Acerca da paixão nas PME

"In the beginning, there was an entrepreneur with a noble idea to make life better through a new product or service. This entrepreneur used passion to create and sell new products. In fact, the company was running on passion - which was contagious and caught customer attention. This passion also drove the company to understand customers better (as well as the reasons they purchase products). Then the company grew, and the bean counters took over. (Moi ici: A mentalidade da tríade) They processed everything and stripped away the most important intangible asset: passion. Without a passion for customers, no strategy will work.(Moi ici: A grande força que nos está a afastar de Magnitograd e do século XX, a adesão a uma tribo. É preciso fazer parte da tribo, é preciso conhecer a linguagem da tribo).Products and customers are two separate entities, which require glue or chemistry to connect them. Without this chemistry, the product is just another set of capabilities. It is actually not the products or services but the way they interact with customers that creates the appeal and the drive to purchase. For many young companies, the passion provides the glue—a personal touch that makes the product or service appealing. Without this passion, the product becomes undifferentiated and similar to competitive offerings. It loses the chemistry that makes it desirable. Companies will repeatedly deny that they have lost passion when in fact they have, and in the process they have lost the bond with the customer. Loss of passion means losing the core reason for being in business and often equates to sinking into the abyss of commoditization in the name of cost control."

Quanto menos paixão mais confiança na folha de excel! Quando se perde o vírus da paixão, instala-se o da comoditização e começa a profecia que se auto-reforça e promove.
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Com Storbacka tomei consciência de que os mercados não existem, eles vão existindo, eles estão em permanente mutação e são influenciáveis, quer pelo lado da procura, quer pelo lado da oferta. Quando se perde a paixão, perde-se a capacidade de influenciar a co-criação, perde-se a capacidade de associar intangibilidade à relação. A concentração passa a ser no produto e em tudo o que está a seu montante. A paixão passa muito pelo que está a jusante do produto, o uso e os resultados e experiências que se sentem.
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Como está a paixão a sua empresa?
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Nunca esquecer a vantagem potencial das PME: A paixão é inversamente proporcional à dimensão das empresas.
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Trecho retirado de "Passionate and profitable : why customer strategies fail and ten steps to do them right" de Lior Arussy.

Mais um exemplo de Mongo e da sua relação com o preço

Este texto "Artisanal, hand-crafted chocolate is a growing niche" é mais um sintoma de uma tendência crescentemente global, aquela a que costumo chamar de Mongo.

"Berk's style of chocolate is known in the business as bean-to-bar, and its focus on pure but bold flavors is drawing fans the same way craft beer and artisanal coffee already have. It comes at a time when the larger chocolate industry continues to grapple with overseas child labor, a potential shortage of cocoa and rising prices for both the industry and consumers..The number of chocolate makers in the United States who identify with the bean-to-bar movement — by either sourcing cocoa directly from farmers or buying it from specialty importers — has grown tenfold in the last decade to at least 60, according to the Fine Chocolate Industry Assn. ..."This whole thing started with the idea we could go back to the 1700s and make chocolate on a small scale like they were making it before the Industrial Revolution," said Pam Williams, president of the Las Vegas-based Fine Chocolate Industry Assn. "There is the desire to know where your food comes from and a reaction against mass-produced food in general that's translating over into chocolate." ...in stark contrast to a typical chocolate bar sold at a movie theater, which probably was made with cocoa beans pooled together from various countries and mixed with dairy, emulsifiers and preservatives.
Bean-to-bar chocolate, which can cost two to three times as much as a regular candy bar, tends to have just two ingredients: chocolate and sugar, most commonly at a ratio of 70% to 30%..The world's biggest chocolate producers — Swiss companies Barry Callebaut and Nestle and the American-based Mars Inc., Mondelez International and Hershey — stake their success on delivering a mainstream product."

Agora, se se abstraírem do chocolate, daquilo que é acidental neste artigo, é possível identificar uma tendência mais geral. Mongo e o mundo das suas tribos, das tribos que valorizam a autenticidade e a individualidade em detrimento da produção massificada. É possível ver a diferença entre o século XX com a busca da redução dos custos unitários como objectivo sacrossanto:

"One of the industry's answers to the price pressure has been the introduction of CCN51, a controversial cocoa varietal developed in Ecuador. Highly productive and rugged, the plant is being lauded by an industry that regularly loses half its crop to pests and disease.
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"Some people have said it tastes like acid dirt," said Ed Seguine, president of Seguine Cacao, Cocoa & Chocolate Advisors in Hanover, Pa. "The concern is it will push out flavor.""

E o século XXI, em Mongo o propósito é aumentar o preço unitário:

"Bean-to-bar chocolate, which can cost two to three times as much as a regular candy bar, tends to have just two ingredients: chocolate and sugar, "

Só que este aumento não é baseado na força do monopólio estatal ou formal, é baseado na concorrência imperfeita, é baseado no encontro de duas paixões, a do que produz e a do que consome, juntos no bailado da co-criação.
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Será que a sua empresa também pode aplicar a concorrência imperfeita?
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Será que a sua empresa também está enterrada no pântano do século XX, ás voltas com truques para reduzir custos? Não será de olhar para alternativas?
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Pergunte-me como.

Um novo nível, com novas regras

Na linha de algo que escrevemos aqui há muitos anos.

"In the 20th Century organization, efficiency and predictability were paramount. But the world has changed. Line organizations driven by efficiency and predictability will have trouble in flourishing: they lack the ability to sense and adapt to the dynamic complexity of their environments."

Trecho retirado de "A New Center Of Gravity For Management?"

O caminho faz-se caminhando

"Start doing the work, and the brain responds, allowing one to build and retain not just technical knowledge, but also the imaginative capacity needed to utilize it fully."

Por isso, é tão difícil à tríade de académicos, paineleiros e jornalistas perceber o quão a economia de Mongo difere da economia de Magnitogorsk, ou de Metrópolis... ou do século XX.

Trecho retirado de "How Learning Artistic Skills Alters the Brain"

Interessante, nestes tempos de Amazon, Mongo cresce

Interessante, nestes tempos de Amazon:

"nationwide, [Moi ici: Nos Estados Unidos] independent bookstores have grown by about twenty per cent since 2009; meanwhile, American craft breweries collectively now sell more than 16.1 million barrels of beer annually, outpacing, for the first time, Budweiser. This isn’t the only evidence that small-scale businesses are making a comeback. Over the last ten years, the long-running decline of small farms has levelled out, and more than three billion dollars was spent last year on more than four thousand independent feature films. Over all, since 1990, small businesses (with, generally, fewer than five hundred employees or less than $7.5 million in annual receipts) have added millions of employees, while big businesses have shed millions."

As previsões e metáforas deste blogue, em grande:

• Mongo;
• Estranhistão;
• artesanato e artesãos;
• nichos;
• tribos;
• PME;
• interacção
• fim de Metropolis ou de Magnitogrado
• século XXI vs século XX

"Once upon a time, or in the last century, to be precise, it was an article of faith that most sectors of the economy faced unavoidable domination by a few big players.
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The true-differentiation strategy seems to work best when scale, despite its efficiencies, also introduces blind spots in areas such as customer service, flavor, curation, or other intangibles not entirely consistent with mass production and standardization. Where getting big begins to hurt the product, small can be bountiful. [Moi ici: Como Tom Peters escreveu no Twitter uma vez "They are to big to care"]
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The economic wedge created by true differentiation is a cause for great optimism, .... It helps to realize the true promise of a free market, in which people have dozens of genuine choices among products that differ in more than just their marketing."

Trechos retirados de "Why Small Businesses Are Starting to Win Again"

Leituras e viagens

Lendo "From systems to ecosystems" de Esko Kilpi encontro:

"In the past, the influence of external forces on business was not significant. The industrial factory was a fairly simple, isolated machine. ... Being efficient and productive inside the system was enough to prosper.
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The assumptions of industrial management are not suited to today’s business environment. In contrast to the industrial era, when value was added primarily in the repetitive manufacturing processes,[Moi ici: Mongo versus Magnitogrado]  value is today created elsewhere, outside of the old industrial system. Value is co-created in the context of usage through customizable, reconfigurable and more or less unique solutions aggregated by the customer, not the manufacturer. There are no consumers any more!
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Linear methods of management are not effective in a complex environment."

Que relacionei logo com o que tinha lido em Spender:

"one of the more compelling research findings relating to Chandler’s strategy and structure ideas was Burns and Stalker’s assertion that in stable market conditions strategists should focus on administrative efficiency, but in dynamic market conditions on loosening up the structure and allowing “organic” responses."

O qual me motivou a ir à fonte e ao subcapítulo "Mechanistic and Organic Systems".
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Para, por fim, recordar o zeitgeist leadership do anónimo engenheiro de província e fechar a viagem em "Armando Almeida quer a PT Portugal focada na liderança, inovação e eficiência".

Escola Normal

Esta manhã, durante a caminhada matinal, que hoje começou às 6h30, ouvi uma conversa de Seth Godin. A certa altura ele fala de algo que me trouxe recordações do meu Porto e que me mergulharam em Mongo, ou antes, no mundo industrial de Magnitogorsk. Ele recordou o nome que era dado às escolas que formavam professores:

Escola Normal!
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Recordações do tempo em que as designações eram mais honestas e enganavam menos pessoas.
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Escola para normalizar alunos, para preparar futuros operários, para preparar futuros acatadores de ordens, para preparar futuros respeitadores da ordem estabelecida.

O século XX fica lá atrás

O século XX fica lá atrás.
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De certa forma, o século XX económico, o século das mega-empresas, o século da eficiência, começou em 1870 com esta figura.

pensem na magia que os muggles não conseguem entender...

Li esta história a 28 de Julho "The two sisters running a bakery in a desert" e ainda não me saiu da cabeça. Consigo encontrar várias notas interessantes e paradigmáticas.

"the elder of the two, says she had no previous experience in agriculture."

Ainda ontem no Twitter favoritei a frase:

"In a situation when you know nothing, everything is a possibility."

Tudo começou com a recordação de uma experiência, algo não matematizável mas muito poderoso.

 "Their business idea grew out of something their uncle told them - that in times gone by, the bread in this part of Spain tasted different.
It was a flavour he missed."

Por que é que o pão tradicional tinha perdido o seu sabor característico?
Porque deixou-se de cultivar trigo na região, as variedades mais produtivas, mais eficientes, mais abençoadas por burocratas em escolas, laboratórios e gabinetes do poder, não conseguiam crescer no deserto de Aragão.
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O pão tradicional, com o seu sabor tradicional, era feito a partir de um trigo específico, adaptado à região:

"'For the seed we grow, the climate is perfect', two sisters explain why they started a bakery and are growing wheat in a Spanish desert.
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They discovered that a type of wheat seed, known as Aragon 03, had been the secret behind the region's distinctly flavoured bread.
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"Many people told us we were crazy for trying to run a business like ours in a [dry] place like this. But we found out that the seed we grow is perfect for this climate," says Laura."

 E resultados?

"In the first year, their business lost lots of money, but by the third year they had broken even.
Now, seven years after they first started farming and baking, they own two bakeries and sell their products in eight others."

E recordando a frase favoritada:

""As my uncle used to say, you have to bend your knees and look closely. For example, I see opportunities where others don't."" 

O tema da frase favoritada recorda-nos logo Gary Klein: "nós não vemos através dos nossos olhos mas através das nossas experiências", e "as nossas experiências produzem modelos mentais", modelos mentais que nos ajudam a perceber e a actuar sobre a realidade. A experiência é uma vantagem até... deixar de ser.
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E quando é que a experiência deixa de ser uma vantagem?
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Quando a realidade muda!
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Aqui recordo as histórias de Laurence Gonzales e, como uma criança com 8 anos tem mais hipóteses de sobreviver na selva amazónica do que uma com 12 anos.
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Quando a realidade muda, a experiência pode-nos fazer prisioneiros de um mundo que já não existe e impedir-nos de procurar novas respostas e a ver barreiras em todo o lado.
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Leio esta história e vejo a desfilar perante mim o filme do século XX, o filme que levou a Magnitogorsk e à emergência de Mongo. Vejo o advento da Revolução Industrial, depois a chegada de Taylor e a propagação da religião da eficiência e da escala que culminam em Metropolis e no pós II Guerra Mundial com a produção e o mercado de consumo de massas. Toda a história económica do século XX pode ser resumida nessa busca da eficiência e da procura da subida no pico único da paisagem competitiva. Por exemplo, nos Estados Unidos em 1890 existiam cerca de 300 fabricantes de bicicletas, em 1905 já só existiam 12. Em 1920 existiam cerca de 1000 fabricantes de automóveis, em 1929 já só existiam 44. Depois, vejo a reacção a tudo isto com o advento de Mongo, com o exemplo da cerveja:

A explosão da diversidade que nos está a fazer entranhar no Estranhistão.
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Como sabem, sou um adepto do paralelismo entre a biologia e a economia e, a biologia está cá no planeta há uns anos mais do que a economia, por isso, a biologia já passou por Magnitogorsk e há muito que vive em Mongo, recordar as árvores cladísticas. Assim, não me espanta que de um lado tenhamos os sacerdotes da eficiência a tentar uniformizar o mundo e a padronizar o gosto, quando na realidade o mundo criou a biodiversidade por alguma razão.
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Temas para reflexões nas empresas:

• não é a competir de igual para igual, numa suposta arena perfeita, no mercado da concorrência perfeita, que está o futuro das PMEs. É a aproveitar o que é diferente, é a alavancar o particular, o distintivo, o típico... é a tornar, a fomentar a concorrência imperfeita.
• quando ouvirem falar em teoria económica, em macroeconomia, em oferta e procura, pensem neste exemplo, pensem na magia que os muggles não conseguem entender...

Por trás disto, Mongo

O século XX, o século de Metropolis, o século daquele começo de "Mãe Coragem" de Gorki numa qualquer Magnitogrado, foi o século das linhas de montagem e das produções massivas que permitiam.
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O século XXI, o século de Mongo, abomina a massificação, afinal, "We are all weird". Em Mongo as eficiências e os ritmos de produção das linhas de montagem não são a melhor opção quando a procura está fragmentada e segmentada.
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Assim, fábrica atrás de fábrica remetem para o caixote do lixo da história a sua linha de montagem, não é nada de pessoal... todas as estratégias são transitórias.
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Ainda me recordo de ler:

"Canon is also looking to boost productivity. Already, the company has seen great gains from "cell assembly," where small teams build products from start to finish rather than each worker repeatedly performing a single task on a long assembly line. Canon now has no assembly lines; it ditched the last of its 20 kilometers of conveyor belts in 2002, when a line making ink-jet printers in Thailand was shut down."

Em 2006, e ter ficado impressionado com as implicações que via à minha frente... são estas coisas que me ajudaram a ver o caminho...
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Escrevo isto a propósito de "Japanese Firm Uses a Single-Worker System to Make Its Products":

"Under this method, workers in single-person stalls assemble products from start to finish, guided by a 3-D graphic and using parts delivered automatically from a rotating rack. Every worker is capable of assembling any variation of the company's 50 or so products.
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The evolution of Roland DG, which is 40%-owned by digital piano maker Roland Corp., started in 1998, when it became one of the first companies in Japan to abandon the assembly line in favor of one-person work stalls modeled after Japanese noodle stands. With orders coming in smaller and smaller lots, Roland DG decided it needed a manufacturing system in which a single worker could build any one of its diverse products.
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 "We can move people instantly to make products that are in demand. There's a great deal of flexibility," says Masaki Hanajima, general manager of production manufacturing.
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Veterans, meanwhile, are able to assemble two machines simultaneously, or run one finished product through tests while assembling the next."

Esquecem-se que Magnitogorsk foi no século XX...

Isto está tudo relacionado!
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Isto (daqui):

"Treat your product like a commodity, and people will buy it like a commodity. Treat it as something special, and you may be able to raise prices by multiples."

Com isto:

• "Here’s Why J.Crew’s New Budget Store Will Ruin Everything"
• "How to use discounting without harming your business"
• "Sainsbury's faces £100m profit blow in price war as opening salvo is fired against discount Germans"
• "California Dad Says He's Cracked the Code to Smart Shopping"

Enquanto uns trabalham para tribos, cada vez existem mais tribos e são mais diversificadas, outros continuam a sonhar com o vómito industrial para satisfazer o mercado de massas...

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Esquecem-se que Magnitogorsk foi no século XX...

A erosão do poder da escala ou, o susto para alguns

Mais um texto que vem ao encontro da narrativa deste blogue, "Bigger is Not Necessarily Better in Our Information-Rich Digital Economy":

"The mass production of standardized products is a defining hallmark of the 20th century industrial economy, bringing high productivity and low costs to a wide variety of products, - from household appliances to cars.
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“Chains took advantage of that data deficit.
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Not surprisingly, things are now changing in our information-rich digital economy.  “Information technology is eroding the power of large-scale mass production.  We’re instead moving toward a world of massive numbers of small producers offering unique stuff - and of consumers who reject mass-produced stuff.  The Internet, software, 3D printing, social networks, cloud computing and other technologies are making this economically feasible - in fact, desirable.”
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“A series of breakthrough technologies and new business models are destroying the old rule that bigger is better,” he wrote.  “By exploiting the vast (but cheap) audience afforded by the Internet, and taking advantage of a host of modular services, small becomes the new big.  The global business environment is decomposing into smaller yet more profitable markets, so businesses can no longer rely on scaling up to compete, but must instead embrace a new economies of unscale.”
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While a few leading edge companies are able to keep up, the vast majority of traditional firms are lagging behind.  They are not able to embrace these disruptive technologies and innovations at anywhere the same speeds.  These companies are working harder than ever, trying to achieve greater efficiencies and predictability.  They keep trying to fit new technologies and practices into outdated business models.  They are holding on to strategies that worked well in the relatively stable business environments of the industrial economy, but fall short in our fast changing digital economy, where new products, business models and competitors keep emerging from all corners of the worlds.
Everyone talks about the need to become more flexible and agile, but many companies have trouble doing so.  The Deloitte study cites a number of strategy and financial barriers uncovered in their research.  But in the end, they suspect that “a more fundamental force may be at work: the historical value accorded to efficiency and controllability by businesses accustomed to a less changeable, less transparent world. . . Simply put, there is a growing mismatch between the old frameworks and practices that many companies use and the structures and capabilities required to be successful in a rapidly changing environment.  Legacy corporate practices are holding businesses back from fully participating in new opportunities.”
“These new economies of unscale will be good for job growth, because they open up thousands of new market niches for exploitation,” writes Taneja.  “By buying specialized services, in customized form and at modest cost, companies can create unique products, find buyers from across the world, and secure profits."

Será que a tríade fica assustada com isto?

A história do século XX

Descobri este livro, "The coming prosperity: how entrepreneurs are transforming the global economy" de Philip Auerswald, ontem. A leitura do primeiro capítulo foi um imenso deja vu:

"The story of the twentieth century is invariably told as a political and military narrative: first, the war to end all wars that did not; then, the democracies’ world war to defeat fascism; and finally, the successful struggle to defeat Soviet communism. Far less well appreciated, but arguably more relevant to the present, is the economic subtext of this same history: the rise and partial fall of large-scale, centralized production.
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At the start of the twentieth century, the economic landscape was transformed by the emergence of an entirely new form of business entity, larger and more complex than any that had existed previously. The major impetus behind this growth was what economists call economies of scale and scope: the ability to reduce costs per unit by (1) increasing the quantity of output and/or (2) integrating within a single business entity the different stages of production, from the acquisition of raw materials to the assembly of a finished product."

Até Magnitogorsk aparece:

"The harnessing of the power of scale and scope was a global phenomenon. It found its most dramatic expression not in Standard Oil, Ford Motor Company, or Thyssen Steel, but rather in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Absolute political control allowed the Soviets to undertake an unprecedented experiment: placing the entire productive apparatus of a nation under the control of what was, at least in theory, a single administrative authority. If, as appeared to be the case in the 1930s, economic power was rooted in the ability to harness economies of scale and scope, then the decentralized market economies of the West seemed to have ample reason to worry. No one would be able to match the Soviets."

Recordar:

• O século XX começou há 100 anos 
• Ora o século XXI não será o século de Metropolis mas o século de Mongo
• Adeus segunda metade do século XX, adeus Metropolis, adeus Magnitograd
• Magnitograd versus Mongo

Cuidado com as noções tradicionais de influência e poder

"A small group of passionate people can influence others that are slightly more reticent, still others take notice and also join in. That’s how disruption happens.
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Disruption never makes sense to us [Moi ici: Os incumbentes instalados], because it always starts with them.
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The truth is that it’s not the influentials [Moi ici: Como não lembrar logo os 70 reformados de luxo] we have to worry about, but when ordinary folks start joining in.
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The 20th century was driven by the scale economy.  The path to success was paved by minimizing costs and maximizing control over the value chain.  The bigger you were, the more you were able to able to negotiate with customers and suppliers, acquire technology and talent and leverage capital and marketing might.
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Yet today, we are competing in a semantic economy in which everything is connected.  Anyone with an idea and a broadband connection can gain access to technology, marketing, finance and talent that rival the world’s biggest firms and, indeed, even large nations."

Cuidado com as noções tradicionais de influência e poder, em Mongo as regras do jogo são outras.

Trechos retirados de "Strategy Is No Longer A Game Of Chess"

Material para a criação de cenários

Uma temática que costumamos abordar aqui, o futuro do emprego, o futuro dos carros, a economia da partilha e aluguer, e como tudo interage:

"For more than a century, big corporations existed because it was cheaper and more efficient to gather and own talent and the means of production in-house than it was to go out and find whatever you needed whenever you needed it. But today, networks and software are changing that.
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This fuels a movement toward smaller, lighter companies at the core, and the core is where people will have "jobs" - full-time gigs sitting alongside colleagues who all have similar full-time gigs. The cores will shrink, leaving fewer of these jobs. Instead, companies will outsource everything they can. (Moi ici: E, depois, alguém há-de interrogar-se, "Por que precisamos delas?")
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Jobs are being replaced by work. (Moi ici: E isto é algo que os "certificadores de competências", as universidades, vão ter de perceber que as pessoas vão precisar menos de canudos e diplomas e mais de conhecimento e aprendizagem contínua pragmática) Employees are being replaced by the talent cloud - an ephemeral place where micro-entrepreneurs and small groups of skilled people connect to the companies that need them.
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The sharing economy is the start of consumers outsourcing the assets they don't have to own. It is to consumers in the 2010s what "re-engineering" was to corporations in the 1990s: a way to slim down, spend smarter, and have more options.
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Cars are a perfect place to start. They are wildly expensive and, with the exception of minivans owned by suburban soccer moms with three kids, shamefully underutilized."

Trecho retirado de "Your Garage May Be the Next Target of 'Un-Scaling'"

O regresso lento mas persistente do semi-industrial

Ainda ontem lia que a as vendas do comércio na Alemanha baixaram em Dezembro. Questionei logo, será que baixaram mesmo? Ou será que o que baixou foram as vendas através dos canais clássicos, facilmente vigiáveis pelas estatísticas?
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Ás vezes leio coisas, por exemplo esta, que me fazem pensar que os artesãos actuais e os frequentadores das feiras informais, são uma espécie de novos "judeus" a perseguir, porque fogem aos circuitos "higienizados" e regulamentados.
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Assim, logo que tive conhecimento de um sítio na internet onde artesãos e quem os procura se podem encontrar, percebi que tinha de o colocar aqui no blogue.

"Tirando partido da nossa ampla rede de contactos na área da manufactura, ajudamos os nossos clientes a encontrar o parceiro de produção ideal ou a identificar especialistas portugueses para executar trabalhos no exterior.
No Ofício fazemos mais do que pôr pessoas em contacto: apoiamos os nossos clientes no processo de decisão, aconselhando relativamente às técnicas de produção mais adequadas para um problema específico. Quando necessário, também nos encarregamos da gestão de todo o processo de produção."

Visitem o interessante "Roteiro Oficinal do Porto".
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Sinto que há qualquer coisa de subversivo na manutenção e apoio a estes artesãos, pelos seus clientes, pela procura... são gente que resistiu à força de Magnitogorsk, à força de Metropolis, à força uniformizadora do século XX.
Gente independente que vive do seu trabalho e que não tem rede, só os seus clientes os suportam. O aliciamento para entrar na onda do século XX sempre foi tão grande que arrisco dizer, se esta gente resistiu é porque gosta do que faz.

1 - O exemplo do calçado

Este é o primeiro capítulo de uma experiência que quero desenvolver nos próximos tempos.

Aceitam-se e solicitam-se comentários e sugestões para o metanoia@metanoia.pt
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A ideia deste primeiro capítulo é o de apresentar um exemplo concreto daquilo a que chamo economia de Mongo a funcionar.
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Penso que será um capítulo usado como referência nos capítulos seguintes.
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O próximo capítulo será, em princípio sobre o porque Mongo funciona, o que está por detrás do funcionamento económico de Mongo.
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A ideia é, depois, apresentar uma abordagem que permite a cada empresa tentar fazer a transição, para entrar no modelo económico de Mongo.

Acerca da economia de Mongo

Este texto "Forget Mega-Corporations, Here’s The Mega-Network" é tão bem vindo. Recordar:

• O fim do modelo económico do século XX
• O poder potenciador das redes no Estranhistão
• Um mundo novo de possibilidades

As Mega-corporações das novelas cyber-punk jazem ou cairão como caiem todas as Torres de Babel

Pensamento fossilizado II

O @pauloperes chamou-me a atenção para este artigo que Steve Denning escreveu há cerca de um ano "Efficiency At Any Cost: Economics Made Wrong"
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No artigo, Denning comenta um texto de Barry Schwartz, “Economics Made Easy”, que não passa de uma ode à eficiência, típico da tríade.

"Worshipping efficiency at any cost is not only heartless: it’s wrong.
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What the article is reciting is the mantra that pervaded 20th Century economics and management. It goes way back to Frederick Winslow Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management (1911) which assumed that the efficiency, i.e. cutting costs and saving money, is the be-all and end-all of an organization.
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What the NYT article misses is that improved efficiency by cutting costs is only one of three ways in which a society’s standard of living can improve. There are two other important routes:

• Adding more value to the customer

• Delivering value sooner

The NYT article thus misses Peter Drucker’s foundational insight of 1973: “The only valid purpose of a firm is to create a customer.” A firm does this by offering value to customers, by providing more of it, providing it at lower value and delivering it sooner. Cost-cutting is only one of three dimensions.
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The idea that improving efficiency by lowering costs is the sole goal of a firm became pervasive in the 20th Century, in part because big firms were hierarchical bureaucracies and cutting costs is all that bureaucracies are good for.
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Bureaucracies are not good at continuous innovation and consistently delivering more value to customers. Nor are bureaucracies good at delivering value sooner"

 Este ano, em Fevereiro, já tinha comentado o artigo de Schwartz em "Pensamento fossilizado". É este pensamento fossilizado que domina o mainstream do pensamento económico nas universidades, nas empresas, nos media e nas políticas públicas.

Duas economias

Este artigo "Increasing Returns and the New World of Business" parece-me que de certa forma ilustra o problema dos membros da tríade.
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Os membros da tríade foram educados na economia e nos modelos e "leis" da economia de Magnitograd, de Metropolis, do século XX e, da produção em massa de commodities. Entretanto, estamos a caminho do Estranhistão onde a economia é outra:

"Marshall’s world of the 1880s and 1890s was one of bulk production: of metal ores, aniline dyes, pig iron, coal, lumber, heavy chemicals, soybeans, coffee - commodities heavy on resources, light on know-how. In that world it was reasonable to suppose, for example, that if a coffee plantation expanded production it would ultimately be driven to use land less suitable for coffee—it would run into diminishing returns.
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Marshall said such a market was in perfect competition, and the economic world he envisaged fitted beautifully with the Victorian values of his time. It was at equilibrium and therefore orderly, predictable and therefore amenable to scientific analysis, stable and therefore safe, slow to change and therefore continuous. Not too rushed, not too profitable. In a word, mannerly. In a word, genteel.
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With a few changes, Marshall’s world lives on a century later within that part of the modern economy still devoted to bulk processing: of grains, livestock, heavy chemicals, metals and ores, foodstuffs, retail goods—the part where operations are largely repetitive day to day or week to week. Product differentiation and brand names now mean that a few companies rather than many
compete in a given market. But typically, if these  companies try to expand, they run into some limitation: in numbers of consumers who prefer their brand, in regional demand, in access to raw materials. So no company can corner the market. And because such products are normally substitutable for one another, something like a standard price emerges. Margins are thin and nobody makes a killing. This isn’t exactly Marshall’s perfect competition, but it approximates it.
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Because the two worlds of business—processing bulk goods, and crafting knowledge into products - differ in their underlying economics, it follows that they differ in their character of competition and their culture of management. It is a mistake to think that whatworks in one world is appropriate for the other.
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Let us look at the two cultures of competition. In bulk processing, a set of standard prices typically emerges. Production tends to be repetitive—much the same from day to day or even from year to year. Competing therefore means keeping product flowing, trying to improve quality, getting costs down. There is an art to this sort of management, one widely discussed in the literature. It favors an environment free of surprises or glitches—an environment characterized by control and planning.
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Competition is different in knowledge-based industries, because the economics are different. ... Hierarchies flatten not because democracy is suddenly bestowed on the work force or because computers can cut out much of middle management. They flatten because, to be effective, the deliverers of the next-thing-for-thecompany need to be organized like commando units in small teams that report directly to the CEO or to the board."