A suckiness dos gigantes nada pode contra isto

"Along with the ceaseless churn of collections — averaging at least four a year — designers leading major brands must invent It bags, launch mass-market fragrances and cosmetic lines, and produce ever more extravagant shows and events to feed social media. Despite this, what consumers long for are experiences, authenticity and community — concepts that, when touted for marketing purposes, quickly lose meaning.
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While running a small independent fashion label is more difficult in some ways than being part of a big conglomerate, it does allow the freedom to be true to one’s instincts and beliefs, which in turn leads to real brand community.
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who are transforming how business is done in their industry with practices that are ethical and equitable to their manufacturers, employees and the environment. They do this not because it is good business (it usually isn’t), but because it seems the obvious moral choice. And because they do this while creating fashion that articulates and, most importantly, anticipates what women want to express and how they want to feel, they have earned the devotion and loyalty of their customers, who tend to be talented, self-realized women: architects and actors, writers and gallery owners.
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Indeed, the quest to be true to one’s self is something all these designers share. Several years ago, Rachel Comey, 45, realized the usual fashion show setup — people crammed on hard benches to watch a few minutes of clothes on parade — didn’t do justice to the kinds of clothes she was making. Instead, Comey began hosting intimate dinner parties, where guests could converse while seeing pieces worn by models of various ages and races. Comey’s designs, which early on suited the creative Brooklyn woman who wanted to look equal parts sexy, comfortable and dorky, are sometimes deeply personal, riffing on her own girlhood memories." (1)

Um filme com um título que diz tudo "Hand-Crafted Is So In Right Now--And This Company Is Capitalizing On It"

Os gigantes vão ser úteis, como a Uber para limpar a legislação, para financiar o investimento em tecnologia que depois, com a sua democratização, poderão ser usados pelos independentes, "If the Shoe Fits: 3D Printing and the Future of Manufacturing Footwear", porque a suckiness vai dar cabo deles.




Trechos 1 retirados de "The Independent Women’s Designers Having a Big Moment"

"Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte XII)

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

Revolta contra a suckiness.

Em especial a parte X, acerca dos gigantes terem sido talhados para o Normalistão e falhem cada vez mais com o avanço de Mongo, eis o tema abordado por Seth Godin ontem em "Bigger to feel safer":

"Creative institutions get bigger so that they can avoid doing things that feel risky.
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They may rationalize this as leverage, as creating more impact. But it's a coin with two sides, and the other side is that they do proportionally more things that are reliable and fewer things that feel like they might fail.
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In other words, hiring more people makes their useful creative productivity go down.
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This is not the way it works in a factory. When Henry Ford hired more people for the assembly line, productivity went up. Things got more efficient. More lines, more plants, more hands led to more productivity. The natural scale of the enterprise was large indeed.
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But a creative studio, a marketing team, architects, strategists, programmers, writers, editors, city planners, teachers--the natural scale of the enterprise is smaller than you think. [Moi ici: O que dizemos acerca de Mongo? O triunfo da arte! Organizações que praticam a arte não podem ter sucesso com os pressupostos que resultavam no Normalistão]
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This is a new law of organizations, and it's not well understood."

A maré do século XXI

Há dias Steve Blank usava a história para fazer um paralelismo entre Elon Musk e o fundador da GM, "Why the Future of Tesla May Depend on Knowing What Happened to Billy Durant".

O artigo é muito interessante e deu para aprender factos importantes. No entanto, há uma ressalva que  quero fazer: atenção à grande corrente de fundo que estava em marcha na primeira metade do século XX.

A primeira metade do século XX foi a ascensão de Metrópolis, a ascensão de Magnitograd, a ascensão da produção em massa, a ascensão da padronização, o triunfo do Normalistão.

Agora, a embrenharmos-nos no século XXI, estamos perante uma outra corrente, uma corrente numa direcção oposta: a ascensão de um mundo económico a que metaforicamente chamo de Mongo; o Estranhistão, a ascensão da variedade, a ascensão da diversidade, a ascensão dos artesãos e das tribos.

Ontem descobri um artigo que ilustra bem esta corrente que nos está a levar a Mongo, "How to Start Designing Your Own Products in 4 Easy Steps":

"With print-on-demand, the sky's the limit with what you can create. And the best part is, for aspiring business owners, it's extremely easy to get started.
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Over the last two years, I've gone from zero to over 600 products that I sell online using print-on-demand technology. The technology has not only allowed me to create a passive income, but also explore my creative side. The best part -- there are literally hundreds of products that I can create so I can focus my time and creative efforts on coming up with incredible designs."

Aquilo a que se chama aqui de democratização da produção (desde 2012), o que vai derrotar os gigantes concentrados na massa, as cooperativas de artesãos. Recordar que na cidade americana de Baltimore, só nessa cidade, em 1920 existiam 19 marcas fabricantes de automóveis.

E, no fim, ganha a Alemanha (parte II) - o reverso da medalha

Ao olhar para uma série de gráficos desta publicação da APICCAPS:

Preços de importação de calçado no Japão

Preços de importação de calçado na China

Preços de importação de calçado na Rússia

Preços de importação de calçado nos EUA

Vivemos tempos de euro forte, ou talvez, tempos em que outros desvalorizam as suas moedas. Em tempos de euro forte alerta-se para o impacte nas exportações. Na mesma publicação referida acima, nas páginas 4 e 8, por exemplo, pode ler-se:

"2017 fecha com novo crescimento de 2,2% da exportação, mas apreciação do Euro frustra objetivo dos 2 mil milhões, sem ajuda dos EUA.
...
Como se temia, a excelente performance da exportação de calçado exibida durante o primeiro semestre de 2017, evidenciava já uma forte travagem, para metade, do ritmo de crescimento no ano terminado no 3o trimestre, saldando-se, ainda assim, por um crescimento anual de 2,2% (G9).
Sendo um crescimento ainda razoável, ficou um ponto percentual abaixo do ritmo de 2016, o que não permitiu quebrar a barreira dos dois mil milhões de exportações de calçado que parecia ao alcance no fim do 1o semestre. A impedir uma maior contribuição dos mercados extra-Euro, pesou a apreciação do Euro frente ao Dólar (+7%) e em geral (+2%, EEF Winter, Fevereiro 2018)."

Em "E, no fim, ganha a Alemanha" procuro demonstrar porque é que quando o euro baixa o país que mais ganha é a Alemanha. Olhando para as figuras acima a Alemanha do calçado é a Itália. Usando o mesmo racional de Dolan e Simon no postal referido sobre a Alemanha, quando o euro sobe o país mais prejudicado pode ser a Itália, e os países abaixo, Espanha e Portugal, com boas marcas ou com boa imagem do sector podem aproveitar o movimento dos clientes-premium que se vêm forçados/tentados a saltar a vedação e vir experimentar marcas intermédias.

Por favor, não embalem em explicações académicas com 50 anos, desenvolvidas para o Normalistão por pessoas que nunca viram paixão na economia, só matemática. Em vez de medo e receio por causa da apreciação do euro, trabalho redobrado para subir na escala de valor e estar atento às oportunidades.

Anónimo engenheiro da província, mas à frente

Ontem a meio da tarde fui ao Twitter e não resisti a escrever:

não há rasgo em lado nenhum, sempre os mesmos zombies: louçã, félix, ângelos correias...
uma classe política em circuito fechado há demasiado tempo, gente pré-windows, pré-apple, pré-DOS https://t.co/YU8rXomjyf

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) April 3, 2018

Esta operação em circuito fechado, gera respostas absurdas para desafios novos. Como não recordar Napoleão:

"Napoleon said: To understand someone, you have to understand what the world looked like when they were twenty." 

Como não recordar Zapatero.

E volto ao postal "Mas claro, eu só sou um anónimo engenheiro da província" de Maio de 2013 sobre os Encontros da Junqueira.

Pensem bem no significado, no alcance e no impacte deste fenómeno: em Maio de 2013 elite que pensa em e a Economia em Portugal continuava embrenhada no século XX, continuava a acreditar na validade das hipóteses que venciam aquando da rodagem do filme Metrópolis por Fritz Lang.

Agora, leiam "The End of Scale":

"For more than a century, economies of scale made the corporation an ideal engine of business. But now, a flurry of important new technologies, accelerated by artificial intelligence (AI), is turning economies of scale inside out. Business in the century ahead will be driven by economies of unscale, in which the traditional competitive advantages of size are turned on their head.
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Investments in scale used to make a lot of sense. Around the beginning of the 20th century, the world was treated to a technological surge unlike any in history. That was when inventors and entrepreneurs developed cars, airplanes, radio, and television, and built out the electric grid and telephone system.
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Scale conferred an enormous competitive advantage. It not only lowered fixed costs — it also created a forbidding barrier to entry for competitors. Organizations of all kinds spent the 20th century seeking scale. That’s how we ended up with giant corporations, and universities with 50,000 students, and multinational health care providers.
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This is the basis of economics of unscale. The winning companies in today’s tech surge are companies that profitably give each customer exactly what he or she wants, not companies that give everyone the same thing.
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Thus, scaled companies find themselves beleaguered by unscaled competitors.
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This is a clear indication of what big corporations are facing in an era that favors economies of unscale over economies of scale. Small, unscaled companies can challenge big companies with products or services more perfectly targeted to niche markets — products that can win against mass-appeal offerings. When unscaled competitors lure away enough customers, economies of scale begin to work against the incumbents. The cost of scale rises as fewer and fewer units move through expensive, large-scale factories and distribution systems — a cost burden not borne by unscaled companies.
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Remember, the corporation hasn’t been around forever. [Moi ici: Como bem sublinhou Seth Godin] It was an invention of the Industrial Age and it was created in response to a unique set of conditions. It makes sense that a new set of conditions needs a new structure. Maybe it will look like something that doesn’t yet exist. But surely some kind of unscaled corporation will emerge in the near future."

Pensem mais uma vez na quantidade de enormidades que oposição e situação deitam cá para fora quando ciclo eleitoral após ciclo eleitoral são comandadas por gente sem skin-in-the game. Não resisto a citar Nassim Taleb:

"Son expertos de pega. Un fontanero sabe de fontanería. Un charcutero sabe de jamón serrano. Pero se ha demostrado que los economistas no saben de economía. Ninguno vio venir la crisis, con honrosas excepciones, y fuimos marginados durante años. Pero lo peor de todo: no han aprendido nada de los últimos 10 años.
Dice Taleb que el negocio de la restauración funciona porque son los clientes, y no otros restauradores, quienes deciden qué locales prosperan y cuáles cierran. Lo mismo ocurre con los médicos, que dependen de su buena reputación entre los pacientes. «Y de no matarlos, claro», bromea.
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En cambio, otros sectores, como la Universidad o la burocracia, están «envenenados» porque sus profesionales se evalúan entre ellos mismos, con nula transparencia."

"pensar que continuarão a existir "mass markets""

A propósito de "How can a big firm be like a start-up?" este trecho:

"Successful innovation involves two things: discovering something new; and bringing that thing to the mass market. Young firms are good at discovery and big ones are good at scaling things up. So let the small ones discover, and if you’re a big firm, consolidate or grow those things into a bigger market."

Uma das falhas do artigo é pensar que continuarão a existir "mass markets".

Mongo é um mundo de tribos e de gente weird and proud of it.

E aquilo que interessa às empresas grandes são ofertas que consigam ter impacte nas contas. Produtos bem sucedidos, mas destinados a nichos não têm tradução nas contas globais e obrigam a outro mindset: na produção, no marketing e na comercialização.

Está tudo relacionado

Interessante encontrar relações entre:

• a urgência para aprender 
• a urgência para lidar com a variedade
• a suckiness dos gigantes
• os totós que julgam que o progresso ocorre comandado pela tecnologia. Como há muito tempo me disse o parceiro das conversas oxigenadas, é esquisito pensar na Indústria 4.0 sem pensar nas pessoas que a vão operar.

Sugiro a leitura de "a vision for learning"

Da normalização para a excepção (parte II)

Parte I.

Muitas vezes penso que as pessoas quando planeiam o futuro não fazem como Teseu no labirinto, não usam uma corda para unir o hoje com o futuro desejado. Por isso, usam lugares comuns. Por isso, não põem os pés no chão e testam a validade dos pressupostos que estão a assumir.

Acerca da variedade de Mongo e da sua conjugação com a automatização já escrevi, por exemplo:

• Estranhistão, autenticidade, imperfeição e automatização (Agosto 2013)
• Um mesmo processo automatizado é demasiado rígido para Mongo (Abril 2014)
• Mongo e a automatização... pois! (Fevereiro 2016)
• Beyond Lean (Agosto 2017)

Agora encontro:

"From fearing exceptions to celebrating exceptions. In the scalable efficiency model, where process efficiency is the source of performance improvement, exceptions and deviation from the norm are typically seen as a problem that is either slowing us down or creating costly waste. For those measured on the efficiency of a process, dealing with exceptions can be an unwelcome distraction from executing the standard process. For the individual, the department, and the organization, all of the incentives and systems encourage minimizing variances and even hiding those that occur. Meanwhile, the potential opportunities—to serve the customer in new ways, to use new tools or create new value— go unexplored. This is where the opportunities to improve an organization’s performance may arise.
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As the number of exceptions increase for frontline workers, organizations should embrace and celebrate exceptions as an opportunity to improve performance. At the very moment when much of business, government, and society is consumed by the idea of machines taking our jobs and what that will mean for humans, we risk letting what differentiates us from machines atrophy. Humans are better at handling exceptions than machines are."

Trecho retirado de "Beyond process - How to get better, faster as “exceptions” become the rule"

Da normalização para a excepção

Primeiro, recordo este postal "Redsigma - O fim da linha" de Agosto de 2013:

"O advento de Mongo obriga a mudar de paradigma. Há meses que ando a namorar com o inevitável... o nome Redsigma está esgotado!!! Redsigma foi uma marca que criei em 1991 ou 92. Reduzir o sigma, reduzir a variabilidade, apostar na standardização. Lentamente, comecei a mudar e hoje, sou quase um inimigo declarado da normalização... prefiro apoiar empresas a estarem à frente da onda, tão à frente que ainda não existem normas. Prefiro apostar na variedade do que estar preocupado com a variabilidade.)" 

Depois, volto a "Beyond process - How to get better, faster as “exceptions” become the rule": 

"What is likely to ramp up performance for the organization? Accelerating performance uses different levers than have been used in the quest for scalable efficiency. Organizations that want to pursue this opportunity will need to focus their attention differently than where most are today.
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Focus on exception handling as a catalyst for performance improvement. [Moi ici: Sempre que se está numa empresa de calçado este é um tema recorrente, o excesso de amostras, a quantidade de pequenas séries, a saudade pelo tempo das grandes séries e das cores uncial - preto e castanho] One consequence of the relentless, rapid changes of the Big Shift [Moi ici: A Deloitte usa este termo, assim como eu uso o termo Mongo] is that many employees in large companies [Moi ici: Pobres gigantes. Por isso, o sucesso das Font Salem e das Lusomedicamenta] are already spending more of their time on “exceptions”—those unexpected issues that fall outside the realm of ex- isting standardized processes. These exceptions can be early signals of changing customer needs or shifting contexts that represent potential threats or significant new opportunities for growth for the company. Embedded in them is the opportunity to develop new approaches and new solutions to deliver more value in response to some new need or circumstance. Organizations that focus on improving their ability to handle exceptions—not just to resolve or eliminate them but to glean learning and create value from them—will discover a valuable source of performance improvement, especially if exceptions increase. Variances and deviations from the norm are the bane of efficiency but can fuel learning and new ways to improve performance over time.
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Focus on value creation as the key driver of performance. While costs can’t be cut any lower than zero, the potential for value creation has no such bounds. [Moi ici: Como não recuar a 2008 e à originação de valor] Focusing on new value creation can be the key to getting on a trajectory of accelerating performance improvement."

No Verão passado descobri o Seru e fiquei surpreendido por ninguém falar dele. Ainda há muito a aprender, quanto tempo será preciso para fazer esta transição da normalização para a excepção?

Agora vou especular (parte II)

Na Parte I em Novembro de 2007 escrevi:

"Assim, se tivesse dinheiro tinha adquirido a fábrica de Loulé à UNICER, com os trabalhadores incluídos, e entrava no mercado da produção de pequenas séries de cerveja, por conta das grandes marcas, estilo 'façonnage', como dizem na indústria farmacêutica. Transformava a fábrica numa 'boutique' de pequenas séries, de autênticas 'delicatessen'... delicadezas que as grandes linhas não podem fornecer."

Agora Fevereiro de 2018, "Font Salem investe mais 40 milhões na fábrica de Santarém":

"a empresa vai também investir numa nova linha de produção, a sétima da fábrica. “Ampliaremos a capacidade produtiva da fábrica Font Salem de Santarém, [Moi ici: Depois de um outro investimento feito em 2015] que alcançará os quatro milhões de hectolitros ao ano. O que nos deixa com sete linhas de enchimento prontas para preparar todo o tipo de cervejas e refrigerantes. Com isto, prevê-se a expansão da fábrica, o que tornará possível produzir novos produtos – para além das atuais 300 referências”,"

"Font Salem vai investir 40 ME para duplicar produção na fábrica de Santarém"

"A Font Salem espera agora que a expansão da fábrica de Santarém se traduza também no aumento da produção para o mercado externo, onde a empresa quer crescer acima dos 25% nos próximos anos."

Recordar Setembro de 2011 - "Um exemplo de proposta de valor"

Recordar Janeiro de 2012 - "Sistematização de ideias"

"Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte VIII)

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

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

Esta é uma frase que muito aprecio.

"Like many former stalwarts of a now-crumbling print industry, the greeting card market has seen better days.
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Hallmark, once the Q-Tip or Band-Aid of greeting cards, closed its distribution center in Enfield, Connecticut, in 2015, and has downsized its full-time staff by more than 50% in the past few years, with continuing news of store closures. And the digital startup Paperless Post, which previously offered both printed and digital cards, recently decided that paperless was indeed the way to go."

Suckiness...

"The shaky prospect of going into any print-based business makes it all the more unlikely that the graphic designer and illustrator Anna Bond, who founded the paper goods business Rifle Paper Co. in 2009 with her husband, Nathan, out of their garage apartment in Winter Park, Florida, should find such great success nearly 100 years after Hallmark was founded.
Rifle reported $21.4 million in company revenue in 2016, and bested that figure with $22.3 million in 2017, with more than 90 product offerings that extend well beyond the stationery and greeting cards for which the company is best known. Here’s how Bond, a 33-year-old Floridian who until 2012 lived in an apartment above her in-laws’ garage, built a multimillion-dollar empire—and proved that print isn’t dead yet."

Recordar na parte VII:

 "But you likely need to trade out your mass-marketing business model for a niche, premium, and specialty model and scale strategies for a superconsumer strategy."

 Trechos retirados de "How One Designer Built A $22M Company–Selling Paper"

"Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte VII)

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

"General Mills actually grew from #2 to #1 in market share the last few years. But the cereal category declined $4 billion dollars from 2000 to 2015, so it didn’t matter. In fact, total sales at General Mills has declined for 15 of the last 16 quarters.
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General Mills highlights three things that are the root of the problem of the axiom “Be #1 or #2 in your category.”
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The first problem is it encourages managers to focus most of their attention on market share and not enough on the category itself. It assumes your category will continue to be relevant and grow so you can be a big fish in a big and growing pond. But what happens when your category is not growing — or even declines? Being number one in a declining market isn’t a great place to be.
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Few companies are willing to consider that its category’s best days are behind it and lay out a radically different strategy to win in the midst of category decline or exit the category entirely.
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General Mills doesn’t compete with just Kellogg’s cereal (what), but a growing number of breakfast and snack categories (when), with a shrinking consumer base in the face of anti-sugar and anti-carb trends (who) [Moi ici: As tais tribos assimétricas] and smaller brands, sold in smaller format stores and e-commerce (how). Looking at it this way, and you see a seemingly endless array of Russian nesting dolls hidden competitor one after another. Carbs are losing to protein. Meals like breakfast are giving way to snacks. Big brands are giving way to smaller brands. Grocery is giving way to food service and e-commerce.
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The first step in strategy has to be to assess whether the category is growing or declining, then choose your strategy tool kit accordingly. Most traditional strategy axioms like “create a competitive moat,” “the low-cost producer wins,” “execution trumps strategy,” and “the customer is always right” makes sense when your category has a tailwind you can count on.
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But if your category is declining or about to decline, your moat, your leadership in cost, and your execution will all look silly at best and could be a big write-down at worst.
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And in a declining category, you should still treat all customers with empathy and respect, but you shouldn’t be listening to most of them. If superconsumers are 10% of consumers that drive 30-70% of category sales and 99% of category insights and wisdom, then 90% of consumers may in fact be misleading you.
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Companies like General Mills have three choices. You can exit and enter a better category via a merger or acquistion. You can re-invent the category through category creation and category design strategies. Or you have to change your stripes, and radically shift your business model. It is still possible to win in a declining category. But you likely need to trade out your mass-marketing business model for a niche, premium, and specialty model and scale strategies for a superconsumer strategy.[Moi ici: Mongo é isto e isto é muito unfriendly para os gigantes]
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Is it likely that General Mills would sell or spin off cereal? Can they re-invent and create a new category? Can they shift from mass marketing to super-premium, direct to consumer strategies? It’s unclear. It is very hard for large companies to change. These are the questions that their leadership and board just be wrestling with."

Excelente artigo "Why Dominating Your Category Can Be a Flawed Strategy"

"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 ...]
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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.
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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"

A caminho de Mongo

Mongo é a designação que dou à metáfora que ilustra o universo económico para onde caminhamos, um mundo de cada vez mais diversidade e cada vez mais afastado da produção em massa que caracterizou o século XX.

Eis o que encontrei em "The Anxious Optimist in the Corner Office - What’s on the mind of 1,293 CEOs around the world?" - PwC's 21st CEO Survey (claro que estes CEO não são de PME)
"Echoing the theme of the World Economic Forum this year, PwC’s 21st CEO Survey speaks to how companies are navigating an increasingly fractured world. We asked CEOs to consider a number of opposing political, economic, and trade trends and pick a side in terms of which way the world was moving (see Exhibit 11). The results are revealing.
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Q Considering the following opposing political, economic, and trade trends, please select the one you believe the world is moving more towards:

most CEOs see the world moving ... towards multiple belief systems and rules of law, regional trading blocs and increased tax competition, and rising nationalism and diverse economic models. In the wake of Brexit, the Trump administration’s withdrawal from trade"

BTW, neste tempo de interesse nos riscos, também por causa da ISO 9001, à pergunta sobre qual o risco mais elevado para os CEO europeus temos:

Como não pensar logo nos populistas que por cá querem criar mais barreiras à criação de riqueza.

Quantos decisores corariam?

1º Considerar a transição para aquilo a que chamamos de Mongo, a evolução para o Estranhistão = um mundo com cada vez mais tribos apaixonadas e menos gente dentro da caixa da normalidade. Cada vez mais gente que não quer ser tratada como mais um, como plankton.

2º Há anos que escrevo aqui e prego, muitas vezes no deserto, acerca das consequências desta evolução para as empresas, um perigo para as empresas grandes, uma exigência crescente para mais empresas mais pequenas para serem focadas num grupo específico de clientes. Pois, salami slicers em vez de Bruce Jenner! E recordar este insight poderoso:

"Customers often think we are different not because we are different, but because we recognize what makes them different"

O trecho que se segue encaixa-se perfeitamente nesta linha de raciocínio:

"Customers are often more heterogeneous than the companies that serve them. Trying to be a one-stop shop and attempting to appeal to a wide spectrum of customers, isn’t necessarily a smart strategy."[Moi ici: Quantos decisores corariam se lessem este trecho e intuissem o que é que ele significa?]

Poucos acreditam num engenheiro da província que faz previsões sobre um futuro a que apelida de Mongo. No entanto, ... muito à frente.

"If you are in an industry where most firms are alike, and the norm is to offer value to a wide spectrum of customers, I predict that at some point – maybe not too far into your future – someone will disrupt your industry by developing a superior value proposition for a very particular customer segment. It’s in those industries where innovation is most feasible and plausible.
...
Focusing your value proposition – whether it is the one for customers or the one for employees – on a specific group of people can empower you to make innovative trade-offs. It can enable you to eliminate traditional trappings that are no longer to everyone’s liking and do a better job across different dimensions.
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In this way, homogeneity in your industry allows you to stop doing certain things that have become outdated. It frees you up to stop offering services and products that target everyone. This opportunity for innovation is not about emulating the awe-inspiring, hi-tech Silicon Valley firms, instead, it’s about making smarter use of the heterogeneity in your business."

Isto é tão claro, tão inevitável para mim...

Imaginem o impacte que isto terá para as empresas grandes...

Pensem nos hummer da Volvo.

Trechos retirados de "Strategy - stop doing what everyone does"

Tribos por todo o lado

Tribos por todo lado, nichos por todo o lado. Mongo é isto:

"all of them into this niche product that acts as a social identifier. For them, standing in line for a T-shirt or baseball cap is a way of telling the world that you know about something that not everyone is hip to.
...
“We become a little band of survivors, with a grim gallows humor to match,” Mr. Andrews wrote. “We’re all in this together.”"

Trechos retirados de "The Cult of the Line: It’s Not About the Merch"

O século XX continua por cá (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

Há anos que refiro aqui o beco sem saída a que as corporações gigantes estão a chegar ao depararem com Mongo e a explosão de tribos que traz. Por exemplo:

• E porque não somos plankton (parte VII)
• E porque não somos plankton (parte VI)

A P&G a encolher, a Mondelez a encolher, ...

Via Twitter o @hnascim chamou-me a atenção para "So Long, Hamburger Helper: America's Venerable Food Brands Are Struggling", mais um exemplo de Mongo não é um mundo gigantes-friendly (parte III):

"For over a century, brands such as Kellogg’s cereal, Campbell’s soup and Aunt Jemima pancake mix filled pantries of American households that wanted safe, affordable and convenient food. They provided companies with reliable revenue growth from grocery shelves, and there was little reason to mess with that formula.
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Today, these giants are struggling with competition that is corroding business from both ends. High-end consumers are shifting toward fresher items with fewer processed ingredients while cost-conscious shoppers are buying inexpensive store brands. [Moi ici: Polarização dos mercados] The makers of staples including Chef Boyardee canned pasta and Hamburger Helper meal kits failed to spot the threat and didn’t innovate in time.
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Anyone searching for macaroni and cheese, a childhood staple, can opt for fancy pasta with organic ingredients or inexpensive store brands such as Kroger Co.’s. Squeezed in the middle are Kraft Heinz Co.’s venerable blue-and-yellow boxes.
...
“A lot of what’s crept into big companies is internal focus, bureaucracy, PowerPoint presentations—the antithesis of agility,”
...
Many big brands didn’t move fast enough to remove artificial ingredients and haven’t been able to shed the negative perception of processed food, said several food executives and others close to the industry.
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At the same time, they faced low-cost store brands—or “private label” products—from retailers such as Costco Wholesale Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and regional grocers that sell copycat products. National brands, which have huge marketing costs, generally can’t afford to compete on price with the in-house brands of stores, which need little marketing beyond displaying products prominently on their own shelves.
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Big food sellers still dominate in America. The 25 largest food and beverage companies commanded a 63% share of $495 billion in U.S. food and beverage sales in 2016, according to consultancy A.T. Kearney.
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That is down from 66% in 2012, and even seemingly small market-share losses hurt sales and profits. The top 25 companies averaged 2% annual sales growth from 2012 through 2016, compared with 6% for their smaller rivals, according to A.T. Kearney."

Ainda mais especulações

Assim que li o título, "Businesses Scale Back Investment in America" veio-me logo à mente a leitura e a reflexão de um passeio "Mais especulações".

Conjugo facilmente o estarmos a entranharmos-nos em Mongo e o choque com a teimosia anglo-saxónica de continuar a acreditar no século XX: eficiência, volume, escala, custo.

"if investment declines over the long term, it could imply at least two bad trends -- either businesses don’t see many good opportunities, or society is becoming more short-termist in its thinking.
...
Net of depreciation, privately held American businesses are only investing about 2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in the U.S. itself" 

"What is going to be scarce is human imperfection"

"In the world of the future, automated perfection is going to be common. Machines will bake perfect cakes, perfectly schedule appointments and keep an eye on your house. What is going to be scarce is human imperfection.
...
If you have a world where the amount of perfect products we can produce increases almost infinitely by using AI, robots and clean energy, we’ll end up with a surfeit of supply, which will push the supply curve far to the right. It will come along with demand curve and ultimately the price will decline.
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What will be plentiful will be the perfect product. What will be rare will be imperfect products; the products that got touched by the human hand.
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A little bit like Persian rug which are produced with error in them. The waivers believed that only god can produce perfection. We might start to value the things that are less perfect, from the ones that are, from the less scarcity value.
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Human-made will be valuable — I can imagine going into a supermarket and seeing on the shelf products labeled “not touched at all by a robot or machine”.
This will be one part of the artisan economy—the economy in which humans will have the space to excel in experiential, discretionary, and intimate. Robots will take all those things that are of high risk, seek reliability, and are repetitive."

Em linha com "Pensado e fabricado por humanos, de carne e osso".

Mongo passa por isto, pela arte, pelas tribos, pela diversidade.

Trechos retirados de "There is one thing that computers will never beat us at"

"the dawning of the era of the independent"

Nos anos quentes a seguir ao 25 de Abril de 1974 era comum ouvir o refrão:

Os grandes ficam maiores e os pequenos desaparecem.

Estávamos em plena vigência do modelo de negócio dominante do século XX: o triunfo da escala e da concentração.

Entretanto, de acordo com a minha interpretação da realidade, estamos a embrenharmos-nos no modelo económico do século XXI: Mongo. E em Mongo a escala deixou de proporcionar a vantagem competitiva do passado.

Em Mongo "We are all weird" e já há mais gente fora do que dentro da caixa. Por isso, em dois ou três dias deparamos com casos como:

• "de como a beleza combate o low-cost"
• Trabalhar o numerador
• Não é possível querer ser tudo para todos ...

E recordo as séries:

• Acerca de Mongo
• Uma novela sobre Mongo

Que retratam a vida em Mongo e o triunfo das tribos sobre a escala, o triunfo da arte sobre o vómito, o triunfo do significado e da proximidade sobre  o padronizado.

E agora, tão estilo de Mongo encontro: "Americans Are Rejecting Big Restaurant Chains":

"Americans are rejecting the consistency of national restaurant chains after decades of dominance in favor of the authenticity of locally owned eateries, with their daily specials and Mom’s watercolors decorating the walls."