companies the opportunity to build their brands and attract new customers without large upfront commitments to media spending. Unlike global consumer brands, smaller companies are not necessarily trying to reach a mass audience through paid media, such as TV advertising. Rather, they are trying to make personal and targeted connections, which social and digital media facilitate with variable-cost marketing..Ease of Coordination. The small attackers can often act more quickly and creatively than global companies in bringing brands to life. As founder-led companies, they are focused and efficient and do not bear the coordination and governance costs of large organizations. Their agility and simplicity allow them to outmaneuver large, siloed FMCG companies." [Moi ici: Ainda há dias exasperado, transmitia a uma multinacional uma mensagem dura para ver se acordam, se aceleram a tomada de decisão e se se focam. São presas tão fáceis nos tempos que correm]

Trechos retirados de "How Big Consumer Companies Can Fight Back"

"Small brands are stealing share from big brands" (parte II)

Parte I.

"WHY DAVID IS WINNING [Moi ici: Curiosa este recurso à metáfora de David e Golias. Quem estará a fazer o papel de Saúl?]
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For the past five decades or more, multinational FMCG companies strengthened their brands, expanded their portfolios, steadily increased share and revenues, and created strong shareholder value. It was an era of big media, big retailers, and big brands. [Moi ici: E depois ...] But about five years ago, smaller companies and brands began to take share from their much larger rivals for the first time.
...

...
[Moi ici: Segue-se algo com o que não concordamos] Consumer Demand.
The belief that consumers’ preferences have shifted is understandable but misplaced. On the basis of our research in this area and our work over the past five years with global FMCG companies competing against smaller rivals in more than 20 categories, we have concluded that the fundamental drivers of consumer demand have remained consistent over time. [Moi ici: Continuem a laborar nesse erro para que as PME possam continuar a aproveitar]"

"Small brands are stealing share from big brands"

"Small brands are stealing share from big brands. [Moi ici: Em linha com a nossa metáfora de Mongo]
...
Conventional wisdom says that today’s consumers want healthy, natural food and personal-care options, and millennials, in particular, prefer authentic to mass-produced goods. To win back this new breed of consumer, the thinking goes, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies have few options. Either they can launch small brands, at the risk of fragmenting attention and resources, or they can try to increase earnings through deep cost cutting, emulating the approach the private equity firm 3G Capital has taken in its acquisitions of large consumer brands. In short, many believe organic growth from the core is over.
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We disagree. Goliath can defeat David. Consumers’ tastes have changed, but their underlying needs and desires have not.  [Moi ici: Não consigo concordar com esta afirmação. Os consumidores já não sãos os mesmos, já não estão prisioneiros do que o industrialismo criou para eles. Em vez de massa passiva e obediente, tribos cada vez mais apaixonadas e intransigentes] What has fundamentally changed is the economics of supply. [Moi ici: Só isto é muito pouco, é verdade mas não é tudo] Scale was once all important. On its own, however, it no longer guarantees competitive advantage. [Moi ici: Verdade que muitos Sarumans na academia por cá ainda não descobriram] Even so, large FMCG companies can prevail over their supposedly nimbler foes. But they need a new playbook.
...
they need to engage with consumers in new ways, accelerating adoption of the viral, personalized, and experience- based methods that small brands have exploited.
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Third, rather than fearing the complexity that comes with creating and marketing a wider variety of brands and products, they need to embrace it strategically. In a fragmenting world, the ability to serve a wide range of demand effectively and efficiently can be a competitive advantage.
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Finally, they need to emulate the focus, coordination, and speed of their upstart rivals. Those companies rely on the agile principles, popular in entrepreneurial hubs around the world, of rapid prototyping, testing, and learning in continual cycles."

Acredito que é muito mais do que uma alteração na estrutura económica do fornecimento. Acredito que é muito mais radical e profundo e não creio que no longo prazo a maioria das empresas grandes subsista como tal. Mesmo que queiram mudar estão prisioneiras da necessidade de grandes séries para justificar as taxas de retorno exigidas pelos accionistas.

Trechos retirados de "How Big Consumer Companies Can Fight Back"

Optar pela concorrência imperfeita

Outro exemplo, apesar de norte-americano, que ilustra a evolução do nosso têxtil, calçado, mobiliário, ...

"Emi-G made sports socks. Color: white. Styles: crew and athletic. "Knit them, put a toe in them, and out the door in 300-pound cases," [Moi ici: Quantidade, eficiência, margens apertadas] says Terry. For 12 years, Russell Athletic was the company's only customer.
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But by the mid-2000s, Fort Payne's hosiery industry--once booming, according to Gina, with more than 120 mills employing roughly half the area's population--had been decimated by a mass exodus to Central America. [Moi ici: Por cá foi por causa da China. No entanto, se falássemos com um Ferreira do Amaral, ou um Vítor Bento, ou um Paes Mamede diriam que foi por causa da adesão ao euro] More than 100 mills had closed, and in 2007, Russell decided to terminate its business with Emi-G. Over the next seven months, the Locklears let go of their entire staff,"

Um dos meus relatos preferidos no mundo do calçado é o da empresa portuguesa que deixou de ser competitiva a produzir sapatos que se vendem a 20€ e agora tem sucesso a produzir sapatos que se vendem a 230€.

"In 2008, Gina, then 28, was living in Birmingham, working as a real estate agent. Years before, when she was employed at a ski shop, she had observed that specialty ski socks sold for $20 a pair. She'd also recently begun to buy organic--food, cleaning products, personal care--but had trouble finding apparel made from organic cotton.
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Gina pitched her parents what to them seemed like a radical idea: an organic cotton sock brand for the eco-chic set.
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"I didn't understand about organic anything, let alone socks," says Terry. "And I knew it would be very expensive to start a brand." Terry's main sticking point was that organic cotton costs several times as much as standard cotton. Gina spent a year making the business case, pointing to the higher price tag and margin on a premium fashion product. She finally persuaded her parents--who were also out of options--to fund the venture with $100,000 from Emi-G's coffers.
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worked with her parents' plant manager to reconfigure Emi-G's machines to produce small batches of patterned, multicolored socks.
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In 2010, Whole Foods picked up Zkano; then, five years later, Martha Stewart selected Little River Sock Mill--Gina's second line, specifically for specialty boutiques--for an American Made award. Today, Zkano sells primarily online, while Little River has accounts with some 200 retailers.
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With new revenue coming in, Gina's parents were able to slowly rebuild Emi-G by doing smaller, limited runs for clients such as a medical company that sells socks to hospitals. Zkano and Little River now account for roughly half of Emi-G's revenue, which is approaching $3 million."

Quando não se pode ser competitivo pelo custo, as empresas têm de fugir desse terreno e procurar fazer como David face a Golias e optar pela concorrência imperfeita.

Trechos retirados de "This Sock Company Is Making 'Made in Alabama' Cool--Thanks to Martha Stewart and Whole Foods"

Do concreto para o abstracto e não o contrário (parte II)

No postal "Do concreto para o abstracto e não o contrário" escrevi:

"Tem, quase sempre, de partir daquilo que tem. Não tem a liberdade de ir à procura do próximo hit, porque isso exige recursos e uma cultura que normalmente não tem."

Interessante que o primeiro passo em  "Creating a Strategy That Works" seja "Commit to an identity"

Porque Mongo é gigantes-unfriendly

Porque Mongo é gigantes-unfriendly:

"“Owners” who are changing all the time, and many of the stock analysts who do their bidding, couldn’t care less about engaging employees, about pride and respect in work, about serving customers, about quality in products and services.  All they care about is MORE: squeezing out more revenues, more savings, more profits. Manage the enterprise the way you make orange juice.
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But what happens when there is no more to be squeezed out of a place that has been run really well? The answer is easy: provide less to make more. Rip the customers off with add-on fees. Pressure the staff to cut corners. Or “downsize” them altogether so that there is no-one to replenish the toilet paper. And don’t forget to pay the CEO outrageous bonuses to drive all this."

Uma PME pode fazer milagres se vir que ganhar dinheiro é uma consequência e não um objectivo directo, se tiver paciência estratégica, se tiver ao leme quem tenha paixão, se apostar na interacção e na co-criação.

Trecho retirado de "The devil is in a detail"

Mongo e os gigantes

Muita turbulência no ar. Por um lado, há anos que escrevo que Mongo não é um mundo gigantes-friendly.
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Por outro lado, esta semana já apanhei "The rise of the superstars":

"But now size seems to matter again. [Moi ici: Acredito que seja ilusão estatística. A febre de fusões e aquisições que destrói valor é prova disso. A fusão das cervejeiras citada no artigo não acontece numa posição de força mas é antes uma reacção ao avanço dos Davids] The McKinsey Global Institute, the consultancy’s research arm, calculates that 10% of the world’s public companies generate 80% of all profits. Firms with more than $1 billion in annual revenue account for nearly 60% of total global revenues and 65% of market capitalisation."

E "What kills companies?":

"The more firms engage in getting today’s work done, it actually reduces the probability of making shifts in innovation and strategy. That is what is so strikingly paradoxical to leaders: The very recipes that work so well for today often get in the way of the future. It’s a challenge to incrementally improve what you’re doing as you’re trying to complement it with something different. The dual strategies are inconsistent."

E "Finding the Sweet Spot Between Mass Market and Premium":

"For some time, however, established players have been having trouble premiumizing their products. Smaller brands have been picking up the slack. In 2015, for example, small food and beverage manufacturers drove nearly half of category growth, while the top 25 manufacturers could only take credit for 3%. "