Onde se faz o futuro

Houve um tempo em que era ao contrário...

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"Emprego ideal. Jovens sonham com lugar em empresas de topo"

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Houve um tempo em que o sonho era constituir a sua própria empresa, era entrar numa start-up, era ser independente...

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Hamel e Prahalad em "Competing for the Future" escreveram este trecho:

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"Companies that create the future are rebels. They're subversives. They break the rules. They're filled with people who take the other side of an issue just to spark a debate. In fact, they're probably filled with folks who didn't mind being sent to the principal's office once in a while. Foresight often comes not from being a better forecaster, but from being less hide-bound."

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Por isso, a evolução da origem das patentes.

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Por isso, a revolução na indústria farmacêutica... em que as grandes empresas se estão a metamorfosear em empresas grandes:

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"Grandes farmacêuticas investem cada vez mais nos genéricos" (no semanário Vida Económica):

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"A indústria de medicamentos genéricos está a funcionar como «tábua de salvação» a algumas empresas de fármacos de marca, devido à falta de novas patentes. Mas também está a servir para reduzir os défices orçamentais e os gastos com a saúde por parte dos consumidores. A indústria do medicamento está a passar por profundas alterações"

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As grandes empresas têm tanto a perder com a mudança, tantos "sunk costs", trazem um tal momentum que é difícil alterar-lhes a direcção (não por causa da velocidade mas por causa da massa):

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"I’ve been wondering lately that companies must have a collective lizard brain. It’s that feeling that keeps the status quo going, that resists change, that resists new ways of doing things, that never thinks outside the box. It’s that collective voice that says “that will never work”, “we did that before and it didn’t work”, “we will fail”. It’s that feeling that prevents individuals from contradicting the boss, from speaking at that meeting, from presenting that innovative idea that might change everything for the better. It’s that little devil’s voice that says “do nothing, say nothing, you might fail, you might look ridiculous, they will laugh at you”." (Trecho retirado daqui ouver aqui)

Poesia "Inventando o futuro"

Texto de Charles Handy:

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"You can't look at the future as a continuation of the past. The things that got you where you are are seldom the things that keep you there. But, on the other hand, if you don't know where you are coming from you will find it hard to go forward.

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Actually, we've got to see the future as a series of discontinuities, and we've got to learn to take these things in our stride.
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I use the metaphor of the second curve, the second part of what is called the Sigmoid curve. The Sigmoid or S-shaped curve describes the way things go in life. They start out with a dip and then, with luck or good management, they grow and move up the curve, but eventually they wane. Everything wanes. It's true of empires, of corporations, of product lifecycles, of relationships, even of life itself. The way you get continued growth in the future is by building a new curve before the first one begins to descend, which means constantly being inventive and
creative.

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Recently it has been fashionable for companies to think of themselves as problem-solving organizations. That is actually wrong because, by the time you've discovered the problem and you're solving it, you're already out of date. You have to be ahead of the problem. You have to invent the world. You have to think `second-curve'.

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But in order to recreate themselves for the future, organizations must be prepared to let go of the past. Otherwise they'll just get locked into their present curve and sooner or later they will come to an end. The trick is not to let go of the past all at once. You can't abandon the first curve until you have built the second one. So, for a time, the past and the future have to coexist in the present. And that's the pathway through the paradox.

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The way you make sense of the future, in organizations and in societies and in your own life, is by taking charge of the future. Not by responding to it.

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I wrote a book called The Age of Unreason. The reason I chose that particular title was because George Bernard Shaw once wrote that the reasonable man responds to the world, while the unreasonable man tries to make the world respond to him. Therefore, he said, all progress (and I have to add all the disasters too) comes from the unreasonable person; the person who actually tries to change the world. What that means is that we can't wait for people to offer us secure jobs and long careers. We have to decide what kind of life we want to lead and go out and make it happen."