Empresas e ambiente

Uma boa reflexão, "How Corporate Purpose Can ‘Signal Virtue’ But Distract The Management", sobre as empresas que gastam a atenção da administração em "signaling virtue" e, depois, não há atenção para os desafios da gestão. Ou será que o "signal virtue" é uma desculpa para esconder a falta de soluções para os desafios da gestão?

Interessante, se em vez de empresas pensarmos em governos ... sim, Políticos e ambiente.

"“Public display of climate and social credentials comes at cost to the business,” says fund manager, Terry Smith of Fundsmith Equity Fund. “The maker of Dove soap, Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Magnum ice cream has set out ambitious climate and social targets and is trying to prove that sustainable business does drive superior financial performance.” However, in the absence of that superior financial performance, broader social goals themselves inevitably come into question.

“Unilever seems to be laboring,” Smith wrote, “under the weight of a management which is obsessed with publicly displaying sustainability credentials at the expense of focusing on the fundamentals of the business.”

It is not that life-purpose training programs for staff and gig workers are not worthwhile. But their priority within Unilever needs to be viewed in the context of all the other issues facing the firm. When overall performance falls short, broad social goals can become suspects in causing the shortfalls.

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Training gig workers and helping them find their own purpose in life isn’t wrong. It could be part of the solution at Unilever. It’s just that Unilever has to commit itself first and foremost to adding value to customers’ lives, not just waving a public-virtue flag and declaring victory."

 

"Identify your core market of primary customers"

Uma mensagem ainda mais antiga que este blogue. Um marcador dos primeiros tempos: Julho de 2007; Março de 2008:

“For firms that have truly made the shift to the customer-driven mindset, here are some of the practices that tend to emerge.
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1. Target. Identify your core market of primary customers. Delighting this group is important so that you have a resilient customer base. Trying to satisfy everyone at the outset practically guarantees average products and services that will not delight anyone. Careful choices need to be made in terms of where to put one’s efforts."

Como eu gosto da imagem deste postal de 2008:

Excerto de: Stephen Denning. “The Age of Agile”

O foco!

Coincidência?
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Não há coincidências, todos os acasos são significativos!
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Ontem comentei com espanto em "Comprar volume de vendas" a motivação por trás da aquisição da SaabMiller perguntando onde pára a criação de riqueza.
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Depois, durante o dia, em mais uma viagem de comboio li "Seven Leadership Keys To Resolving Mission Impossible":

"shareholder value theory has induced CEOs to focus on increasing the share price without doing the hard work of improving real performance in terms of creating value for customers.
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“managing the stock market”, instead of “managing the real market in which factories are built, products are designed and produced, real products and services are bought and sold, revenues are earned, expenses are paid, and real dollars of profit show up on the bottom line.”
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The real world consequences of corporations focusing on maximizing shareholder value as reflected in the stock price have now become clear: cost cutting, staff reductions, squeezed operations, lower investment and R&D, reduced benefits and pensions for employees, mindless mergers, closed factories, off-shoring, increased debt, reduced ability to compete, declining rates of return on assets, excessive financialization of the economy, and ultimately secular economic stagnation.
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“We must shift the focus of companies back to the customer and away from shareholder value,” ... “In other words, we must turn our attention back to the real market and away from the expectations market.
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the purpose of a firm is to create a customer, then the success of the firm must be framed in terms of achieving that purpose. Shareholder value is a result, not the goal of the firm."

Dick Dastardly é um mau exemplo

Do outro lado do Atlântico e do equador, o @AllanMoura  mandou-me este texto "Por que deixar de lado a competição" de onde sublinhei:

"embora seja difícil encontrar um ramo empresarial sem concorrentes, é possível e desejável deixar de lado o sentimento de competição. Isso faz bem não só para a saúde, mas para o negócio também, diz Kiechel. Se a fixação por derrotar os “adversários” se tornar objetivo prioritário, um desempenho indesejado pode levar ao sentimento geral de autodepreciação dentro da empresa, à caça às bruxas na equipe e, principalmente, a deixar para trás os focos principais do negócio.
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Em outras palavras, concentrar o foco em alguém a quem servir, não derrotar.”"

Um conselho deste blogue e também de Buffett.
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Como não recordar Dick Dastardly!

Qual era o grande defeito de Dick Dastardly?

Já li muita coisa mesmo de Michael Porter. Confesso que nunca tinha lido um artigo de 1979, publicado na HBR chamado "The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy".
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Há dias, desafiado por um artigo de Steve Denning, pesquisei o artigo na internet. O artigo deu origem depois a livros que quase todos os estudiosos de estratégia já leram e apresenta o tão famoso modelo de Porter para desenhar estratégias.
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Li a primeira frase do artigo. Parei! E não voltei a fazer qualquer tentativa para o continuar a ler, Denning tinha razão:

"In essence, the job of the strategist is to understand and cope with competition."

Não acredito nisto.
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O objectivo da estratégia não é lidar com a concorrência! O objectivo da estratégia é escolher clientes-alvo e seduzi-los.
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Não admira as gerações de observadores de motards!
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Não admira os decisores paralisados pela observação da concorrência como o rei Saul.
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Qual era o grande defeito de Dick Dastardly?

Sempre tão preocupado com a concorrência nunca usava as suas vantagens competitivas senão para lidar com a concorrência.

Acerca de sectores estáveis e demasiado homogéneos na oferta (parte VI)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV e parte V.
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Outro sector, outro exemplo: livrarias no tempo dos "chineses" da Amazon et al.

"My thoughts on the future of libraries are equally applicable to many other sectors that are facing the threat of extinction from massive disruption to their businesses."

Segue-se no artigo uma longa lista de produtos tornados obsoletos pelo smartphone. Depois:

"But the disruption isn’t limited to products. Whole sectors of commerce are under threat.[Moi ici: São as dores de parto de uma nova economia. Já não estamos no século XX mas ainda não estamos em pleno Mongo]
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Physical banks with branches, tellers and checks are being replaced by online banking with mobile payments and digital wallets.
Taxis are being replaced by Uber and Lyft.
Video rental stores like Blockbuster have given way to online streaming by Netflix and Amazon.
Television networks are facing similar inroads.
Venerable retail clothing chains are being undermined by fast fashion firms like Zara and H&M, with product cycles that are completed in weeks, rather than a year.
And who needs to buy a car when there is Zipcar or Car2Go?
Do we really need huge hotels when a firm like Airbnb has 800,000 listings in 33,000 cities?
Most physical book stories like Borders have already succumbed to Amazon, and paper books are being replaced by the Kindle and other devices."

Cá vai o desafio para as livrarias:

"we need to recognize that the computer age is not fundamentally about computerization. The computer age is about the change in management mindset enabled by computerization.
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The choices for the incumbents of the Traditional Economy are simple: change or die. Some organizations might decide, like Borders or Blockbuster, to die. Staying on the same course is not an option."

Qual a resposta típica dos incumbentes perante a disrupção provocada por quem chega para servir os lientes overserved?
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A resposta rápida, fácil e... errada:

"A second wrong path involves applying the 20th century preoccupation with efficiency to the organization and merely using computers to reduce costs."

 Algumas sugestões para as livrarias e não só:

"The first and most important question for libraries is to ask: How can we delight our users and customers? [Moi ici: Quem terão de ser os nossos clientes? Para quem podemos fazer a diferença? O que queremos ser?]
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How can we manage the library to enable continuous innovation?
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The third question is: What will make things better, faster, cheaper, more mobile, more convenient or more personalized for our users?
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The fourth question to ask is: What needs could libraries meet that users haven’t yet even thought of? We can’t solve the mystery of the future of libraries by asking users what they want: they simply don’t know! They can’t imagine the possibilities,"

E, para terminar uma citação que é uma grande verdade:

"We can also draw on the wisdom of French novelist Marcel Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” We have to recognize the future that is already unfolding right in front of us. What we need are eyes to see it."

Uma citação que se encaixa bem com esta imagem que encontrei ontem no Twitter:

Trechos retirados de "Do We Need Libraries?"

Recuar à nossa primeira década do Século XXI

Ler:

"A plausible hypothesis is that the big, steeply-hierarchical bureaucracies that we have inherited from the 20th Century are faced with a fundamental shift in power in the marketplace from seller to buyer, and are unable to cope the continuous innovation needed to prosper in this new context. [Moi ici: No nosso caso foi o efeito do choque chinês que arrasou o nosso sector transaccionável] As a result, they resort to the artificial means of financial engineering and share buybacks, aided by the “government cocaine” of seemingly endless supplies of cheap money.
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The result is a House of Cards economy in which apparent prosperity masks hidden risks. Ultra-low global interest rates drive market participants into riskier assets, while low interest rates encourage using greater leverage. The underlying problem? We don’t know where all the leverage is buried and will only find out after the fact, as we should have learned from the increasingly severe financial crashes over the last few decades.
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The current low level of corporate defaults, supported by free government money and financial engineering, can’t last forever."

É, de certa forma, recuar à primeira década da economia portuguesa do século XXI e rever a orgia despesista na economia não-transaccionável.
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Trechos retirados de "Our House Of Cards Economy"

"Where do new jobs come from?" (parte II)

A propósito da parte I.
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Este texto de "Proven Paths to Innovation Success":

"Today, 58 percent of R&D spending is directed at incremental or renewal innovations, just 28 percent at new or substantial innovations, and only 14 percent at breakthrough or radical innovations."

Este slide que o Paulo Peres me referiu:

 Este texto de Gary Hamel:

"Businesses are, on average, far less adaptable, innovative, and inspiring than they could be and, increasingly, must be."

Por estes dias, vou acreditando que os novos negócios criam emprego, não por serem novos, mas por serem mais livres de custos afundados, menos burocratizados, mais concentrados no numerador da produtividade do que no denominador, do que na eficiência. Os novos negócios, pela sua circunstância, apostam nas "Empowering innovations" que criam emprego (recordar este postal escrito a 6 de Novembro de 2012)

"Where do new jobs come from?"

Mais um excelente texto de Steve Denning, "The Surprising Truth About Where New Jobs Come From":

"Where do new jobs come from?...
"The surprising truth is that over the last twenty five years, almost all of the private sector jobs have been created by businesses less than five years old.
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“In fact, between 1988 and 2011,” write Jason Wiens and Chris Jackson of the Kauffman Foundation, “companies more than five years old destroyed more jobs than they created in all but eight of those years.”
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Existing firms are net job destroyers.
“Both on average and for all but seven years between 1977 and 2005, existing firms are net job destroyers,” write Wiens and Jackson, “losing 1 million jobs net combined per year. By contrast, in their first year, new firms add an average of 3 million jobs.”
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“New businesses account for nearly all net new job creation and almost 20 percent of gross job creation, whereas small businesses do not have a significant impact on job growth when age is accounted for.”
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“Policymakers often think of small business as the employment engine of the economy. But when it comes to job-creating power, it is not the size of the business that matters as much as it is the age. New and young companies are the primary source of job creation in the American economy. Not only that, but these firms also contribute to economic dynamism by injecting competition into markets and spurring innovation.”

Porquê?
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Continua.

douram a realidade "engenheirando" resultados

É tão fácil entrar em choque no Twitter, basta escrever que o propósito de uma empresa não é o de ganhar dinheiro, para logo algumas pessoas virem defender o oposto.
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Atenção, as empresas precisam de ganhar dinheiro, se não ganharem dinheiro são um sorvedouro que empobrece a sociedade. Contudo, ganhar dinheiro é uma consequência, não o objectivo. O objectivo é seduzir, satisfazer e fidelizar clientes, sem isso uma empresa não tem razão de existir, se seduzir, satisfizer e fidelizar clientes, como recompensa pode ganhar dinheiro.
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Muitas empresas, basta pensar no caso português da PT e recordar "Para mim, um simples anónimo engenheiro da província", elegem como principal objectivo o ganhar dinheiro. Steve Denning em "IBM's Potemkin Prosperity" descreve muito bem o suicídio da IBM, recordar "Acerca do curto-prazismo", por causa da crença no ganhar dinheiro para os accionistas como o propósito das empresas.
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Muitos políticos fazem o mesmo, douram a realidade "engenheirando" resultados nos indicadores.

Distinguir Mongo do modelo económico do século XX

Sabem como gosto de distinguir Mongo do modelo económico do século XX, parte dessa diferença é resumida desta forma por Steve Denning:

"The 20th Century literature in economics and business is mainly about “consumers” -  passive individuals who uncritically buy and use whatever product or service is being pushed at them. [Moi ici: Recordar a malta dentro da caixa] The consumer is someone who can be manipulated by clever sales campaigns - a target to be exploited.
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As the 20th Century wore on, businesses only gradually realized that the game was changing in a fundamental way. An epic shift of power in the marketplace from seller to buyer was occurring. As a result of globalization, deregulation and rapidly evolving technology, buyers had steadily more choices available to them. Then, as a result of the Internet, they had reliable information as to what those choices were and an ability to communicate with other customers. The result? The customer was, collectively, in charge of the marketplace.
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The passive “consumer” who could be easily manipulated to buy and use whatever was being delivered was becoming extinct. The unthinking “consumer” was evolving into the thinking “customer”, with whom the producer of products and services needed to have an active, interactive relationship. The customer was someone who explored the available choices and made a conscious decision as to what to buy.
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The shift from a consumer to a customer was a potentially frightening prospect to business. It meant a fundamental change in the relationship between sellers and buyers, and required a basic shift in thinking about how to succeed in business.
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This shift wasn’t an easy fit with 20th Century business which had essentially taken the consumer for granted. Success in business was principally about cutting costs and being more efficient than competitors and having sales campaigns to sell the products. It was all about money.
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What these approaches missed was that, unlike the consumer, a customer had to be respected and courted with superior products and services that met real needs. The shift in management focus wasn’t an option. It flowed inexorably from the shift in power in the marketplace."

E por cá, quantos anos mais vai demorar?

Quantos anos mais vai demorar, por cá, a fazer-se esta mudança de paradigma?

"Bad ideas don’t die just because they are bad. They hang around until a consensus forms around another idea that is better. This is what’s happening now with a stupid idea has dominated American business for the last four decades: that the purpose of a firm is to maximize shareholder value. The massive problems that this notion has caused for business and society have been documented. Even Jack Welch has called it “the dumbest idea in the world.” Yet it remains the conventional wisdom throughout much of big business. What’s different now is that a consensus is forming around a better idea."

Teremos de esperar pela contribuição dos cemitérios?

"The report’s most important finding is that majority of the thought leaders who participated in the study, particularly corporate executives, agreed that “the primary purpose of the corporation is to serve customers’ interests.” In effect, the best way to serve shareholders’ interests is to deliver value to customers." 

E os novos que continuam a ser formatados pelos velhos?

"“If [corporations] make it their purpose to maximize shareholder value, shareholders are likely to suffer because that cravenness turns off customers, employees, and the world in general. If they make it their purpose to serve customers brilliantly, be a fabulous place to work, and contribute meaningfully to the communities in which they operate, chances are their shareholders will be very happy.” The key is to see that it’s not a tradeoff." 

Trecho retirado de "Why The World's Dumbest Idea Is (Finally) Dying"

Acerca de Mongo

" the major changes that the web has already had on the economy:

• First, it has shredded the vertical value chains of the 20th Century economy, in the process wreaking havoc on middle men, the markups and the margins.

• Second, it has created a vast new set of horizontal value chains, in which millions of people are creating their own virtual meeting places and marketplaces with their own lateral economies of scale.

• Third, it has created a generation of people who began preferring access to ownership, and so stopped buying things.

• Fourth, it has shifted the balance of power in the marketplace from sellers to buyers. Customers have instant reliable information about the choices enabled by globalization and a capacity to communicate and interact with other customers. Suddenly the customer is in charge. Firms can no longer push average products at customers, in the confident belief that sales and marketing will be able to sell them. They now have to figure out what might delight customers and continuously deliver that.

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Could it be that that we are once again living through a period of massive real change, in which there are “measurement problems,” and that economics is adding up the wrong numbers and simply not recording the huge changes under way?
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Thus we are living, according to a recent report by The Economist, in “a Cambrian explosion” of innovation. “Digital startups are bubbling up in an astonishing variety of services and products, penetrating every nook and cranny of the economy. They are reshaping entire industries and even changing the very notion of the firm."

Um tema já aqui abordado algumas vezes, "measurement problems". O mundo muda e os indicadores do passado continuam a ser calculados e lidos para interpretar o mundo actual. Por exemplo, para quem olha só para os números das vendas do retalho tradicional, escapa-lhe completamente a revolução em curso no retalho digital.

Trechos retiados de "Is The Creative Economy Also In Trouble?"

O produto já não é suficiente

Nem de propósito, em sintonia, com o que temos lido nos últimos dias, com o que escrevemos quando escrevemos sobre ecossistema da procura e, com o que escrevemos sobre co-criação:

"As a result, even better products can disappear with alarming rapidity. By contrast, ecosystems that delight customers are difficult to build, but once built, are difficult to compete against.
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The winners will be determined not only by building a better mousetrap, but also how that mousetrap fits into the things that customers are trying to get done is their lives, in other words, their individual ecosystem. The quandary for companies is how to meet the idiosyncratic needs of millions of different customers?"

Trecho retirado de "Why Building A Better Mousetrap Doesn't Work Anymore"

Um futuro aberto

Tenho lido nas notícias que a Boeing está com um problema nas mãos. No entanto, só com esta reflexão de Steve Denning "The Boeing Debacle: Seven Lessons Every CEO Must Learn" é que mergulhei na causa do problema... impressionante como a ganância pelo lucro fácil, como a tirania da bolsa faz quebrar uma das regras básicas que sempre ouvi:

"Don’t outsource mission-critical components"

O artigo desenvolve-se como uma crítica ao outsorcing desmesurado na tal busca irracional pelo aumento da eficiência, pela extracção de valor, em vez de pela originação de valor. O artigo defende que muitos embarcaram na moda do offshoring sem perceber se iam ganhar alguma coisa com isso a nível contabilístico... tal como aprendi há anos com a Ventoro.
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Contudo, o que me interessa mais é o futuro, e o artigo termina com esse olhar para a frente:

"The errors of offshoring are thus not isolated events. They are the result of the underlying philosophy of shareholder value, rather than the true purpose of every firm: create value for customers. (Moi ici: Por isso, é que marcas ainda consideradas grandes na mente dos consumidores, para mim já não passam de carcaças ocas, com carapaça luzídia e sedutora mas sem alma) The resurrection of American manufacturing will require more than simply bringing back production to America. Global manufacturing is at the cusp of a massive transformation as the new economics of energy and labor plays out and a set of new technologies—robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and nanotechnology—are advancing rapidly. Together these developments will spark a radical transformation of manufacturing around the world over the next decade. The winners in the rapidly changing world of manufacturing will be those firms that have mastered the agility needed to generate rapid and continuous customer-based innovation.
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Success in this new world of manufacturing will require a radically different kind of management from the hierarchical bureaucracy focused on shareholder value that is now prevalent. It will require a different goal (adding value for customers), a different role for managers (enabling self-organizing teams), a different way of coordinating work (dynamic linking), different values (continuous improvement and radical transparency) and different communications (horizontal conversations). Merely shifting the locus of production is not enough. Companies need systemic change—a new management paradigm." 

E não sei se a tirania da bolsa vai ter paciência estratégica para salvar as empresas cotadas, não sei se as empresas grandes aprenderão a trabalhar como alfaiates, não sei se as empresas grandes saberão lidar com uma explosão de segmentos cada vez mais pequenos e irrequietos.
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O que vejo é o futuro aberto para quem está perto dos seus clientes-alvo, da sua tribo.

Salvar o mundo do efeito dos economistas

Minutos depois de acabar de escrever "Os arquitectos da sua paisagem competitiva", enquanto viajava de comboio, dei de caras com "Saving The World From The Economists: Ronald Coase & Paul Krugman"... BINGO!!!

"The sad reality is that the people do pay attention to economists and their models. Although it’s true that the tools used by economists to analyze business firms are too abstract and speculative to offer any useful guidance to entrepreneurs and managers, this doesn’t prevent them being used, with devastating negative effect in the real world."

Depois, Steve Denning pega na argumentação de Krugman e desmonta-a com números.
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Por fim, remata com este final tão querido a este blogue:

"Ironically, the deeper cause of these problems may lie with the economic work of Coase himself, whose writings form the basis of the current economic theory of the firm. Firms exist, Coase wrote, because they reduce transaction costs. This theory won Coase the Nobel Prize in economics. It has contributed to the continuing focus in business on cost-cutting and efficiency, while short-changing the ever more pressing need today to add value for customers. Far from being irrelevant to business, as Coase argues in HBR, economic theories play a key role in creating the intellectual foundation for it.
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What we need now is a new economic theory of the firm that includes an appropriate emphasis on adding value for customers, not just on efficiency and cutting costs. If Professor Krugman were to turn his attention to that, with some serious economic analysis, instead of merely berating corporations as “bandits”, he could well deserve a second Nobel Prize." 

A economia não tem de ser um jogo de soma-nula

A propósito da falência da empresa de consultoria, Monitor, criada por Michael Porter recomendo a leitura deste artigo "What Killed Michael Porter's Monitor Group? The One Force That Really Matters" de Steve Denning.
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Para começar, não creio que Steve Denning tenha razão na mensagem que atribui a Porter, julgo que Denning simplifica e acaba por caricaturar a mensagem de Porter. Basta pesquisar o que tenho escrito ao longo dos anos sobre as ideias de Porter para perceber:
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Escreveu Denning:

"Why go through the hassle of actually designing and making better products and services, and offering steadily more value to customers and society, when the firm could simply position its business so that structural barriers ensured endless above-average profits?"

Escreveu Porter:

"How can you deliver a unique value to meet an important set of needs for an important set of customers?"

Prefiro esquecer a diatribe contra as ideias de Porter e concentrar-me em algumas ideias interessantes que Denning defende (e que, ao contrário do que escreveu, Porter também defendeu, basta pesquisar neste blogue). Muitos políticos e comentadores precisavam de perceber este conceito que se segue:

"By defining strategy as a matter of defeating the competition, Porter envisaged business as a zero-sum game. As he says in his 1979 HBR article, “The state of competition in an industry depends on five basic forces… The collective strength of these forces determines the ultimate profit potential of an industry.” For Porter, the ultimate profit potential of an industry is a finite fixed amount: the only question is who is going to get which share of it.(Moi ici: Este é o discurso dos proteccionistas, a riqueza capturada pelos chineses é a riqueza que os europeus não podem capturar... como se o bolo não pudesse crescer, como se a riqueza não tenha crescido e crescido e crescido com o comércio desde que os humanos dominaram o fogo)
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Sound business is however unlike warfare or sports in that one company’s success does not require its rivals to fail. (Moi ici: A propósito desta frase que muito boa gente devia meter na cabeça, recordar estas palavras de Porter "Ao contrário do desporto ou da guerra, nos negócios, as empresas podem ganhar sem necessitarem de aniquilar os seus rivais.") Unlike competition in sports, every company can choose to invent its own game. A better analogy than war or sports is the performing arts. (Moi ici: Como seria diferente e muito mais saudável o debate sobre a produtividade e a competitividade se esta analogia fosse interiorizada... se Hilary Austen fosse mais lida, por exemplo) There can be many good singers or actors—each outstanding and successful in a distinctive way. Each finds and creates an audience. The more good performers there are, the more audiences grow and the arts flourish. What’s gone wrong here was Porter’s initial thought. The purpose of strategy—or business or business education—is not to defeat one’s rivals. (Moi ici: Algo que aprendi com Porter foi a fugir da competição perfeita, da guerra directa, "“Managers who think there is one best company and one best set of processes set themselves up for destructive competition. "The worst error is to compete with your competition on the same things," Porter said. "That only leads to escalation, which leads to lower prices or higher costs unless the competitor is inept." Companies should strive to be unique, he added. Managers should be asking, "How can you deliver a unique value to meet an important set of needs for an important set of customers?"") The purpose is business is to add value for customers and ultimately society."

Outra ideia interessante de Denning:

"The business reality of today is that the only safe place against the raging innovation is to join it. Instead of seeing business—and strategy and business education—as a matter of figuring out how to defeat one’s known rivals and protect oneself against competition through structural barriers, (Moi ici: Esta é a conversa e o pensamento dos que falam na necessidade de proteger os "campeões" nacionais, as empresas do regime) if a business is to survive, it must aim to add value to customers through continuous innovation and finding new ways of delighting its customers."

E acerca do futuro da consultoria sobre estratégia:

"Does strategy consulting have a future? When rightly conceived as the art of thinking through how companies can add value to customers–and ultimately society–through continuous innovation, strategy consulting has a bright future. The market is vast because most large firms are still 20th Century hierarchical bureaucracies that are focused on “the dumbest idea in the world”: shareholder value. They are very weak at innovation."

BTW, acreditar que a Monitor defendia a ideia de que existem "vantagens competitivas sustentáveis alicerçadas em betão" parece-me um bocado forte. Deste clássico e deste outro "The Geometry of Competition" de Bruce Chew o que retiro é que existem posicionamentos competitivos transitoriamente sustentáveis através de decisões que assentam em trade-offs difíceis de reverter... prometer alicerces de betão, não.

Sobre a paranóia da eficiência e do eficientismo

Um excelente artigo de Clayton Christensen, "A Capitalist’s Dilemma, Whoever Wins on Tuesday".
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Para quem escreve há anos sobre a paranóia da eficiência e do eficientismo, para quem aponta para a vantagem de trabalhar para aumentar o numerador, em vez da paranóica concentração na redução do denominador, é reconfortante ler:

"So we taught our students how to magnify every dollar put into a company, to get the most revenue and profit per dollar of capital deployed. To measure the efficiency of doing this, we redefined profit not as dollars, yen or renminbi, but as ratios like RONA (return on net assets), ROCE (return on capital employed) and I.R.R. (internal rate of return).
Before these new measures, executives and investors used crude concepts like “tons of cash” to describe profitability. The new measures are fractions and give executives more options: They can innovate to add to the numerator of the RONA ratio, but they can also drive down the denominator by driving assets off the balance sheet — through outsourcing. Both routes drive up RONA and ROCE.
Similarly, I.R.R. gives investors more options. It goes up when the time horizon is short. So instead of investing in empowering innovations that pay off in five to eight years, investors can find higher internal rates of return by investing exclusively in quick wins in sustaining and efficiency innovations.
In a way, this mirrors the microeconomic paradox explored in my book “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” which shows how successful companies can fail by making the “right” decisions in the wrong situations. America today is in a macroeconomic paradox that we might call the capitalist’s dilemma. Executives, investors and analysts are doing what is right, from their perspective and according to what they’ve been taught."

Vale a pena ler o artigo, e recordar o que escrevemos aqui acerca da eficiência versus a eficácia:

"Executives and investors might finance three types of innovations with their capital. I’ll call the first type “empowering” innovations. These transform complicated and costly products available to a few into simpler, cheaper products available to the many.
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Empowering innovations create jobs, because they require more and more people who can build, distribute, sell and service these products. Empowering investments also use capital — to expand capacity and to finance receivables and inventory.
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The second type are “sustaining” innovations. These replace old products with new models. For example, the Toyota Prius hybrid is a marvelous product. But it’s not as if every time Toyota sells a Prius, the same customer also buys a Camry. There is a zero-sum aspect to sustaining innovations: They replace yesterday’s products with today’s products and create few jobs. They keep our economy vibrant — and, in dollars, they account for the most innovation. But they have a neutral effect on economic activity and on capital.
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The third type are “efficiency” innovations. These reduce the cost of making and distributing existing products and services. Examples are minimills in steel and Geico in online insurance underwriting. Taken together in an industry, such innovations almost always reduce the net number of jobs, because they streamline processes. But they also preserve many of the remaining jobs — because without them entire companies and industries would disappear in competition against companies abroad that have innovated more efficiently." 

E para completar, recomendo a interpretação de Steve Denning sobre o artigo de Christensen em "Capitalism, After The Election"

Um mundo novo de possibilidades

Ao ler este artigo "Wikispeed: How A 100 mpg Car Was Developed In 3 Months" a meio tive de refocar pois a minha mente já estava longe...
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Mais um exemplo das estruturas simples, do mundo de agentes livres, de free-lancers... rapidez, flexibilidade como nunca se viu.
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Agora que escrevo isto estou com vontade de reler Ronald Coase e rever os custos de transacção e  "The Nature of the Firm".

Material para reflexão

Uma perspectiva interessante: "Is The US In A Phase Change To The Creative Economy?"
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Também útil para avaliar as soluções que nos propõem para ultrapassar a crise... apostando nos sectores que foram fundamentais para o mundo que ficou para trás.
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