"their business model is fundamentally broken"

O mundo está em permanente mudança, mudança que acelerou nas últimas décadas com a disseminação da internet. Enquanto as mentes dominadas pelo locus de controlo externo apelam ao papá-estado e ao seu apoio pedo-mafioso, a minoria, com o locus de controlo interno, olha as coisas de frente e procura construir uma alternativa.

Em "Perilous Times" encontramos um bom exemplo dos que experimentam coisas novas e dos que esperam que o mau tempo desapareça, por artes mágicas, como aquela empresa em 2007:

"But the real challenge facing many colleges and universities at the moment is that their business model is fundamentally broken. “Business model” isn’t a popular phrase in higher education, either, but all colleges have one. When we use the term, we are referring to the revenue that an institution must take in to support the resources and processes it uses to deliver on its value proposition.
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Many colleges and universities are increasingly unable to bring in enough revenue to cover their costs.
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What makes this even worse is that the natural pressure in higher education is for costs to increase -- thanks to the lack of economies of scale and the complexity of higher education operations. A major reason for the complexity of those operations is that many colleges and universities have multiple value propositions with multiple business models for multiple stakeholders. Managing that complexity has driven up the cost of administrative overhead over time.
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First, in the competition to attract students, colleges and universities will continue their arms race. For many, that will mean adopting copycat sustaining innovations -- more faculty, more extravagant facilities, more administrative positions -- that add cost. But this will further strain their business model, because they are already struggling to bring in enough revenue from a mixture of tuition, government funding, endowment returns and donations. For those institutions that are largely dependent on tuition for revenue and have small endowments, they will be in big trouble.
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Second, for those that can’t keep up and those that experience enrollment declines, their large fixed costs -- thanks to tenured faculty, debt payments associated with financing their many buildings, and associated building-maintenance costs -- place them in peril without an easy ability to adjust.
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But standing still, avoiding innovation and trying to be many things to many people is a nonstarter. We look forward to many individual colleges innovating, defying the odds and proving our predictions wrong."

Quem pensa no depois de amanhã concentra-se nisto:

“Against this backdrop, it is true that the emergence of the first disruptive innovation in education since the printing press -- online learning -- will also play a role as more students enroll in online learning experiences. The full impact of disruption in higher education will take at least a generation to be felt, however, not overnight. … the opportunity to carve out a specific focus around a meaningful “job to be done” -- the progress that an individual is trying to make in a particular circumstance -- in the lives of its students.” 

E imagina um mundo de oportunidades muito para lá dos estudantes, pensa num mundo que exige mais informação e formação, pensa num mundo onde essa informação até está disponível gratuitamente, mas pensa na curadoria necessária para filtrar o trigo do joio, pensa na necessidade de confiança e de experiência, pensa na necessidade de interacção. Será, no entanto, um mudo que não vai ser para professores de carreira, formados em pedagogia e sem experiência da vida...

"It’s the new business model that is stealing your customers, not the product”

“Car dealers now make hardly any money on car sales themselves—less than 10 percent of total net profits. Rather, their profits arise from the sale of financing, insurance, extra warranties, and maintenance, which now represent 67 percent of their net income. Car dealers have evolved and today resemble banks selling financial services much more than they do auto retailers.
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After all, Uber, Amazon, and Birchbox are all regarded as technology companies, right? I decided to talk to these firms and learn about the new technologies they developed and were leveraging. It soon became clear to me that the initial success of these companies didn’t hinge on new and innovative technologies, but rather on the power of their business model innovations. Similarly, others have argued that even well-regarded “tech” companies such as Google, in their early days, didn’t invent completely new technologies, but rather invented or perfected new business models. These innovations represented the real engine of disruption.
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Business model innovation is a powerful force of abrupt market-level change, in some cases more powerful than technology. Technology, as Jim Collins put it more than a decade and a half ago in his bestselling book Good to Great, “is an accelerator, never a creator of momentum and growth.
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Likewise, don’t let an excessive focus on your products prevent you from paying attention to your business. Many executives at incumbent businesses, wedded to their business models, react to disruption by blaming their products. As they see it, all the newfangled lemonade stands out there are stealing customers because they have created better-tasting lemonade. Stop blaming your lemonade! The truth is that the upstart’s lemonade tastes the same as yours, or maybe even worse. It’s the new business model that is stealing your customers, not the product. ”

Agora relacionar com "Today's CEO playbook is outdated. Here are 5 things rising stars should focus on to win in the next decade":

"Competing in ecosystems.Classical models of competition assume that there are discrete companies that make similar products and compete within clearly delineated industries. But technology has dramatically reduced communication and transaction costs, weakening the Coasean logic for combining many activities inside a few vertically integrated firms. At the same time, uncertainty and disruption both require individual firms to be more adaptable and also make business environments increasingly shapeable. Companies now have opportunities to influence the development of the market in their favor, but this can be achieved only by coordinating with other stakeholders.
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As a result of these forces, new industrial architectures are emerging based on the coordination of ecosystems  —   complex, semi-fluid networks of companies that challenge several traditional assumptions of business. ... They blur the boundaries of industries: for example, automotive ecosystems include not just traditional suppliers but also connectivity, software, and cloud storage providers. And they blur the distinction between collaborators and competitors: for example, Amazon and third-party merchants have a symbiotic relationship, while the company competes with those merchants simultaneously by selling private-label brands.
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The playbook for how to emulate these ecosystem pioneers has not yet been fully codified, but a few imperatives are becoming increasingly clear:
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Adopt a fundamentally different perspective towards strategy, based on embracing principles like external orientation, common platforms, co-evolution, emergence, and indirect monetization
Determine what role your company can play in your ecosystem or ecosystems  —   not all companies can be the orchestrator [Moi ici: Ao orquestrador chamei em 2012 o arquitecto de paisagens competitivas]
Ensure that your company creates value for the ecosystem broadly, not just for itself"

Trechos iniciais retirados de “Unlocking the Customer Value Chain” de Thales S. Teixeira.

Modelos de negócio

“Although choosing a business model is one of the most important decisions any businessperson makes, executives don’t always reflect much on what a business model actually is or does.
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A business model specifies how the firm creates value (and for whom), and how it captures value (and from whom).
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A business model, as defined above, describes how a business is supposed to function in theory. Although businesses will differ from one another in their particulars (name, location, number of employees, financials, and so on), a model allows us to look beyond the particulars to identify conceptual similarities and differences between businesses, whether or not they happen to operate in the same industry. Likewise, a model allows us to chart how business concepts evolve over time.
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As I’ve indicated, the creation of new business models tended to happen slowly prior to the internet. In the supermarket industry, it took half a century or longer for slotting fees and club membership fees to make their debut as a means of capturing value. Even after they appeared, it took decades for other companies within the industry to embrace them.
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This slow pace of change made life comparatively easy for executives. No matter what market or sector you were entering, the choice of a business model was pretty simple. By default, you were handed a standard model or method for creating value and making money. At best, a second option of business model was available to you as well. In media, for instance, a single model for making money dominated for much of the twentieth century. Companies created value for customers by offering free content such as broadcast television shows, news articles, or radio songs to consumer audiences. They captured value by selling viewers’ attention to advertisers, in what was termed an “ad-supported” model. Over time, premium cable television channels such as HBO and satellite radio SiriusXM embraced a different model for making money. They created value for customers in the same way—by providing content. But they captured value by charging for subscriptions, what was called a “paid media” model. For decades, these two models were basically it. If you wanted to compete, you chose one of the two and gave it your best shot. Switching was rare.
This situation changed dramatically with the advent of the commercial internet in the mid-1990s.
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The appearance of business model innovation in and across industries happens so suddenly that executives and entrepreneurs often struggle to understand it. Disruptors tend to use a surfing metaphor, perceiving promising business models as powerful ocean waves. Seeking to catch and ride these waves, they anticipate them by directing their gazes in a direction where waves will likely appear. When they sense that a wave is imminent, they position themselves by paddling directly in front of the wave. Of course, spotting the right wave to ride requires focus and some luck, and staying atop of the wave once it appears requires learning and patience. For incumbents, the spread of business model innovations feels far less fun, and far more threatening. Incumbents tend to think of them, consciously or not, as wildfires that pop up unpredictably, propagate quickly, and wreak devastation in their paths. Their instinctive response is to suppress the wildfire by attacking or buying the startup. If a business model innovation flares up in your industry, turn on the siren, quick!
Which of these metaphors is most accurate?"

Trechos retirados de “Unlocking the Customer Value Chain” de Thales S. Teixeira.

Para reflexão pelos empresários do calçado e do têxtil

Um artigo interessante e merecedor de reflexão por muitos empresários do calçado e do têxtil, "Millennials have a new shopping habit that could spell trouble for Forever 21 and H&M".

Talvez mais uma razão para subir na escala de valor, talvez mais uma razão para pensar em Mongo e nas suas tribos.

Dá que pensar no potencial impacte numa série de modelos de negócio baseados no fast-fashion... ou no low-cost.

"shifts toward particular logics can be reversed" (parte VI)

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

Ontem em conversa ao almoço ao comentar "Quem aproveitará?" com o D. Pedro IV, ele recordou-me que se trata eventualmente de um retorno ao modelo dos distribuidores, um retrocesso face à progressiva desintermediação trazida pela internet.

Um bom exemplo para uso nesta série.

Construir monopólios informais

Este blogue é o blogue da "Concorrência imperfeita e dos monopólios informais".

É tão esquisito, a palavra monopólio é uma palavra proscrita, é uma palavra que representa o pior que há no mundo económico-político. No entanto, quando lhe acrescento a palavra informal, "monopólio informal" tudo muda de figura e passa a ser o meu objectivo primordial quando trabalho estratégia com as empresas.

Em Agosto de 2004 fiz um trabalho com uma empresa do sector da construção onde usando o balanced scorecard e o conceito de ecossistema de partes interessadas desenvolvemos um monopólio informal para fugir da competição pelo preço. Passados estes anos todos é interessante, no mesmo sector, num outro país, encontrar a mesma terminologia em "Compete as 1 of 1":

"Some years ago, the founder and CEO of a small custom-engineered structural components company (based around a core technology of precast-prestressed concrete) recognized that his industry was undergoing consolidation. He lacked the capital to acquire other firms and wanted to remain independent. So he approached Plantes Company to help him find a way to become, in his words, “a monopoly.” He wisely recognized the advantages of creating a unique market position: being 1 of 1 instead of 1 of many. [Moi ici: Como não recordar a biologia, as paramécias de Gause ou os rouxinóis de MacArthur] Developing a differentiated and hard-to-copy market position could lead to attractive returns, profitable growth opportunities, and freedom to remain independent during industry consolidation.
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Kay worked closely with the leadership team to identify current and potential competencies, [Moi ici: Como não recordar "Do concreto para o abstracto e não o contrário"] the benefits they could provide, and which kinds of current or potential customers would most benefit from these competencies. She also helped the leadership team understand that the company’s direct customers — general contractors — were, in fact, competitors. Why? Because they could and often did fill the needs of end customers by backwards-integrating into structural components using cast-in-place concrete, a substitute technology.
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Kay recommended the company redesign its business model to become a design-build contractor vertically integrated around the precast-prestressed concrete core technology. Its value promise would be “more building for your dollar, faster, and without schedule and cost overrun risks.” As a general contractor, the firm could control the design of the project and the precast, making this promise feasible and hard for general contractors to copy. Execution required specializing initially in parking decks, where precast is a high percent of cost-of-goods-sold and the company could sell directly to owners who needed new parking decks quickly.
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Today, the company, which used to win business on price, does all its work on a negotiated basis."

"e tudo pode começar como um biscate"

Ao ler "The quiet radicalism of Henri Matisse’s great-grandson" não pude deixar de pensar no que significa. Pegar num produto tradicional, carregá-lo de significado e apostar na sua divulgação e venda via internet.

"have transformed that small pottery studio into a thriving business with a cult following on the internet."

Depois, ainda encalhei neste trecho:

"The direct-to-consumer model works particularly well for this kind of labor-intensive business. By cutting out the middleman markups that come with selling products at boutiques and department stores"

E recordei uma especulação de há alguns anos:

- Não receiam que um dia um par de sapatos possa ser feito e vendido por um trabalhador a partir de casa?  

Está cada vez mais perto... não! Já está a acontecer! Nós é que não nos apercebemos da evolução no aparecimento dos primeiros nenúfares numa evolução exponencial, o lago é grande.

Um trabalhador pode não ter capacidade de planeamento para encomendas médias, mas basta-lhe trabalhar e produzir um par de cada vez. Ah! O país é muito pequeno...

Quem diz que o mercado-alvo é este país socialista onde as pessoas são cada vez mais carne para o canhão da impostagem? Como dizia o Nuno na segunda-feira à noite: UE e até o mundo.

Basta ter um filho, ter uma sobrinha, ter um parceiro que trate da internet, da prateleira e aposte num crescimento orgânico. É claro que ter uma loja na internet não é sinónimo de sucesso, mas o caminho faz-se caminhando, e tudo pode começar como um biscate.

E o potencial para co-criação, para interacção, para alterar a ordem das coisas.

Birdwatching e economia

Recordei logo 2010 e "Mais uma sugestão de modelo de negócio" ao ler um artigo referido por Nuno Gomes Oliveira no FB, "L'observation des oiseaux rares accidentels peut être bénéfique pour l'économie".

Recordar também os Açores e 2013.

"an effective, well-integrated business model"

“The basic architecture underlying all successful businesses consists of four interdependent elements that can be represented with four boxes. Every thriving enterprise is propelled by a strong customer value proposition (CVP)—a product, service, or combination thereof that helps customers more effectively, conveniently, or “service, or combination thereof that helps customers more effectively, conveniently, or affordably do a job that they’ve been trying to do. The CVP describes how a company creates value for a given set of customers at a given price. The profit formula defines how the company will capture value for itself and its shareholders in the form of profit. It does this by distilling an often-complex set of financial calculations into the four variables most critical to profit generation: revenue model, cost structure, target unit margin, and resource velocity. Finally, key resources and key processes, are the means by which the company delivers the value to the customer and to itself. These critical assets, skills, activities, routines, and ways of working enable the enterprise to fulfill the CVP and profit formula in a repeatable, scalable fashion.
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Every successful company is fulfilling a real customer job-to-be-done with an effective, well-integrated business model, whether it knows it or not”

Excerto de: Mark W. Johnson. “Reinvent Your Business Model: How to Seize the White Space for Transformative Growth”

Pragmáticos que sofrem

Em linha com este postal de Abril de 2007, e relacionado com o tema do alinhamento do modelo do negócio porque não basta inovar, o texto de Geoffrey Moore, "Where are you in the Market Development Life Cycle?".

Geoffrey Moore associa a cada estado de desenvolvimento do mercado um determinado mindset do cliente-alvo:

"Each of the four stages in the life cycle is readily detected by a simple litmus-test question: What is the state of mind that is motivating your current cohort of prospects to become customers?
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Here are the mental states by market development stage:
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In the Early MarketThis is a market made up of technology enthusiasts and visionaries who are adopting ahead of their peers in order to get a competitive advantage or head off some problem looming on the horizon. Their state of mind can be summarized as We believe what you believe.
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Crossing the ChasmThe first customer cohorts that emerge on the Mainstream Market side of the chasm are adopting because they are saddled with a painful problem that they cannot solve with their current set of tools. We call these people pragmatists in pain. They do not believe what you believe. Instead their state of mind is We need what you have.
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No longer do you talk about the technology first. Now it is the customer problem that takes center stage, followed by a domain-specific solution that is communicated in their language, not yours.
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Working in niche markets with high-value use cases can be exceptionally rewarding as the return on investment for customers is so high they can afford to pay premium prices, and still rave about your products. Such niches, however, represent a small fraction of the total available market, where most prospects may well be looking for productivity improvements of the type you offer, but at a more competitive price.
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Inside the Tornado.
When not under duress, most pragmatist customers adopt when they see their peers adopting. They don’t want to go too early, but they also don’t want to get left behind. So, they are always checking in to see what others are doing. Their mental state is We want what they have.
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[Moi ici: Segue-se um conselho que é o meu, confesso que foi o que pensei acerca das minhas PME antes de o ler] For companies who are not the gorilla in the overall category, rather than just picking up whatever scraps are left to others, best strategy is usually to retrench in a niche market where you can be number one—effectively causing at least a small group of peers who will herd around your offerings. [Moi ici: Talvez algo de Hermann Simon e os seus campeões escondidos]
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On Main Street.
Conservative customers postpone adoption as long as they reasonably can, seeking to get the most out of their existing infrastructure while others assimilate the new stuff. Eventually when the new becomes the market standard, they have to capitulate. At that point their mindset is We need what they have.
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Note that these customers do not want your product. Instead they see themselves as buying under duress. You want to make this as painless as possible for them, with simple pricing, easy installation, and highly defaulted product options. They really don’t want to be bothered.
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At the end of the day, conservatives buy whatever the pragmatists bought, but typically at a lower price and with no bells and whistles. They are skeptical even then, but once they have chosen a vendor, they tend to be quite loyal, if for no other reason than to avoid having to go through another cycle of adoption."

Ser generalista como Bruce Jenner não é só para os processos internos que não funciona num mundo de especialistas, também a nível da relação com as partes interessadas.

Acerca dos influenciadores

Ao longo dos anos tenho escrito sobre os ecossistemas e os influenciadores. Por exemplo:

• "Subir na escala de valor" em Março de 2007
• "Os ecossistemas da procura a mudarem"
• "Não esquecer!"
• "O poder do influenciador"
• "Muito mais do que olhar só para o cliente imediato"
• "Olhar para o ecossistema"

O que se segue parece-me muito útil e claro:

"Influencer marketing in the B2B world is a viable strategy, and there are real influencers out there who can help you achieve real marketing and business results. But they are not all created equal. Pick the wrong type of influencer and you won’t get the return you’re after.
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Both B2B and B2C companies have quickly adopted influencer strategies and, while their approaches are not fundamentally different, the impact influencers can have varies widely.
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In my work with B2B influencers, I have noticed powerful nuances and success factors at play. Regardless of your industry, you need to consider four distinct types of influencers and the role each plays to get the most bang for your buck.
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Trechos e imagem retirados de "Are You Sure You’re Working With The Right B2B Influencer?"

Comunicar

"The third dimension of value-based selling is the communication of the value proposition to the customer. According to the interviews, the most salient aspect of the sales communication is the credible demonstration of the offering’s contribution to the customer’s business profits. While any salesperson might claim to save money or enhance customer revenues, value-based sellers provide persuasive evidence for their value claims. Clearly value evidence acts as a powerful mechanism to reduce ambiguity regarding superior value for the customer.
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Respondents emphasized that credible communication in value-based selling should actively aim to reduce customer perceived risk. We identified two widely used risk reduction strategies in value communication. First, references can be used to demonstrate a history of past successes and evidence of the vendor’s willingness and capability to deliver superior value.
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Second, companies emphasizing value-based selling were widely implementing guarantees to signal their credible commitment to delivering superior value. Bearing some of customer’s risk was often regarded as the flip side of sharing the value pie.
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In sum, communicating the value proposition is defined as the degree to which a salesperson focuses on convincing customers that the proposed offering would impact their profit statement."

Trechos retirados de "It's almost like taking the sales out of selling— Conceptualizing value-based selling in business markets", publicado por Industrial Marketing Management · January 2012

Quantificar

"In value-based selling, the focus is on active identification of customer problems and the creation of mutually valuable solutions to those problems. Hence, value oriented salespeople strive to actively indentify and craft offerings that have substantial potential to impact customer profits. The interviews indicate that quantification efforts are a major aspect of crafting the value proposition. Salespeople can base their customer value quantification efforts on different methods such as customer specific value calculations, value studies, simulations, return-on-investment studies, lifecycle calculations, and knowledge about the value created for reference customers. Quantification efforts aim to build evidence for the offering’s monetary implications in the customer application for value-in-use.
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An effective value proposition cannot be crafted by the seller alone but requires at least some mutuality and participation from the customer based on dialogue, customer specific data, and other customer inputs. Overall, this reflects service thinking where crafting value propositions is based on the idea of “co-creation” of value rather than predefined “delivery” of value.
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Even if salespeople cannot precisely quantify the value of their offerings, our interviews underline the importance of making the size of the value opportunity visible to the customer.
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In sum, we define crafting the value proposition as the degree to which a salesperson builds up quantified evidence about the size of the market offering’s value opportunity in terms of its impact on the customer’s business."

Recentemente num projecto, ao listarmos o que é que os actores de um ecossistema da procura procuravam e valorizavam, um dos tópicos foi "durabilidade".

"O nosso produto tem uma durabilidade superior à da concorrência."

 Disse-lhes que o meu filho mais novo aos oito anos já dizia: publicidade!

Vou falar-lhes de "builds up quantified evidence about the size of the market offering’s value opportunity in terms of its impact on the customer’s business". Que estudos suportam a afirmação acerca da durabilidade superior? Que argumentos suportados tecnicamente? Que números suportados em experiências?

Trechos retirados de "It's almost like taking the sales out of selling— Conceptualizing value-based selling in business markets", publicado por Industrial Marketing Management · January 2012

"focuses on identifying key drivers of customers’ earning logic"

"The face-to-face interviews with sales managers indicated that value-based selling is a viable and utilized sales approach in the companies selected for our study. The common themes recurring in top of mind responses indicate that value-based selling behaviors shift the sales focus to the offering’s implications for the customer’s business instead of focusing on customers’ expressed needs and creating customer satisfaction. [Moi ici: Rever este sublinhado, sobretudo aquele "implications for the customer’s business"] More specifically, respondents emphasized that value-based selling is a broader approach than selling product functionalities or customer benefits, focusing on the value-in-use potential of the offering for the customer’s business and financial profits.
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value-based selling goes beyond presenting the benefits of an offering to the customer. The central aspects of value-based selling behaviors are efforts to understand the customer’s business and the related value creation opportunities, proactive crafting of value propositions that are substantive from customer’s point of view, and communicating the value potential to the customer.
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More specifically, the analysis of the interviews reveals that value-based selling is a multidimensional concept comprising three salient dimensions: (1) understanding the customer’s business model, (2) crafting the value proposition, and (3) communicating the value. We therefore define value-based selling behavior as “the degree to which the salesperson works with the customer to craft a market offering in such a way that benefits are translated into monetary terms, based on an in- depth understanding of the customer's business model, thereby convincingly demonstrating their contribution to customers’ profitability.”
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Understanding the customer’s business modelAll respondents emphasized that value-based selling must be based on behaviors focusing on building a thorough understanding of the customer’s business goals. The need for a thorough understanding was manifested in a variety of ways in the interviewees’ comments, such as the need to understand the customer’s goals, how the customer makes its money, the customer’s earning logic, and to understand the customer’s customers, which are all condensed into the business model concept.
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In sum, understanding the customer’s business model is defined as the degree to which a salesperson focuses on identifying key drivers of customers’ earning logic. This understanding forms the basis for crafting compelling value propositions and communicating them effectively."

Continua.

Trechos retirados de "It's almost like taking the sales out of selling— Conceptualizing value-based selling in business markets", publicado por Industrial Marketing Management · January 2012

O que é que isto quer dizer?

Esta manhã numa fábrica de calçado, enquanto aguardava ser atendido, comecei a folhear uma revista La Conceria (versão inglesa).

A certa altura deparo com uma nota de rodapé nas páginas iniciais que me pôs a pensar: 1 em cada 4 pares de sapatos comprados na Alemanha são comprados online.

O que é que isto quer dizer para quem produz?

Como alguém, numa outra fábrica de calçado, costuma dizer: os sapatos terão de ser produzidos por alguém.

Sim, mas como é que quem produz estabelece relação com os donos das novas prateleiras? Em que feiras é que eles estão? Será que vão a feiras? Será que eles pensam em épocas ou têm outra frequência mais acelerada? Quem faz parte dos seus ecossistemas?

Aguardemos pelos desenvolvimentos

Eu só sou um anónimo consultor da província, estudo umas coisas, faço outras e vejo outras ainda. A minha experiência formata-me e condiciona o meu pensamento e o campo de possibilidades que antevejo.

Por isso, esta semana, numa empresa com um comportamento semelhante ao das bolas vermelhas da figura:

Perguntaram-me, qual o principal problema das empresas portuguesas (PME)?

Pensei no tecto de vidro, mas evitei a expressão e, apresentei esta figura.

Ontem, ao ler "ACO Shoes cresce à boleia da Europa de Leste" pensei numa frase recente de Nassim Taleb:

"l'entrepreneur peut tout perdre ou travailler sans compter son temps. Mais c'est grâce à ce genre de folie individuelle qu'une société fonctionne."

O que é que sublinhei? Por um lado, aquilo que é a base do sucesso actual:

"Especializada em calçado de conforto, a ACO produz 1,5 milhões de pares de sapatos, cerca de cinco mil pares por cada dia útil da semana."

Depois, por outro lado, aquilo em que a empresa pretende apostar no futuro:

"Para 2018, a empresa está a apostar em produtos de alto valor acrescentado, através da criação de um calçado mais técnico, e que se insere numa estratégia virada para o mercado português." 

Acredito que esta aposta para 2018 foi mal apanhada pela jornalista, justificação mais benévola, tal a falta de alinhamento.

Primeiro: a proposta de valor para vender sapato de conforto é diferente da proposta de valor para vender sapato técnico;
Segundo: os comerciais que vendem uma coisa têm de usar outra argumentação para vender outra;
Terceiro: as prateleiras onde se vendem uns sapatos são diferentes das prateleiras onde se vendem os outros;
Quarto: alto valor acrescentado para o mercado português é quase um oxímoro. Tirando brincadeiras e experiências de bolso o mercado português não suporta produções de alto valor acrescentado.

No entanto, eu só sou um consultor anónimo. Aguardemos pelos desenvolvimentos.

Quanto tempo? (parte II)

Parte I.

Nem de propósito, entretanto, encontrei "Can blockchain ensure Unilever’s tea farmers produce a fairer brew?":

"Imagine being able to trace the exact origins of your cup of tea: where and how it was made, whether organic soil was used and if the workers were treated fairly.[Moi ici: Perfeito para Mongo, para a democratização da produção e para a autenticidade]"

Quanto tempo?

"what most people don’t understand yet is that blockchain technology is about so much more than digital coins. At its essence, a blockchain is a new type of digital ledger which records information in a publicly-verified, traceable way across a decentralized network of devices. What this means is information for, say, an app isn’t just stored on a privately-owned server somewhere—it’s stored across multiple devices that communicate with each other to verify user activity, rather than referencing one central authority"

Há uma empresa com que estou a trabalhar que tem na sala de reuniões uma foto excelente do chão de fábrica de uma fábrica de sapatos anterior à electricidade onde a existência de um veio central ditava a localização das máquinas, como na foto:

O aparecimento da electricidade demoraria 30 a 40 anos a alterar o layout das fábricas.

Quanto tempo demorará o blockchain a alterar os modelos de negócio de Mongo, sobretudo a promover a democratização da produção?

Trecho retirado de "Why Designers Need to Start Thinking About Blockchain"

"Ask For Problems, Not Solutions"

Um texto muito bom, "Your Business Model Is Like A Yoghurt, And 7 Other Lessons From Alexander Osterwalder":

"1) Nobody Gives A Shit About Your Idea.
That’s exactly right, nobody cares. Why should they? People only care about the value you and your idea can provide to THEM.
...
Don’t just throw ideas around, because ideas are cheap. Focus on the value your idea can provide others.
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2) Your Business Model Is Like A Yoghurt...
Your Business Model Has An Expiry DateAnd it is probably coming very soon. No matter how well it tastes in the moment, your business model will soon go sour. To avoid getting sick, you must throw it out and get a new one.
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The yoghurt has a slight edge over your business model, though. With the yoghurt, at least you know WHEN it expires.
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Your business model isn’t as forgiving. So keep smelling it daily, and be open to the idea of throwing it out when it has run its course.
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3) Customers Have NO IDEA What They Want...
Ask For Problems, Not Solutions
Customers aren’t experts on solutions.
They are, however, experts on their own problems.
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So don’t ask people what they want. Don’t burden them with such cognitively demanding tasks. Instead, ask about their problems. Dig for issues, troubles, worries, challenges and, above all, PAINS. Then, and only then, get to work on curing them."

Alteração da lógica do mercado e dos seus ritmos

Ontem em "Acelerar o time to market" sublinhava o como a tecnologia permite reduzir o tempo, desde a ideia até à prateleira, e reduzir os custos para produzir pequenas séries.

Hoje, mais um exemplo, desta feita sobre a alteração da lógica do mercado e dos seus ritmos:

"Many shoe designers put out new collections only twice a year–perhaps launching strappy sandals in the spring, and boots in the fall. M.Gemi, a direct-to-consumer luxury shoe startup, has totally nixed that model. It drops a new pair every single Monday. This week, for instance, it debuted a $198 slip-on sneaker made from crushed velvet, a material that seems to magically change color under different lights.
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The idea is for customers to wake up on a Monday morning to an email featuring the latest shoe. If a customer likes it, she can get it in time for a party or a date that weekend. “We don’t expect our customers to buy a new shoe each week,” Cheryl Kaplan, M.Gemi’s president, said at an event today at the Fast Company Innovation Festival. “But it gives them something to look forward to and keeps our conversation with them going.”

Trecho retirado de "M.Gemi Feeds Our Luxury Shoe Addiction With Cheaper, Italian-Made Heels"