São as decisões dos humanos que ajudam a fazer a diferença

Um facto de que não se costuma falar.
.
Um facto que descalça os teóricos, os académicos, os analíticos e os adeptos da intervenção do Grande Planeador, o papá-Estado: a heterogeneidade dentro dos sectores de actividade económica.
.
Os gráficos, descrevem a distribuição de desempenhos dentro de cada sector:

Em cada sector, as diversas empresas, actuando no mesmo "mercado" e sujeitas às mesmas condições de regulação evidenciam tanta heterogeneidade (juro, já este ano, para meu espanto, visitei uma pequena empresa com cerca de 30 trabalhadores, que fabrica materiais de construção, não exporta, facturou mais em 2012 do que em 2011 e tem o mês de Janeiro tomado)
.
Não é o sector que determina o desempenho, não há sectores velhos e obsoletos, são as escolhas de gestão, são as apostas estratégicas, são as decisões dos humanos que ajudam a fazer a diferença. E que diferença:

"The idea that some industries are superior - a view promulgated by Wall Street analysts, media pundits, and managers’ own human tendency to look for “easier” businesses - is illusory. The data do not support it. Sure, some industries outperform others, but the differences are far smaller than you might think, and most highfliers eventually revert to the mean. Moreover, the difference in returns within an industry - any industry - is several times greater than the difference across industries, no matter which ones. (Moi ici: Algo que referimos aqui pela primeira vez aqui. Recordar também aqui) CEOs and boards shouldn’t waste time - and shareholder capital - trying to jump to “better” industries. In almost every case, a bigger opportunity lies in improving your performance in the industry you’re in, by fixing your strategy and strengthening the capabilities that create value for customers and separate you from your competitors."

Outro tema interessante, Minkowski rules:

"the assumption that managerial talent and knowledge are fungible. Shareholders often assume that a company that’s capable in one area can rapidly learn to be capable in another. In fact, the capabilities that matter form over decades and may involve millions or billions of dollars in human and financial capital."

Uma conclusão importante:

"The fact that there’s no such thing as a bad industry is even more relevant to CEOs.
...
Your chance of getting superior returns is far better if you stay in your own industry and improve your performance than if you move into a new one. It’s a bit like having faith, when darkness falls, that the sun will return tomorrow: You can pretty much count on it."

E quando uma empresa fica num sector, durante aquele período de escuridão, à medida que o tempo passa, tem de mergulhar mais profundamente na dinâmica do cliente e afastar-se cada vez mais do tangível que oferece e concentrar-se no serviço que aquilo que oferece realiza e avançar na diferenciação.
.
Voltando ao ponto inicial: São as decisões dos humanos que ajudam a fazer a diferença.
.
Os teóricos e académicos olham para as folhas de cálculo e não conseguem ver a magia que só quem está mergulhado num sector e tem pensamento estratégico, consegue criar. Os teóricos e académicos são uma espécie de Spocks que pensam linearmente e não vêem alternativa. Os que dão a volta e fazem os milagres são uma espécie de Kircks:

"Kirk makes decisions based on his emotions, his instinct and his gut. Spock counters with the reasons why Kirk's planned actions are "illogical" or don't fit the data. Kirk experiments, creates problems with impulsive decision making and usually wins the day by doing something Spock (and Kirk's adversaries) didn't expect him to do. Kirk demands more than his people and his ship should be able or willing to offer. Kirk rejects the rules and tries to apply his own rules to any situation."

O velho episódio de MacGyver e Sandy.

O amigo Paulo Peres esta noite enviou-me esta citação:

“While strategy and technology are important, no great idea can meet its fullest potential without beauty.”

Beleza, arte, relações amorosas, paixão... pobre Spock, tão limitado!

.
Trechos iniciais retirados de "The Grass Isn't Greener" de Evan Hirsh e Kasturi Rangan, publicado na HBR de Janeiro-Fevereiro de 2013.

A redução dos CUT

A propósito deste tema:

1. "Custos unitários do trabalho baixam mas estão 10% acima da média da zona euro"
2. "Banco de Portugal diz que salários reais terão de cair mais 10%"

Em ambos os textos a mesma abordagem. O Banco de Portugal escreve sobre os custos unitários do trabalho (CUT), os jornalistas acabam a falar em reduzir salários reais. Por exemplo da fonte 1:

"Os custos unitários de trabalho representam aquilo que cada empresa gasta por cada funcionário, (Moi ici: É este tipo de definições que induz em erro de interpretação. Os CUT são um rácio entre os custos do trabalho e a produtividade desse mesmo trabalho) tendo como componente principal o salário do trabalhador. O índice corresponde a um custo de produção relativo dos produtores nacionais por comparação aos produtores dos principais países parceiros nas trocas internacionais.
...
O Governo já abordou a questão da redução dos custos do trabalho e de baixa salarial a duas vozes, com o primeiro-ministro a garantir que não está a preparar qualquer diminuição de salários e o ministro das Finanças a falar numa inevitabilidade de corte dos custos unitários do trabalho."(Moi ici: Particularmente interessante este último parágrafo: o jornalista conclui que o primeiro-ministro e o ministro das Finanças estão em desacordo. Logo, concluo eu, o jornalista, como quase todos os portugueses, acha que os CUT só baixam se os salários reais baixarem... não podia estar mais errado)

Por exemplo, na fonte 2 a confusão começa logo no título. O Banco de Portugal escreveu sobre CUT ou sobre salários reais?

"Ou seja: neste momento, Portugal precisa de ter salários reais 10% abaixo do nível atual (pelo menos) para conseguir competir taco a taco com os parâmetros dos parceiros da zona euro. (Moi ici: Será que o jornalista faz ideia do que está a escrever? Agora até mete aqui ao barulho a zona euro... Contra tudo o que se escreve neste blogue, querem pôr-nos a competir de igual para igual com os parceiros da zona euro? Se formos competir de igual para igual perdemos. Só conseguem visualizar a concorrência perfeita. Quando o que propomos é a batota da concorrência imperfeita, diferenciação para competir com as nossas vantagens competitivas) Os 10 pontos percentuais em causa resultam da diferença entre o índice de 101,8 pontos de Portugal e os 91,6 pontos da zona euro no primeiro trimestre."

Então, talvez faça sentido olhar para os números dos salários reais:

Dados do Eurostat para "Labour cost per hour in euros (for enterprises with 10 or more employees)"
.
.
.
Faz algum sentido a interpretação dos jornais? Claro que não!
.
Comparemos agora a evolução dos CUT entre alguns países da zona euro e a Alemanha:

.
Se os CUT são um rácio entre os custos do trabalho e a produtividade desse trabalho, então, a redução dos CUT pode ser obtida através de 3 vias:

• reduzindo os custos do trabalho
• aumentando a produtividade do trabalho; ou
• uma conjugação das duas.

Sistematicamente, quem fala da necessidade de reduzir os CUT fala em reduzir salários. 

.

Quando contraponho que se deveria apostar no aumento da produtividade (chamo a atenção para os gráficos de Marn, Rosieelo, Dolan, Simon, Baker, Hinterhuber e tantos outros...), dizem-me logo que há urgência, que os ganhos de produtividade demoram muito tempo. Que sim, que idealmente se deveria aumentar a produtividade mas como isso leva muito tempo têm de se reduzir os salários já, para dar folga às empresas, depois, elas terão tempo para aumentar a produtividade. 

.

Já se usou essa argumentação no tempo do escudo para defender a desvalorização da moeda para aumentar a competitividade das empresas portuguesas e viu-se no que é que isso deu.

.

O tipo de competição, cultura empresarial, segmentos de mercado que se ganham à custa da redução CUT por redução de custos é incompatível com a competição, cultura empresarial, segmentos de mercado, argumentos de venda, imagem de marca, tradição necessária, para reduzir CUT à custa do aumento da produtividade do trabalho. É a velha história do espaço de Minkowski, o passado cobra uma taxa, limita as hipóteses do futuro. Por isso é que tenho aquela frase no início da coluna das citações aqui no blogue:

"It is widely believed that restructuring has boosted productivity by displacing low-skilled workers and creating jobs for the high skilled."Mas, e como isto é profundo:"In essence, creative destruction means that low productivity plants are displaced by high productivity plants."

Maliranta e o exemplo finlandês, após a quebra brusca do mercado soviético, são uma grande lição sobre o aumento da produtividade.

.

As empresas que competem no mercado interno, sujeitas a uma forte quebra na procura e sem acesso a capital e outros recursos, estão em modo de sobrevivência, têm de reduzir custos, preservar capital e encolher o portfolio da oferta e de negócios concentrando-se no que traz mais capital, para muitas delas faz sentido pensar em reduzir salários, a alternativa é o desemprego. Mas esta conversa sobre os CUT é sempre aplicada para falar sobre a competitividade das empresas portuguesas nos mercados internacionais... onde existe oferta oriunda de países com salários muito mais baixos do que em Portugal.

.

Por que será que as empresas portuguesas estão a ganhar quota de mercado e a vender cada vez mais caro os seus produtos em sectores como o calçado, ITV, mobiliário, maquinaria, ...?

.

Não foi porque reduziram salários, foi porque aprenderam a ser diferentes e a vender o que os outros não conseguem oferecer, por exemplo: rapidez de entrega.

.

A tese que defendo neste blogue é que o grande problema não foi a adesão de Portugal ao euro, foi a entrada da China no mercado internacional. As empresas portuguesas não conseguem competir de igual para igual com o modelo de negócio de baixo preço e grandes volumes que favorece as empresas chinesas. As empresas portuguesas não competem de igual para igual com as empresas da zona euro, cada uma escolhe nichos onde pode ter vantagens e é aí que actua, "É muito mais do que um jogo de soma nula"

.

BTW, basta pensar nas taxas de crescimento das economias europeias nos últimos 12 meses e comparar esses números com isto:

Claro que jornalistas que escrevem coisas destas até mereciam ver o seu salário reduzido...

.

O que estes estudos sobre agregados de agregados de agregados consideram é que a oferta das empresas portuguesas é igual à oferta das empresas da zona euro e, por isso, é tudo uma questão de preço. E isso é uma grande mentira, sem qualquer adesão à realidade

O triunfo da heterogeneidade

Ontem, durante o meu jogging, ao reflectir sobre o que tinha lido no capítulo 1 ("The Economics of Strategic Diversity") de "Astute Competition - The Economics of Strategic Diversity" de Peter Johnson, interroguei-me sobre o impacte dos economistas na economia do país.
.
Que impacte terá uma classe educada, moldada, condicionada a pensar em termos de competição perfeita, monopólios, oligopólios, em suma, commodities... aqueles que conseguem, através do contacto com a realidade, partir o molde são uns heróis.
.
Agora, percebo melhor a ênfase nos custos e, sobretudo, a visão redutora de olhar para um sector económico como um bloco homogéneo onde todos competem da mesma maneira, ou seja, pelo preço.
.
Por isso, Daniel Bessa e os seus pares são incapazes de perceber o real, eles falam de mercado, e na realidade o que existem são seres vivos únicos, não matematizáveis, as empresas... e como prova da sociedade de vácuo e espuma em que vivemos, apesar de falharem uma e outra vez nas previsões, continuam a ser convidados para descrever a realidade e continuar a fazer previsões.
.
Por isso, o mainstream fica admirado com a resiliência da economia real e das empresas reais, e só concebe uma explicação o preço, neste caso a cotação do euro (aqui e aqui).
.
Por isso, a tríade, como lhes chamo há muito tempo, olha para um sector económico como um bloco homogéneo coerente, maciço... quando a realidade é saudavelmente heterogénea. Heterogeneidade entre empresas é o equivalente à biodiversidade na biologia, nos ecossistemas. O melhor seguro contra as catástrofes!!!
.
"Contemporary neoclassical economics does not provide an adequate account of the competition between diverse businesses.

…

Nowhere though do we encounter a business as the object of investigation in traditional economics. In other words, there is a huge gap in the economics coverage of commercial activity. Why is this? Part of the reason is that the focus of economists is on markets rather than on businesses.

…

Management and strategy seem to have little importance: notionally at least, we could optimise the production function with but a few hours of linear programming.

…

Businesses get things done, facilitating intent and action in a way that is fundamentally beyond the scope of the market mechanism. We can consider businesses to be the vehicle to extract economic rents through the competitive control of resources; they are the building blocks of heterogeneous competition.

…

Like people, businesses are unique and the teams working in them expect strategies to reflect the specifics of the business, not averages or generalisations drawn across a large number of other businesses, which are each in fact distinct. Furthermore, businesses like individuals learn and adapt, (Moi ici: Por isso, o pensamento newtoniano de causa-efeitos eternos e imutáveis não funciona) particularly in the light of generally held assumptions about how businesses behave or conform to expectations. In talking to the key individuals in a business, it soon becomes apparent that heterogeneity is the key to generating returns different from those of competitors. Richard Rumelt got it right when he said:

Similar firms facing similar strategic problems may respond differently.

Firms in the same industry compete with substantially different bundles of resources using disparate approaches. These firms differ because of different histories of strategic choice  (Moi ici: A lição do espaço de Minkowsky, aqui também) and performance and because managements appear to seek asymmetric competitive positions. (Foss 1997: 132)

.

Economics heads in the opposite direction since it is determined to eliminate or render irrelevant the specifics of the individual situation. (Moi ici: Bem me parecia a mim, anónimo engenheiro de província, que era assim que os economistas viam a coisa, mas pensava que era defeito. Afinal é feitio) As a result, markets are the antithesis of businesses — all the non-systematic, business-specific information is washed away in the economists’ assumption of efficient and deep product markets: this is what transactional cost economics tells us happens when markets function well. The transactions are nominally the same and as a result individual businesses are not relevant to the making of purchasing decisions because they all offer whatever it is that the market provides. But this emphasis on anonymity in economics goes beyond the featureless neutrality of markets.

.

The entire approach of traditional economics is to try to introduce homogeneous elements to make a situation tractable — essentially various forms of everything else being assumed to be the same — in order to establish a general conclusion of the form ‘whenever we have X, then Y follows’. More fully, though, we should say that ‘whenever we have two situations that only differ in so far as X occurs in one and does not in the other, then Y will occur in the situation that X occurs’. This uniformity of background assumption is generally known as the ceteris paribus assumption e.g. same product, same production processes, same customer needs. In real business situations, it is extremely rare for conditions to repeat themselves, in other words, for ceteris paribus to hold.

In a similar fashion, the force of ceteris paribus thinking extends to the way economists think about the businesses themselves. Traditional economic analyses of business problems show little understanding of the heterogeneous internal structure of businesses that result from their selection of business model.

While Michael Porter and other industrial organisation theorists perceive the existence of cost- and value based sources of competitive advantage, they are not able to link in a specific way these advantages to the configuration of the firm. The typical assumption is that the differences relate either to economies of scale and scope, or to operational efficiency.

Very little attention is given to differentiated internal structures since this undermines the powerful underlying requirement that competing businesses are relevantly similar, permitting the application of ceteris paribus thinking.

.

It is easy to suspect that traditional economists cannot in fact explain how businesses make a sustained profit. In a world of perfect competition supernormal profits will be zero, and the suggestion of economics is that anything other than this outcome is either inefficient, transient or morally reprehensible. This failure to understand the source of sustained business profits probably arises from the focus of traditional economics on only three types of competition (monopoly, oligopoly and perfect competition — all of which are selected and investigated because they are susceptible to mathematical analysis) and associated rents.

…

Economists also tend to regard differentiation within a product or service as a variant of price, when in fact price may not be a criterion that determines purchase.

…

We find that often a reasonable price, not necessarily the best price, is a threshold requirement for a product or service to be bought; however, the dominant criterion that triggers a purchase decision relates to aesthetics, ease-of-use, name recognition or some other set of considerations.

When we turn to the basis of competition between businesses, economists usually assume that strategic positioning problems are essentially pricing problems, and this single price variable entirely captures the decision criteria of the purchaser."

Cuidado com as empresas que querem ser boas a tudo

"If you spend your life trying to be good at everything, you will never be great at anything. While our society encourages us to be well-rounded, this approach inadvertently breeds mediocrity. Perhaps the greatest misconception of all is that of the well-rounded leader.
.
Organizations are quick to look for leaders who are great communicators, visionary thinkers, and who can also get things done and follow through. All of these attributes are desirable and necessary for an organization to succeed. But of all the leaders we have studied, we have yet to find one who has worldclass strength in all of these areas. Sure, many leaders can get by or are above average in several domains. But paradoxically, those who strive to be competent in all areas become the least effective leaders overall."
...
"Without an awareness of your strengths, it's almost impossible for you to lead effectively. We all lead in very different ways, based on our talents and our limitations. Serious problems occur when we think we need to be exactly like the leaders we admire. Doing so takes us out of our natural element and practically eliminates our chances of success."
.
Este trecho, retirado de Strengths Leadership Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow" de Tom Rath e Barry Conchie, foi escrito a pensar nas pessoas, nos líderes.
.
Pois bem, por mim, aplico-o na íntegra, também, às empresas. Cuidado com as empresas que querem ser boas a tudo, que querem ir a todas e servir a todos.
.
Se calhar, não conseguem ser boas a nada.

Sarasvathy (parte II)

Continuado daqui.
.
Há um mês escrevi "Para PMEs tem de ser uma abordagem híbrida?":
.
"Começamos por olhar para fora, para o mercado para identificar os diferentes grupos homogéneos de clientes ou potenciais clientes, e escolher os grupos mais interessantes em termos de rentabilidade e de sustentabilidade da relação.
.
No entanto, não é só uma questão de querer... é também uma questão de poder. Como os recursos são escassos, há que conjugar a primeira questão com a dura realidade, quem é que podemos servir com vantagem tendo em conta a história, o cadastro, as capacidades que adquiridas e experimentadas?"
.
Agora, descubro Sarasvathy:
.
"Expert entrepreneurs begin with who they are, what they know and whom they know, and immediately start taking action and interacting with other people.

• They focus on what they can do and do it, (Moi ici: "Get out of the building" "Ship then test" "Think beta not best") without worrying much about what they ought to do.
• Some of the people they interact with self-select into the process by making commitments to the venture.
• Each commitment results in new means and new goals for the venture.
• As resources accumulate in the growing network, constraints begin to accrete. The constraints reduce possible changes in future goals and restrict who may or may not be admitted into the stakeholder network. (Moi ici: Espaço de Minkowsky)
• Assuming the stakeholder accumulation process does not prematurely abort, goals and network concurrently converge into a new market and a new firm.

...
The bird-in-hand principle
This is a principle of means-driven (as opposed to goal-driven) action. The emphasis here is on creating something new with existing means rather than discovering new ways to achieve given goals
...
Effectuation is the inverse of causation. Causal models begin with an effect to be created. They seek either to select between means to achieve those effects or to create new means to achieve preselected ends. Effectual models, in contrast, begin with given means and seek to create new ends using non-predictive strategies.(Moi ici: Consultor, em empresas estabelecidas que precisam de uma segunda vida, tem de conjugar oportunidades que se podem criar olhando para o mercado, olhando para a sua configuração, olhando para as hipotéticas cadeias da procura existentes ou a construir, com as suas capacidades, com as suas experiências, com o seu cadastro, com os seus recursos. Não adianta fazer castelos no ar... não há dinheiro e não há tempo! As empresas já existem e têm de resultar, portanto, a restrição do que se é, do que se sabe e do que se tem é importante mas há causalidade. Com o que se tem, como dar a volta?)
...

• Effectuators see the world as open, still in-the-making. They see a genuine role for human action. In fact, they see both firms and markets as human-made artifacts. In this sense, effectual entrepreneurship is not a social science. It is a science of the artificial (Moi ici: Muito bom... Herbert Simon. Take that bento-lovers).
• Effectuators very rarely see opportunities as given or outside of their control. For the most part, they work to fabricate, as well as recognize and discover opportunities (Moi ici: Muito bom... Sarasvathy et al., 2003). 
• (Moi ici: Atenção ao que se segue e comparar com os que promovem a impressão de bentos para tornar as empresas mais competitivas) Effectuators often have an instrumental view of firms and markets. They do not act as though they were the agents of the firm or as suppliers catering to demand – firms are a way for them to create valuable novelty for themselves and/or for the world; markets are more likely made than found; and a variety of stakeholders including customers are partners in an adventure of their own making. 
• Effectuators do not seek to avoid failure; they seek to make success happen. This entails a recognition that failing is an integral part of venturing well. Through their willingness to fail, effectuators create temporal portfolios of ventures whose successes and failures they manage – learning to outlive failures by keeping them small and killing them young, and cumulating successes through continual leveraging."

Continua.

Valor versus preço

Em alguns postais recentes (aqui, aqui, aqui e aqui) tenho-me queixado que os economistas não distinguem preço de valor e, por isso, julgam que a única forma de competir é através do preço mais baixo.
.
Preço é o que o cliente paga, valor é o que o cliente recebe!
.
""Value" may be one of the most overused and misused terms in marketing and pricing today. "Value pricing" is too often misused as a synonym for low price or bundled price. The real essence of value revolves around the tradeoff between the benefits a customer receives from a product and the price he or she pays for it."
...
"Customers do not buy solely on low price. They buy according to customer value, that is, the difference between the benefits a company gives customers and the price it charges. More precisely, customer value equals customer-perceived benefits minus customer-perceived price. So, the higher the perceived benefit  and/or the lower the price of a product, the higher the customer value and the greater the likelihood that customers will choose that product." (Moi ici: E Mongo resulta da explosão de benefícios, de experiências, de atributos que os clientes procuram e valorizam cada vez mais, associada às limitações impostas pelas escolhas de Minkowski e aos rós negativos traduzidas em atractores)

"The value map explores the way customer value and the price/benefit tradeoff work in real markets for a given segment.
.
A academia e os políticos só conhecem, ou só acreditam, em trabalhar na zona A da figura:

Em Mongo, onde muitas das nossas PMEs exportadoras já trabalham, trabalha-se na zona B da figura:

Trechos retirados de "Setting value, not price" Ralf Leszinski e Michael Marn

Criar valor, através da criação de escassez, por via da arte no trabalho

Há problemas que são como puzzles, têm uma solução única que tem de ser procurada.
.
Há problemas que pertencem à categoria de "wicked problems". Sobre eles Hilary Austen em "Artistry Unleashed" escreve:
.
"These problems are characterized bu such features as ambiguity, uncertainty, instability, and complexity.
...
Different people will do and try to achieve different things; it will also be hard to tell who might have the simple best grasp of the situation, or who might have the single best solution.
.
In the context of artistry, I call them enigmatic problems. The enigmatic problems associated with artistic work have an additional feature I want to highlight by using this term. Not only are the ends and means unclear, they are also interdependent. As your effort to solve an enigmatic problem proceeds, the ends evolve as means are generated. Likewise, as means unfold, new ends become possible; these may in turn demand new means. (Moi: Isto está sempre a acontecer nas empresas com futuro que visito. Ainda ontem, durante uma auditoria, um problema recorrente foi resolvido com a aquisição de um novo meio. O uso do novo meio, e a intimidade gerada por esse uso, criou novas capacidades capazes de atingirem novos fins. Como em tempos disse ao José Silva "Gente que faz umas coisitas malucas, fica a ser conhecida como os malucos que fazem umas coisas malucas. Assim, quando alguém sonha com uma coisa maluca... pensa logo nos malucos habituados a lidar com coisas malucas. É uma espiral virtuosa sem limites")
This interdependent relationship  between ends and means is a hallmark of artistic work."
.
E Mongo, com os seus rós cada vez mais negativos é um mundo de "enigmatic problems", problemas cheios de incerteza, ambiguidade, complexidade, mudança, surpresa, escolhas de Minkowski, indeterminismo, e singularidades.
.
Como é que os artistas encaram Mongo? Como é que os artistas lidam com o artistic work que é viver e prosperar em Mongo?
.
"True artists see the features identified above - that cluster I call enigmatic problems - not as obstacles but as exciting opportunities (Moi ici: "exciting opportunities" classificação super-apropriada!!! Por que terei dado este título "Go Mongo: "We will find a place (To settle) Where there's so much space""? Por que já usei por mais do que uma vez este trecho do filme de Kubrik ("What is goid to happen Dave? Something wonderful!")  Por isso me vejo como um optimista ingénuo).
.
Parte do meu trabalho, com as empresas que estão dispostas a isso e têm a matéria-prima para isso, é o de co-aprendermos a fazer batota e de abraçarmos a mudança. Eu chamo-lhe batota, Hilary Austen chama-lhe outra coisa:
.
"They consciously work to become skillful with these problems. And here's the kicker: in the face of enigmatic problems true artists display a greater intelligence in their medium than many of us do in our own professional medium.
...
Artists seek rather than fear ambiguity in their medium. They embrace rather than avoid or ignore surprises; instead, they court the solutions that surprises stimulate and the growth that surprises make possible."
.
Oxalá eu consiga instilar alguma esperança no futuro, não uma esperança cor-de-rosa à la Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa ou à la Sócrates, baseada na auto-estima, ou em bolhas, ou em outras tretas, mas assente na capacidade de criar valor.

Objectivo: Criar interdependências! (parte II)

Continuado daqui:
.
Como se criam interdependências?
.
Eis um artigo que exemplifica como se pode fazer batota: "Break the Rules the Way Zappos and Amazon Do":
.
Como saboreio as palavras que se seguem:
.
"What would you think of a business that identifies cost reduction opportunities but purposely does not follow through with the cuts? Or another that actually chooses to build excess capacity? Not long for this world, you might figure. Or perhaps they're luxury chains that can pass on their inefficiencies to customers who are used to paying a premium.
.
Well, both guesses are off. Consider the following examples. The first is Zappos, which was recently acquired at a premium by Amazon, which happens to be our second example. Both companies seem to make a point of ignoring the "make it lean" dictum of the hour, and both are thriving, not in spite of these "inefficiencies" but because of them. What may look like costly mistakes are in both cases deliberate choices made by people who know how to manage their operations for the new retail environment."
.
Estas escolhas são fundamentais!!!
.
Este tipo de escolhas são aquelas que dividem, que custam, que obrigam a trade-offs, que são sacríficios. Ao fazerem estas escolhas podem oferecer um conjunto de experiências que uma faixa de clientes-alvo procura, aprecia e valoriza.
.
Simultaneamente, quem segue os preceitos lean... cria uma organização mais adequada para servir outro tipo de clientes... mas não estes!!!
.
"To gain and keep customers, you have to provide them with a unique and addictive experience.
.
With Zappos, that experience is superior customer service, delivering on this promise of guaranteed long-term satisfaction. It's the unquestioned knowledge in the consumer's mind that she or he can for any reason, for a one-year period, with consummate ease and without shipping costs, return any purchase to get a full refund. And Amazon has turned its mammoth selection and super-rapid delivery into a unique experience. In these, and in the case of other leading retailers and manufacturers we've studied, the ability to manage for a changing reality is the element that will determine success or failure."

Objectivo: Criar interdependências!

Mais um interessante artigo sobre Mongo.
.
"Interdependency, Competition, and Industry Dynamics" de Michael J. Lenox, Scott F. Rockart e Arie Y. Lewin. Publicado pela revista Management Science (Vol. 53, No. 4, April 2007, pp. 599–615).
.
"Critical to understanding contemporary differences in market share and profitability among firms within an industry (Moi ici: Cá voltamos a este tema que me fascina, a distribuição de produtividades como um fenómeno intra-sectorial) is systematic knowledge of how those differences arose in the first place.
.
Understanding the structural evolution of industries — the rate of change in output and prices, the rates of entry and exit (turnover), and the growth and decline of individual firms (mobility) and industry participation — is widely recognized as fundamental to identifying the origins of profitable market leaders who can sustain performance over time. Industry evolution provides important contingencies that affect the viability of various firm strategies."
...
"Over the years, researchers have endeavored to develop clear characterizations of industry evolution. Central to these investigations has been the observance of shakeout, i.e., a rise and then fall in the number of competitors over time. Following the inception of an industry, new entrants rush in, often driving up the rate of innovation and leading to a diverse set of ways to deliver value. Competition intensifies and industry exit increases. Over time the rate of
entry decreases, eventually stabilizing at a low level.
.
As a result, the number of firms within the industry grows exponentially at first, then peaks, and then declines, typically settling in with a few dominant firms."
...
Aqui vai a proposta de trabalho dos autores:
.
"we propose that interdependency in productive activities provides a robust, alternative explanation for the stylized facts about industry evolution and shakeout. By “interdependency in productive activities,” we refer to the potential for the value of one activity to depend on whether a firm engages in another activity. In the presence of interdependent and potentially complementary activities, firms face barriers to search and often struggle to discover valuable configurations of productive activities." (Moi ici: Este factor das interdependências é, na minha opinião, fundamental para que Mongo seja uma realidade)
...
"In this paper, we construct and analyze a model of industry evolution in the presence of interdependency among firm activities."
...
"Differences in interdependency not only provide an explanation for why incumbents are more or less successful in different industries, but they also can explain why incumbents contribute more to technological progress in some industries while in other industries recent entrants make larger contributions.(Moi ici: Claro, as interdependências são espaço de Minkowski puro e duro. As escolhas que fazemos hoje estão limitadas pelas escolhas que fizemos ontem e vão limitar as escolhas que poderemos fazer no futuro. Hummmmm, já sinto o cheiro da batotice no ar.)
In this way, our model provides a potential resolution to the debate between the “old” and “new” Schumpeter about the growth contributions of incumbent firms versus new entrants. In industries where the potential for interdependency is low, incumbent firms are more likely to innovate and drive growth. (Moi ici: Claro, my twisted mind, já está na batota... apesar do que os autores escrevem, como veremos mais à frente, a questão que se me coloca desde já é, como é que as PMEs podem aumentar o grau de interdependência? O batoteiro que há em mim, o artista que dentro de mim se quer desenvolver, começa logo a metralhar: que ofertas? que capacidades? que actividades? que investimentos? que cultura pode aumentar o grau de interdependências?)
.
We argue that interdependency is at least as compelling as scale-based explanations as a way of explaining industry dynamics. Interdependency complements these scale-based explanations by providing a separate mechanism to explain industry dynamics in general—and shakeout in particular—in markets where adjustment costs are low or linear or where innovation returns are independent of the previous scale. Interdependency, however, also conflicts with scale-based explanations, as they give rise to empirical predictions that in several cases are directly opposed to those of past models. Ultimately the two explanations differ in a fairly simple but fundamental way. In the presence of interdependency, past innovation conditions future innovation as it does in previous models, but not because they affect incentives to innovate ... because they affect the content of what will be learned from innovative effort.
The key to this explanation is not differences in the amount of past innovative success, but differences in the content of past innovative successes, which lead to different technological trajectories. Our model focuses on the importance of what firms learn rather than solely on how much firms learn and how the nature of learning varies among industries."
...
"Activities are interdependent to the extent that “the value of a particular feature of the organization [activity] depends on a variety of other features of the organization [activities].” Interdependent activities are complementary when the marginal value of engaging in one activity is increased by engaging in another.
.
The potential for interdependency among a firm’s activities may lead firms to adopt a host of specific practices in concert and may result in “distinctly separated clusters of firm characteristics”. Early random differences in
production decisions condition later choices, potentially leading to quite different bundles of activities (and profitability) for even initially similar firms. These differences in activity bundles may persist as lagging firms struggle to imitate leading firms’ bundles of highly interdependent activities. To the extent that organizations are better at evaluating incremental than radical changes and limited in their ability to fully comprehend or
re-create the practices of rivals without such understanding, the presence of interdependencies will only reinforce within-industry heterogeneity.
...
The resulting limits to imitation and search are central to a number of streams of literature in strategy and economics. Fundamental to the resource-based view of strategy is the notion that heterogeneity in individual firm resources and capabilities may lead to performance differences among firms and that these advantages are not “competed away” because of the inability of competitors to perfectly imitate one another."
.
Como economistas-cientistas, os autores precisam de um modelo e fazem simplificações. Assim, consideram só o caso da competição pelo preço. E, talvez por isso, assumem que o potencial de interdependência num sector industrial é sempre constante... talvez porque para os autores o atributo é o preço. E se trabalharmos com mais atributos, com mais qualidades, e se os clientes também valorizarem diferentes atributos ao longo do tempo?
.
De qualquer forma Mongo rules nas indústrias ou sectores com interdependências mais elevadas... algo na linha da afirmação de que a criação de valor a partir de activos intangíveis é mais recheada em relações de 2ª e 3ª ordem.

Os modelos de negócio e a criação de valor (parte I)

Excelente artigo "The Role of the Business Model in Capturing Value from Innovation: Evidence from Xerox Corporation’s Technology Spinoff Companies" de Henry Chesbrough e Richard S. Rosenbloom.
.
Primeiro um breve resumo da história da ideia de modelo de negócio:
.
"Thus, a firm’s current businesses influenced its choice of likely future businesses as well. (Moi ici: O espaço de Minkowski não perdoa)
While the notion of strategy subsequently was developed in a myriad of directions, one branch of its development that prefigures the argument here was research in how managers could leverage the resources of the organization beyond that organization’s current business.
...
A later branch of the strategy literature incorporated cognitive bias into the idea of strategy.
(Prahalad and Bettis (1986) introduced the notion of a dominant logic: a set of heuristic rules, norms and beliefs that managers create to guide their actions.
...
While incumbent firms were able to capitalize on incremental innovations, their expertise and knowledge became liabilities in the face of radical technology changes. (Moi ici: não é só na vertente tecnológica, acontece o mesmo quando um terramoto provoca uma mudança nos factores abióticos. A citação seguinte explica muito bem como a teia impede e cega o perceber e abraçar a mudança.)
...
They argued that a change in the system linkages upsets the managerial heuristics that have developed to coordinate components – a technical variant of dominant logic. These managerial heuristics again provide a useful filter for firms coping with technological change, but they constrain the actions of firms as well.
...
In sum, the technological management literature shows that firms have great difficulty managing innovations that fall outside of their previous experience, where their earlier beliefs and practices do not apply."
.
Continua.

Testar a estratégia (parte I)

Excelente artigo do The McKinsey Quarterly "Have you tested your strategy lately?"
.
"Ultimately, strategy is a way of thinking, not a procedural exercise or a set of frameworks.
...
First, companies develop strategy in many different ways, often (Moi ici: Often? I believe is always) idiosyncratic to their organizations, people, and markets. Second, many strategies emerge over time rather than from a process of deliberate formulation. (Moi ici: Pena é que muitas vezes não se tome consciência dessa formula para a aperfeiçoar, para a melhor utilizar, para a forçar)
...
All companies operate in markets surrounded by customers, suppliers, competitors, substitutes, and potential entrants, all seeking to advance their own positions. That process, unimpeded, inexorably drives economic surplus—the gap between the return a company earns and its cost of capital—toward zero. (Moi ici: Isto aconteceria num universo fechado... Aprendi com Drucker que qualquer posição de liderança é transitória e com tendência a ser de curta duração. Aprendi com Schumpeter que os lucros só resultam da vantagem do inovador e desaparecem assim que aquilo que era inovador se torna rotina)
.
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. The best companies are emulated by those in the middle of the pack, and the worst exit or undergo significant reform. As each player responds to and learns from the actions of others, best practice becomes commonplace rather than a market-beating strategy. Good strategies emphasize difference—versus your direct competitors, versus potential substitutes, and versus potential entrants. (Moi ici: Diferenciação. Recordar este trecho e este outro só de ontem)
.
Market participants play out the drama of competition on a stage beset by randomness. Because the evolution of markets is path dependent—that is, its current state at any one time is the sum product of all previous events (Moi ici: O espaço de Minkowski), including a great many random ones—the winners of today are often the accidents of history.
...
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"
.
Faz lembrar a primeira encarnação de Michael Schumacher... are you playing to playing or playing to win? Jogar por jogar, ou jogar a feijões?

Continua.

Alimentar discussões sobre hipotéticos futuros

Talvez Martin Feldstein esteja a ser demasiado optimista "Harvard’s Feldstein Says U.S., China Trade Gap on Path to Resolution"
.
No entanto,  a valorização do yuan e o crescimento do mercado doméstico chinês são dois poderosos factores abióticos que estão a alterar a paisagem competitiva enrugada.
.
Que estratégias podem emergir destas alterações?
.
O que é que as associações industriais estão a fazer para gerar a discussão entre os seus associados? Não para darem origem a planos quinquenais, mas para gerarem carambolas nas mentes dos mais ambiciosos, dos mais apaixonados, dos mais temerários, para que nasçam dezenas, centenas de planos individuais, à medida de cada empresa, à medida da experiência, à medida do cadastro, à medida do CV de cada empresa/empresário... Minkowski em acção!
.
Enquanto escrevo isto, o twitter avisou-me que Seth Godin publicou um novo postal... nem de propósito:
.
"The sure-fire recipe for business success
.
Wait, I was confused. There's a sure-fire recipe for delicious chocolate chip cookies. There is in fact a magic formula.
.
For businesses, not so much. There isn't one secret, one process, one solution. Instead, there are a thousand or maybe a million.
.
It's not a jigsaw puzzle, it's a strand of DNA, easily rearranged and sometimes it even works. For a while."

O modelo NK de Kauffman - uma introdução (parte II)

Continuado daqui.
.
"With a low K value, an organization can change a particular attribute without significantly impacting the fitness contribution of other organizational attributes. Put more abstractly, with a low K value, the organization faces a highly correlated fitness landscape and is therefore able to engage in effective local adaptation.
...
With higher levels of K, local adaptation is not an effective response to a change in the fitness landscape. A change in a single organizational attribute is likely to have repercussions for the fitness contribution of a variety of other organizational attributes. As a result, with a higher level of K, survival subsequent to a change in the fitness landscape is much more dependent on a successful long-jump or reorientation than local adaptation. Thus, as suggested by the work of Tushman and Romanelli (1985), there may be a correlation between survival and reorientations, but the analysis implies that this correlation should be present only for organizations that have a relatively high intensity of epistatic interactions. When organizations are tightly coupled, and as a result the fitness space is only weakly correlated, local adaptation is not very effective. Under such conditions, survival in the face of a changing environment becomes more linked to a successful (lucky or visionary) long-jump or reorientation."
.
Daí que, perante uma importante alteração abiótica, seja preciso tempo para que as organizações façam as alterações estruturais que lhes permitam voltar a um desempenho adequado.
.
Trechos  retirados de Trecho retirado de capítulo 13 "Organizational Capabilities in Complex" de Daniel Levinthal que faz parte do livro “The Nature and Dynamics of Organizational Capabilities”, editado por Giovanni Dosi, Richard R. Nelson, Sidney G. Winter.

O modelo NK de Kauffman - uma introdução

"An important contribution of Kauffman's work is the finding that the topography of the fitness landscape is determined by the degree of interdependence of the fitness contribution of the various attributes (genes) of an organism. In the literature on population genetics, such interaction effects are termed epistatic effects. If organizational fitness is highly interactive, that is the value of a particular feature of the organization depends on a variety of other features of the organization, then the fitness landscape will tend to be quite rugged. (Moi ici: Fundamental este ponto.

Não há uma receita única!!!) In such a setting, even if only one element is changed, the fitness contribution of those attributes that did not change might still be affected.
...
Despite the importance of such interactive effects on fitness, much of the population genetics literature, as well as the organizations' literature, has tended to treat facets of the organism (organization) as if their fitness contribution is independent of other attributes of the organism (organization). Kauffman (1993) has developed a simple but powerful analytic structure to represent epistatic interactions, which he terms the NK model. An entity, an organization for our purposes here, is characterized as consisting of N attributes where each attribute can take on A possible values. Thus, the fitness space consists of A (elevado a) N possible types of organizations. The degree to which the fitness of the organization depends on interaction effects among the attributes is specified by the variable K. In particular, the contribution of a given attribute of the organization to the organization's overall fitness is assumed to be influenced by K other attributes. Therefore, if K equals zero, then the contribution of each element of the organization (such as strategy, personal system, structure, etc.) is independent of all other attributes. At the other extreme, if K equals N − 1, then the fitness contribution of any one attribute depends on the value of all other attributes of the organization. As a result, adjacent locations in the fitness space need not have similar fitness values. In this sense, the value K determines the intensity of interaction effects and, in turn, how rugged or correlated is the fitness space.
.
Consider the problem of identifying a coherent set of policies, that is a set of behaviours for which there are positive complementarities. This is a problem of finding an attractive peak in a rugged fitness landscape. If organizational capabilities are an outcome of such a search process, what general statements can we make about such a process?
.
Intelligent, non-exhaustive, search processes are sensitive to the topography of the problem space being explored. This may be the actual topography or, as in many efforts at calculative rationality, a representation of the actual topography.
.
At one level, this sensitivity to the topography is a statement of minimal intelligence of the search process. Clearly, if a search process is to reflect any intelligence, it should be sensitive to the fitness value of alternative locations in the space of possible solutions. In particular, the engineering challenge is to design an algorithm that is effective at finding extreme points in such a space.
.
However, search processes tend to be sensitive to the topography of the solution space in a stronger sense as well. The particular extreme value that is identified by a given algorithm is typically sensitive to the initial proposed solution at which search started. Furthermore, the extreme value that is identified will be (or quite close to) a local peak in the solution space.


Consider the outcome of a process of local search on a rugged landscape. In particular, suppose that search takes the form of examining alternatives in the immediate neighborhood of the current proposed solution and that search ceases when a local optimum is obtained. Finally, imagine carrying out a large number of such search efforts at randomly chosen starting locations in the space of possible solutions. Except by chance, the initial ‘solutions’ for each of the search efforts will differ. However, after a few iterations of local search, the number of distinct solutions will decline radically. This reduction in the number of identified ‘solutions’ reflects the fact that while the solutions were initially distributed randomly in the landscape, many initial starting points share the same local optimum. Kauffman (1993) terms the set of locations in the landscape for which local search results in a common local optimum as belonging to a common ‘basin of attraction’.
.
The number of local optima that are reached increases as the landscape becomes more ‘rugged’. In particular, consider the landscape that results when K = 0. As noted earlier, when K = 0 there is a single maximum in the space of alternative solutions. If a policy array is located at any point other than the optimum, there is a location in the immediate neighborhood, involving a change in a single attribute that enhances performance. Since K = 0, changing this attribute improves the performance independent of the other N−1 attributes. Therefore, a process of local search results in a ‘walk’ to the optimum from all starting positions.


For K > 0, the landscape has multiple local optima. More generally, as K increases the landscape becomes less correlated and the number of local optima increases. (Moi ici: Estão a ver as consequências? Pode-se competir de muito mais maneiras do que simplesmente pelo preço/custo!!!) As a result, search efforts may become ‘trapped’ at a suboptimal local peak. (Moi ici: E não só, não é tudo falta de visão para descobrir o pico máximo, é também o leque de opções deixado aberto pelo espaço de MInkowski. è possível visionar picos mais atraentes mas reconhecer que não se tem ADN empresarial para lá chegar e triunfar de forma sustentada) This property is clearly an implication of the limited nature of local search. The ‘ruggedness’ of the landscape has an impact on organizational form to the extent that there are peaks and valleys beyond the ‘vision’ of the search algorithm. Thus, greater vision attenuates the effect of a given level of K. However, as long as the search effort is not exhaustive, the qualitative properties of search leading to, possibly inferior, local peaks remains. Furthermore, the number of such peaks increases with K for a given range, or vision, of neighborhood search.
.
This analysis of local search in complex landscapes has important implications for contingency theory arguments regarding variation in organizational forms in a population. Contingency theory is typically expressed as an argument for a correspondence between facets of organizations and features of the environment in which organizations function. In this discussion of movement on rugged fitness landscapes, all organizations face the same environment. What differs is their initial composition. As a result of these different starting points, organizations are led to adopt distinct organizational forms. Local search in a multi-peak landscape results in organizational adaptation being path-or history-dependent. (Moi ici: Cá está o espaço de Minkowski) As a result, the observed distribution of organizational forms in a population may reflect heterogeneity in the population of organizations at earlier points in time rather than variation in niches in the environment, as suggested by ecological analyses, or a set of distinct external conditions, as generally suggested by contingency theories."
.
Isto faz-me pensar numa outra consequência... a exploração que uma empresa faz na paisagem enrugada em busca da optimização do seu desempenho pode levar aquilo a que se chamam estratégias puras... (estratégias puras e híbridas - o dilema: parte I e parte II, ou seja, não há almoços grátis) estratégias puras geram maiores retornos mas têm um problema...
.
.
.
.
Empresas que seguem estratégias puras são menos robustas a enfrentar alterações importantes no meio abiótico!!! Quanto mais interdependência, quanto mais sinérgico for o mosaico, maior o compromisso com determinada visão do futuro do meio abiótico... e se este muda... menor a flexibilidade da empresa, Minkowski outra vez, para recuar para uma posição anterior e recomeçar a busca numa paisagem alterada.

Empresa (ponto vermelho) aperfeiçoa-se para trepar de 1 para 2 e de 2 para 3. Quando começa a pensar em chegar a uma etapa 4...
.

Oooppsss!
.
Uma alteração imprevista do meio abiótico baralha os planos da empresa que aterrou na etapa 4.
.
E quem garante que a alteração no meio abiótico não terá réplicas que fragilizarão ainda mais a posição competitiva da empresa?
.
Em Portugal a reacção típica nestas circunstâncias é pedir ajuda ao governo... ou seja, adiar o inevitável... como as escolas privadas hoje em dia. Recordarei sempre o exemplo da Pirelli.
.
Trecho retirado de capítulo 13 "Organizational Capabilities in Complex" de Daniel Levinthal que faz parte do livro “The Nature and Dynamics of Organizational Capabilities”, editado por Giovanni Dosi, Richard R. Nelson, Sidney G. Winter.

Tão biológico...

"When it comes to serving customers, businesses can move in one of two fundamental directions. They can standardize operations so that every customer receives the same options and treatment as every other customer." (Moi ici: deriva 1da figura)

...
"On the other hand, a business can try to operate so that every customer is treated, to the greatest extent possible, as a unique individual – a market segment of one, if you will." (Moi ici: deriva 2 da figura)
...
"The degree of complexity required to deliver a company’s desired customer experience is directly linked to what we call the segment range and the degree of segment differentiation. Segment range is the number of different customer segments that the company actively targets while the degree of segment differentiation is the extent to which a company tailors its business activities to fit the exact requirements of a particular segment." (Moi ici: A via da diferenciação como aspira, no limite, a tratar cada cliente como único, leva as empresas a entrarem numa espiral de diferenciação. Quanto mais diferenciação são capazes de entregar, mais vontade, mais apetência pela diferenciação nasce na mente dos clientes, o que gera novamente mais diferenciação. E, como um espaço de Minkowski, as escolhas que levaram à diferenciação de ontem, não podem ser facilmente anuladas amanhã. Assim, o cadastro de diferenciação, barra algumas avenidas de diferenciação futuras e potencias outras.)
...
"The objective when using segmentation should be to strike an appropriate balance between maximizing a segment-specific customer experience while minimizing operational complexity. In short, managers should segment those activities that really matter to customers and otherwise simplify operations. So how should a manager figure out which activities to differentiate by segment, which to share across segments – and which to eliminate altogether?
.
The first question to ask is what really matters to the group of customers that constitute a segment."
...
"The logic is then to make sure that you differentiate on those competing factors that are most critical for a particular customer segment while you standardize, or even eliminate, those competing factors that are of less importance. This will ensure that “key hooks” are in place for particular customer segments while operational complexity is kept at a minimum."
.
Trechos retirados de "Segmenting When It Matters" de Andreas Birnik e Richard Moat.

A evolução da ideia de mosaico estratégico (parte VIII)

Continuado daqui: parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI e parte VII.
.
Não há acasos! Todas as coincidências são significativas!!!
.
Começamos há dias esta série, entretanto, na véspera da publicação da parte VI, descobrimos que o número de Janeiro de 2011 da revista Harvard Business Review é dedicado aos modelos de negócio e que havia um artigo, em particular, "How to Design a Winning Business Model" de Ramon Casadesus-Masanell e Joan E. Ricart, que se enquadra nesta série.
.
"Strategy has been primary building block of competitiveness over the past three decades, but in the future, the quest for sustainable advantage may well begin with the business model. (Moi ici: A cada vez maior atenção ao conceito de modelo de negócio. Um conjunto de escolhas que se reforçam e criam uma posição distintiva com maior sustentabilidade)

…

A 2009 follow-up study reveals that seven out of 10 companies are engaging in business-model innovation, and an incredible 98% are modifying their business models to some extent. Business model innovation is undoubtedly here to stay. (Moi ici: As mudanças no meio abiótico que desabaram sobre a economia mundial desde 2007, criaram uma nova paisagem competitiva. Nova paisagem implica novas formas de competição, logo, novos modelos de negócio)

…

The economic slowdown in the developed world is forcing companies to modify their business models or create new ones. In addition, the rise of new technology-based and low-cost rivals is threatening incumbents, reshaping industries, and redistributing profits.

…

Our studies suggest that one component of a business model must be the choices that executives make about how the organization should operate … Managerial choices, of course, have consequences. (Moi ici: Fundamental recordar este postal "O paradoxo da estratégia (parte II: As posições anteriores limitam as posições futuras". Ou seja, as escolhas anteriores de uma empresa barram algumas das suas escolhas futuras e potenciam outras das suas escolhas futuras. No mercado, composto por várias empresas, cada uma com o seu cadastro de escolhas, as escolhas acerca do futuro não podem ser feitas livremente... o passado persegue as empresas)

…

These consequences influence the company’s logic of value creation and value capture, so they too must have a place in the definition. In its simplest conceptualization, therefore, a business model consists of a set of managerial choices and the consequences of those choices.

Companies make three types of choices when creating business models. Policy choices determine the actions an organization takes across all its operations … Asset choices pertain to the tangible resources a company deploys … And governance choices refer to how a company arranges decision-making rights over the other two … Seemingly innocuous differences in the governance of policies and assets influence their effectiveness a great deal.

…

Above all, successful business models generate virtuous cycles, or feedback loops, that are self-reinforcing. This is the most powerful and neglected aspect of business models. (Moi ici: Há algo aqui do arquétipo de "Sucesso para os vencedores". Partindo deste exemplo "Success to the Successful", é considerar a Jane como um conjunto de escolhas e o Tom como outro conjunto de escolhas. O sucesso obtido com um dado conjunto de escolhas começa a sugar, a captar, a drenar recursos de umas para as outras, por causa dos resultados que se obtêm e que recompensam algumas escolhas face a outras) 

…

The leaders gathered those assets not by buying them but by making smart choices (Moi ici: E só à posteriori é que as escolhas se revelam como boas!!!) about pricing, royalties, product range, and so on. In other words, they’re consequences of business model choices. Any enterprise can make choices that allow it to build assets or resources—be they project management skills, production experience, reputation, asset utilization, trust, or bargaining power—that make a difference in its sector.

The consequences enable further choices, and so on. This process generates virtuous cycles that continuously strengthen the business model, creating a dynamic that’s similar to that of network effects.

As the cycles spin, stocks of the company’s key assets (or resources) grow, enhancing the enterprise’s competitive advantage. Smart companies design business models to trigger virtuous cycles that, over time, expand both value creation and capture.

…

Its competitive advantage keeps growing as long as the virtuous cycles generated by its business model spin. Just as a fast-moving body is hard to stop because of kinetic energy, it’s tough to halt well-functioning virtuous cycles.”

.

Alguns postais anteriores que comentam trabalhos de Ramon Casadesus-Masanell e Joan E. Ricart:

• "Modelos de negócio"
• "Modelos de negócio (parte V)"
• "Modelos de negócio (parte VI)"