Experiências controladas

Uma reflexão interessante e muito operacionalizável sobre o desafio de montar um negócio dedicado a servir um conjunto bem definido de clientes-alvo "How to Discover Your Perfect Target Customer in 5 Steps".

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Há alguns dias equacionei que a etapa da "Customer Discovery" das startups podia ser utilizada pelas PMEs no seu esforço de internacionalização para novos mercados que desconhecem e, que já estão a ser servidos por incumbentes mais endinheirados.
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A reflexão não traz nada de novo a este blogue, no entanto, recomendo-a pela sua clareza, pela linguagem utilizada.

"1) Start with the Smallest Market Possible – This may feel counterintuitive to many just starting a business, but you have to find a group of customers that think what you have to offer is special. When you’re just getting started you may have very little to offer and in many cases very few resources with which to make sufficient noise in a market for generic solutions.
Your key is to find a very narrow group, with very specific demographics or a very specific problem or need and create raving fans out of this group. You can always expand your reach after you gain traction, but you can also become a big player in this smaller market as you grow."

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"2) Create an Initial Value Hypothesis – ... You must create a “why us” value proposition and use that as you hypothesis for why us."

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"4) Draw an Ideal Customer Sketch – Once you’ve trotted out your hypothesis and tested it with your narrow group, you’ve got to go to work on discovering and defining everything you can about your ideal target group." (Moi ici: Recomendo uma pesquisa aqui no blogue acerca da ferramenta "personas" ou da "journey mapping")

A ideia é abordar a internacionalização inicialmente como uma experiência laboratorial controlada.
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E por que não aplicar a mesma metodologia a uma empresa que queira diversificar o seu negócio, começando a oferecer novos produtos ou serviços a um grupo que já conhece ou que anda na fronteira dos grupos que já conhece?
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Por exemplo, uma empresa trabalha com um grupo de clientes-alvo. E começa a perceber que existe uma franja de outra tribo que lhe vem adquirir produtos, porque fazem parte de uma zona de convergência. Por que não estudar essa outra tribo? Talvez descubra que existem produtos muito relevantes para essa tribo que também podia produzir e comercializar e, alargar a sua área de influência.

E para quem acredita que os custos são tudo...

Em Agosto de 2008 especulei aqui ("Especulação") que a China poderia começar a pôr um fim ao seu modelo quase exclusivamente dedicado à exportação e começar a apostar no desenvolvimento do seu mercado interno.
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Tal passaria por uma valorização da sua moeda:

Bingo!
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Tal passaria por um aumento dos salários:

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Bingo!
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"China’s economic rise is largely due to low-wage manufacturing. However, statistics from the International Labour Office show that average monthly wages have risen around 12-13 per cent for each of the last five years.

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A quick hypothetical example: A developed country pays workers $1000 per year, and an emerging market pays $100 per year. The former wage increases of 2 per cent per year, and the latter 12 per cent. In year zero, the wages in the EM are a tenth of the DM. If the increases stay the same, how long until the gap is halved to a fifth?
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Seven years. So China is catching up. But wages aren’t the whole story: China’s labour productivity is about 12 per cent of that of the US. (Moi ici: A produtividade média portuguesa é cerca de 50% da americana) And the costs of production aren’t just labour – there are components, the cost of capital and so on. (Moi ici: E os custos de transporte, e os custos da rigidez que a distância impõe) In fact, there are recent stories suggesting that companies are keener on US labour as coastal wages in China are now too high."

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Quem acompanha este blogue sabe que não morro de amores  pela via do custo mais baixo, apesar de reconhecer que é uma abordagem perfeitamente legal e honesta, prefiro a via do valor, a única que traz benefícios para todos.

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Contudo, tenho de reconhecer que esta alteração estrutural na China pode ajudar muito a re-industrializar umas certas franjas do Ocidente.

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Quem acompanha este blogue sabe que a tendência de regresso começou a detectar-se já em 2006 (exemplos aqui e aqui), não por causa dos custos, mas por causa da flexibilidade, por causa da rapidez, por causa da propriedade intelectual.

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Triste mesmo, é que muitos empresários não percebem porque é que os seus clientes começaram a regressar em 2005/6, ... subestimam-se demasiado, mesmo muito.

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Trecho retirado de "Chart of the week: are wages the key to competitiveness?"

It's not the euro, stupid! (parte II)

Parte I.
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A partir deste "amigo" cheguei a este "amigo" que me levou a este "amigo" (abençoada Internet).
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Em "Trade Induced Technical Change? The Impact of Chinese Imports on Innovation, IT and Productivity" de Nicholas Bloom, Mirko Draca e John Van Reenen, publicado em Janeiro de 2011 descubro uma alma gémea. Já li o corpo do artigo duas vezes e ainda não encontrei nada com o qual não concordasse... tudo o que é apresentado vem suportar as teses que defendo há anos aqui no blogue.
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Convém recuar ao Portugal de 1996... salários baixos, dentro da fortaleza Europa...
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"A vigorous political debate is in progress over the impact of globalization on the economies of the developed world.
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One major benefit of Chinese trade had been lower prices for manufactured goods in the developed world. We argue in this paper that increased Chinese trade has also induced faster technical change from both innovation and the adoption of new technologies, contributing to productivity growth. (Moi ici: O mesmo efeito que a ausência de patentes impõe no mundo da moda) In particular we find that the absolute volume of innovation (not just patents per worker or productivity) increases within the firms and industries more affected by exogenous reductions in barriers to Chinese imports. (Moi ici: Uma outra forma de dizer: subir na escala de valor, fugir do campeonato do preço e entrar no do valor)
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A contribution of our paper is to confirm the importance of low wage country trade for technical change using a large sample of over half a million firms and exploiting China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) to identify the causal effect of trade.
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The rise of China and other emerging economies such as India, Mexico and Brazil has also coincided with an increase in wage inequality and basic trade theory predicts such South-North integration could cause this. ... What may be happening is that trade is stimulating technical progress, which in turn is increasing the demand for skilled labor.
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First, on the intensive margin, Chinese import competition increases innovation, TFP and management quality within surviving firms. Firms facing higher levels of Chinese import competition create more patents, spend more on R&D, raise their IT intensity, adopt more modern management practices, and increase their overall level of TFP. Second, Chinese import competition reduces employment and survival probabilities in low-tech firms - e.g. firms with lower levels of patents or TFP shrink and exit much more rapidly than high-tech firms in response to Chinese competition. Thus, our paper jointly examines the effects of trade on survival/selection and innovation. The combined impact of these within firm and between effects is to cause technological upgrading in those industries most affected by Chinese imports. An additional set of results shows that Chinese imports significantly reduce prices, profitability and the demand for unskilled workers as basic theory would suggest. (Moi ici: Tudo, tudo a suportar o que defendemos neste blogue há anos!!! Baixar salários? Aumentar o tempo de trabalho para fazer face aos chineses? Get a life!!! Quem o defendo só ilustra assim a sua ignorância dos números e não percebe o que se passa/passou)
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Chinese imports reduce the relative profitability of making low-tech products but since firms cannot easily dispose of their “trapped” labor and capital, the shadow cost of innovating has fallen. Hence, by reducing the profitability of current low-tech products and freeing up inputs to innovate, Chinese trade reduces the opportunity cost of innovation. (Moi ici: É o salto para a frente, há empresas que são inovadoras por causa do seu ADN, está-lhes na massa do sangue. Há muitas mais que só inovam quando a necessidade aperta!!!)
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First, import competition from low wage countries like China has a greater effect on innovation than imports from high wage countries. This occurs because Chinese imports have a disproportionate effect on the profitability of low-tech products, providing greater incentives to innovate new goods. Second, firms with more trapped factors (as measured by industry-specific human capital, for example) will respond more strongly to import threats.
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for labour economics we find a role for trade with low wage countries in increasing skill demand (at least since the mid-1990s) through inducing technical change.
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Our paper uses new patenting, IT, R&D, management and productivity data to establish that trade drives out low-tech firms (reallocation) and increases the incentives of incumbents to speed up technical change.
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important role of trade on technical change. In particular, our finding that (i) the positive trade effect is on innovation (rather than just compositional effects on productivity via offshoring or product switching)
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we find that about half of the increase in innovation following the fall in trade barriers against China comes from within firms (they expand the number of patented innovations, spend absolutely more on R&D and modernize their management practices) implies that changing composition is not the whole story.
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size is not an adequate proxy for productivity, finding that small plants actually do relatively better than larger plants following an increase in Chinese import.  (Moi ici: Em toda a linha!!! Até este tópico da dimensão das empresas e a vantagem das PMEs vem suportar as teses deste blogue!!!)
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In their model, small firms survive by operating in product niches rather than the standardized products competing with China.  (Moi ici: Nichos, outro conselho recorrente deste blogue!!!)
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Chinese imports are associated with an increase in the wage-bill share of college educated workers, suggesting Chinese trade raises the demand for skills. ... This is consistent with the model that Chinese trade leads firms to switch from producing older low-tech goods to the design and manufacture of new goods, which is likely to increase the demand for skilled workers.
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in the face of Chinese import competition European firms change their product mix."
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Só gostava de conhecer um estudo com números, com suporte em amostra estatisticamente significativa que comprove que o problema da nossa economia é a falta de competitividade do sector de bens transaccionáveis... ao menos um.

Lição para as PMEs

A propósito de "China Makes Almost Nothing Out of Apple's iPads and iPhones" talvez faça reflectir quem acha interessante  dar condições vantajosas a marcas estrangeiras para que venham para Portugal para serem cá produzidas.
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Lição para as PMEs portuguesas:
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"If you want lots of jobs and lots of high paying jobs then you’re not going to find them in manufacturing." 

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Claro que isto é a mentalidade americana dominada pela economia à moda antiga, se estão no campeonato do preço, tudo tem a ver com os custos. Ainda não somos alemães mas os alemães dão a lição de que é possível ter "high paying jobs in manufacturing", não é a produzir para outros, não é a fazer produtos indistintos como automóveis familiares.

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Quando as PMEs assumem uma marca, quando criam pontos de venda, quando apostam no design:

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"They’re where the money is, in the design, the software and the retailing of the products, not the physical making of them."

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Quando se lê isto " Manufacturing is just so, you know, 20 th century."" recordar o que aqui escrevo tantas vezes para escândalo de muitos: produzir é o mais fácil (aqui, aqui, aqui, aqui, ...)

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A vantagem de estar a 2 dias de Berlim

Há anos que damos o mote aqui no blogue para o papel da rapidez, da flexibilidade, da proximidade, para compensar o factor custo, quando nos comparam com a Ásia.
Depois de ler:
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""We custom make everything. When an order comes in here, we make it to order," he says.
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Meyers says being just south of the U.S. border gives his company an advantage in the fiercely competitive global market. His firm gets access to a low-wage workforce in Mexico, yet it can still deliver products rapidly to their customers in the United States. His company's lead-time is just seven days, he says.

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"You're not going to get something from China in seven days unless you put it on an airplane," Meyers says. "Here, we put it on a truck, and it's in. We take an order, we custom build it, we ship it out, and it's out quickly."
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If a customer needs a product quickly, Meyer's team can build it, move it across to McAllen and have it on a FedEx flight within 24 hours. Myers says this is a service that manufacturers in Asia simply can't offer.
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"I would say about 40 to 60 percent of our companies are in one way or another experimenting with the whole concept of rapid response manufactures," he says. "We have some companies that literally don't build a product until it's sold."
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Patridge and other advocates of rapid response manufacturing are betting that agile, streamlined companies based along the border will have a competitive advantage over Asian firms selling products to the U.S. market.
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First, North American manufacturers can avoid having large inventories locked in shipping containers crossing the Pacific Ocean. Second, labor in the Mexican border factories is cheap, starting at roughly $10 a day. Third, from the border, companies can deliver a customized product, whether that's an engraved cell phone or a custom mechanical part, to a U.S. buyer in a matter of days."

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Há anos que vimos aqui defendendo esta vantagem competitiva face à Ásia. Os macro-economistas só vêem custos e esquecem-se do resto. E mais, o mercado europeu é mais exigente e requintado que o americano, suportando por isso preços mais elevados.

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A originação e captura de valor ainda pode ser maior se as PMEs não venderem minutos mas marca, mas experiência, mas conhecimento.

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Trecho retirado de "Border-Town Factories Give Manufacturers An Edge"