Boring, average e sunset

“Don’t use your company’s age or industry as an excuse for mediocrity. There is no such thing as an average or old-fashioned business, just average or old-fashioned ways to do business. [Moi ici: Isto faz-me recuar a 2006 e a Suzanne Berger e "there are no “sunset” industries condemned to disappear in high wage economies, although there are certainly sunset and condemned strategies, among them building a business on the advantages to be gained by cheap labor”"] In fact, the opportunity to reach for extraordinary may be most pronounced in settings that have been far too ordinary for far too long. If how you think shapes how you compete, then it should be easier to compete in fields locked in to old ways of thinking.
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Truth be told, even in a world in which “average is over,” the choice facing leaders in most fields is not between one-of-a-kind creativity and end-of-times calamity. The more likely outcome is something closer to endless (and endlessly frustrating) mediocrity. Despite our fascination with digital disruption, radical reinvention, and the merciless logic of survival of the fittest, countless organizations endure for decades in the face of bland results. The status quo is surprisingly powerful, and not always fatal.
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The problem with most organizations is not that they are broken. It’s that they are boring. And boring organizations don’t lend themselves to runaway success.”

Excerto de: William C. Taylor. “Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways”. Apple Books.

Mudar o modelo de negócio para salvar uma empresa

Se recuar no tempo há um livro que se destaca por me ter dado bases para generalizar sobre o que então começava a coleccionar com o meu trabalho: "How We Compete: What Companies Around the World Are Doing to Make it in Today's Global Economy".

Nunca esqueço uma citação desse livro:

“… there are no “sunset” industries condemned to disappear in high wage economies, although there are certainly sunset and condemned strategies, among them building a business on the advantages to be gained by cheap labor”

Citação tão bem ilustrada pelas empresas de calçado incapazes de competir a produzir sapatos que se vendiam na prateleira por 20€ e passaram a dar cartas a produzir sapatos que se vendem na prateleira a 300€.

Muitas vezes é preciso mudar o modelo de negócio para salvar uma empresa. Um excelente exemplo sobre o tema em "Renascer das cinzas. Um fato à distância de um clique":

"Francisco Batista pegou numa empresa moribunda, a CBI – Indústria de Vestuário e converteu-a numa unidade rentável focada no negócio da confeção de vestuário feminino e masculino de alta qualidade. Orientada para o segmento médio-alto, a empresa exporta 90% da sua produção
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A lógica é sempre a mesma: aproveitar a mão-de-obra especializada, “o capital mais importante para recuperar a empresa”, e depois rever o modelo de negócio para ganhar competitividade e apostar nos mercados externos.
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 “renovar a atividade para nichos de mercados onde é possível competir através de uma maior qualidade”. “Em grandes quantidades não conseguimos competir”, frisa."

Reappraisal

Na página 255 de “How we compete” de Suzanne Berger and the MIT Industrial Performance Center pode ler-se:

"there are no “sunset” industries condemned to disappear in high wage economies, although there are certainly sunset and condemned strategies, among them building a business on the advantages to be gained by cheap labor”

Lembrei-me disto assim que li:

"Change the Model, Not the Business"

Para, depois, perceber que se trata da capacidade de olhar para um acontecimento mudando de ponto de vista: reappraisal.
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ADENDA: O exemplo da Xiameter é um bom exemplo.

A alternativa à terraplanagem chinesa

Enquanto por cá os encalhados da academia continuam a viver no tempo em que o preço era única variável a accionar para seduzir um cliente (será que alguma vez o foi, verdadeiramente?), noutro sítio fazem isto "MIT faculty see promise in American manufacturing".
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Qual a abordagem de Suzanne Berger e do seu grupo?
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"Not long ago, MIT political scientist Suzanne Berger was visiting a factory in western Massachusetts, a place that produces the plastic jugs you find in grocery stores. As she saw on the factory floor, the company has developed an innovative automation system that has increased its business: Between 2004 and 2008, its revenues doubled, and its workforce did, too. Moreover, the firm has found a logical niche"

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Quantos dos encalhados que botam faladura nos media e peroram sobre a necessidade de reduzir salários, ou de desvalorizar a moeda, para tornar a economia portuguesa mais competitiva, fazem isto?

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Escolher 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... empresas industriais bem sucedidas na exportação, em diferentes sectores de actividade, e visitá-las, para perceber a lógica do seu sucesso. Visitar, ver e perceber (veni, vidi, vici), esquecer as sebentas obsoletas e descobrir como é que quem não estudou por elas, quem nunca ouviu falar delas efectuou o seu "milagre".

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Ficariam surpreendidos com o que iriam encontrar...

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Suzanne Berger escreveu o livro que me iniciou na descoberta da lógica por detrás da alternativa à terraplanagem chinesa "How we compete".

Uma das minhas inspirações iniciais

Suzanne Berger... recordo o precioso e "eye oppening" livro “How we compete” de Suzanne Berger and the MIT Industrial Performance Center, publicado em Janeiro de 2006.
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Julgo que foi este livro que me iniciou numa visão optimista da realidade económica quando recorremos ao caminho menos percorrido.
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Com Suzanne Berger, como mais tarde confirmei com Christian Lindgren, aprendi que nunca estamos condenados, há sempre uma alternativa.
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Estas palavras demonstram que continuamos na mesma onda:
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"One useful observation emerging from Berger’s studies of France is that globalization is not an inexorable historical force changing everything in its path, including social values and political traditions. In the early 20th century, she notes, “people also thought that globalization was irreversible,” only to see it slow for decades thereafter.
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Berger’s interest in the relationship between politics and economic forces helped steer her toward the study of manufacturing — which she thinks has a similarly practical value. “The use of this work is to show a space for choice,” Berger says. “We really can make decisions about what kind of companies or society we want. The idea that we’re being forced into something can blind us to the opportunities we really have.”
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"“Dell outsources just about everything,” Berger notes of the computer maker, “whereas Samsung is making many of the same products, but they're trying to keep as much as possible in-house. Over the years they have been very profitable companies. If we take industries that are under the most ferocious competitive pressures in the world — consumer electronics, apparel, automobiles — we see there are real choices for those companies.”
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“Labor costs are a very small part of overall costs,” Berger says. Probably a more important driver of firms’ decisions to locate activities abroad is the emergence of millions of new consumers in developing countries; selling to them leads firms to produce goods in those markets.
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More strongly, Berger asserts that chasing lower labor costs can be a self-defeating strategy for many firms. (Moi ici: Podemos começar a listar os académicos, paineleiros e políticos portugueses (a tríade) que não conhecem alternativa ao preço mais baixo e aos salários baixos)
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“If you get your advantage by reducing labor costs, then you’re in a place where your advantage is not sustainable,” Berger says. “Your margins will be thin and evanescent. There will always be someone who can undercut you, because there will always be other regions where people are willing to work for less. (Moi ici: Fácil de equacionar essa resposta, excepto pela tríade) Instead, profits come from being able to do something that another company cannot easily replicate.”
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(Moi ici: Segue-se a grande mensagem deste blogue) As Berger sees it, a more sustainable future for U.S. manufacturing would be one in which its comparative advantage comes from new products, ideas, and business models; from skilled workers; or from quality advantages that are hard to replicate, in fields ranging from energy and transportation to pharmaceuticals, among others.
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“There are a lot of pressures,” Berger says, “but they do not force us down the path of only one solution.”
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Trechos retirados de "In Profile: Suzanne Berger"

Têxteis produzidos em países de mão-de-obra cara

Excelente artigo "How Can Jeans Cost $300?" com vários tópicos que costumamos aqui referir no blogue:
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"This is a rarefied segment of the denim business. Americans bought $13.8 billion of men's and women's jeans in the year ended April 30, according to market-research firm NPD Group. But only about 1% of jeans sold in the U.S. over that year cost more than $50. (Moi ici: Um nicho. Estamos a falar de um nicho não de produção massificada, com grandes encomendas e centenas de trabalhadores)
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The prices of "premium" jeans—industry jargon for luxury-priced denim—appear to be edging slightly upward after a downturn following the financial crisis.
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It costs about $50 to make a pair of Super T jeans, True Religion's best-selling style with oversized white stitching, estimates founder, chairman and chief executive, Jeff Lubell. The wholesale price is $152, he says, and the average retail price is $335. (Moi ici: Bate certo com os números que conheço por cá, da fábrica à loja multiplica por 3, quem ganha é o dono da marca, da loja à montra multiplica por mais 2-3. Daí, depois, o período de saldos) Of course, plenty of these jeans sell at substantially less than full price.
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As with all fashion, a big part of the price of luxury denim is in the multiple profit margins taken at each level of production. Most any piece of clothing contains parts and services from potentially dozens of providers: from fabric and button makers, to designers and seamstresses, and wholesalers and sales agents. After all this, designers and retailers say the typical retail markup on all fashion items, including jeans, ranges from 2.2 to 2.6 times cost.
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In the luxury business, those mark-ups cover huge marketing budgets (someone has to pay for giant billboards and ads in fashion magazines) as well as the costs of running stores, headquarters, shipping, and other overhead.
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Jeans brands also try to stand out from season to season by using patented materials, such as rivets and stitching, and by using special washes and distressing methods.
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Most premium jeans' cotton denim fabric comes from the primary maker of high-end denim fabric used in the U.S. and Europe: Greensboro, N.C.-based Cone Denim, a unit of the International Textile Group. There, in a plant known as White Oak, shuttle looms dating from the 1950s weave the denim fabric that winds up in many premium denim brands, including J Brand. The looms are older, narrower, and slower than highly efficient modern looms, but they weave fabric with slight irregularities known as slubs, which impart a texture and character that modern looms lack. (Moi ici: Como os discos de vinil... BTW quantas fábricas fecharam por causa de manterem estruturas produtivas dos anos 50? E de quem é a responsabilidade? Dos trabalhadores? Dos clientes? Dos governos? Como escreve Huerta de Soto, citando Kirzner, "o exercício da empresarialidade implica uma especial perspicácia (alertness), ou seja, um contínuo estado de alerta, que torna possível ao ser humano descobrir e aperceber-se do que ocorre ao seu redor")
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Jeans makers say that manufacturing in the U.S., in addition to appealing to consumers, allows them to move quickly. (Moi ici: O factor proximidade associado à rapidez e flexibilidade. Não duvido que em muitos sectores a flexibilidade a nível laboral seja importante, mas para quem lida com moda a sério, o grande factor de flexibilidade é a proximidade. Agora isso implica uma outra organização do trabalho, isso implica criativos que estão numa fábrica e não num atelier onde o tempo é secundário) When Jeff Rudes, founder and chief executive of J Brand, saw designer Jil Sander's electric colors in New York's Jeffrey boutique earlier this year, he asked his designers to come up with a hot pink and an emerald green color for jeans. Five days later, the first, small run of jeans were shipping into Barneys New York. Mr. Rudes says it typically takes his company six to eight weeks to make a pair of jeans in the U.S., compared with three to six months in China."
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Mais sobre este tema dos têxteis produzidos em países de mão-de-obra cara podem ser encontrados pesquisando David Birnbaum ou de Suzane Berger.

Formular uma estratégia competitiva é fundamental

Já em 2007 escrevi sobre o tema, há quem fale em retoma não como uma consequência mas como uma força motriz, e isso faz toda a diferença.
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Quem fala da retoma como uma força motriz, pensa na retoma como uma maré alta e na crise como uma maré baixa:

Quem pensa na retoma como uma força motriz está à espera que a maré suba, porque quando a maré sobre todos os barcos sobem.
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Pelo contrário, quem pensa na retoma como uma consequência não espera, põe os pés ao caminho para sair do buraco e construir o futuro.
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A importância da actuação individual comprova-se com a análise das distribuições de produtividade intra-sectoriais.
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No mesmo país, no mesmo sector de actividade, com as mesmas leis laborais, com a mesma Justiça, com o mesmo governo, com a mesma moeda, diferentes empresas conseguem resultados completamente diferentes.
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Esse facto devia merecer reflexão mais aprofundada dos agentes, pero todavia tal parece não suceder.
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James McTaggart, Peter Kontes e Michael Mankins no livro "The Value Imperative" de 1994 já abordavam o tema:
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"We have often heard it said that "picking the right horse" is more important than the "skill of the jockey." (Moi ici: Mentalidade perigosa, mentalidade derrotista, mentalidade conformada)  Managers of businesses that participate in unattractive markets, for example, frequently maintain that their business cannot possibly produce an economic profit over time due to the powerful direct and limiting forces at work in their product markets.While seemingly reasonable, in many cases they are wrong. (Moi ici: Nunca mais esqueci o que aprendi com Suzanne Berger “… there are no “sunset” industries condemned to disappear in high wage economies, although there are certainly sunset and condemned strategies, among them building a business on the advantages to be gained by cheap labor” recebi esta mensagem como uma lufada de ar fresco pleno de esperança no futuro, desde que se actualize a estratégia em função das alterações na paisagem competitiva. )
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Indeed, we have found that for most businesses, competitive position has a far greater impact on profitability than market economics do. (Moi ici: A importância de formular uma estratégia competitiva) In nearly every market, no matter how unattractive, there are businesses that are able to build a competitive advantage large enough to more than offset the poor market economics, enabling them to earn a positive economic profit consistently over time."
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"Looked at another way, the distribution of economic profit and equity spreads across companies within a market is much wider than the distribution across markets, many companies are unprofitable even though they participate in attractive markets."

Há alternativas

Interessados no desafio de competir no mundo de hoje e triunfar, apesar dos mega-concorrentes no preço ou nos custos, devem procurar ler "How We Compete" escrito por uma equipa do MIT liderada por Suzanne Berger.

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O livro tem a grande vantagem de partir da micro-economia, do contacto com empresas reais, com pessoas concretas, para relatar histórias de sucesso sobre como competir com a Ásia.

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Um must!

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Para competir é preciso ter uma estratégia, sem estratégia corre-se o risco de se ser um prato numa prova de tiro aos pratos. Por isso, esta apresentação faz crescer água na boca:

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"We in the garment industry — both the factory suppliers and the importer/retailer buyers — none of us like strategies. We are very good at tactics. We are masters at dealing with crisis. But long-term strategies are simply not our thing. At best, strategic thinking in our industry is a last resort. At worst, it occurs only afterwards.
We all had ten years to create viable strategies to meet the challenges of the quota phase-out. We all knew the actual date that quotas would disappear on December 31, 2004. We all knew that the end of quota would bring the greatest change in the history of the global garment industry. Yet on January 1, 2005, we were all taken by surprise, unprepared." (Moi ici: Aqui os caviares dirão, a culpa é dos empresários portugueses que são ignorantes, temos de lhes expropriara as fábricas)

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"Tactics provide short-term incremental change. Strategies provide something new. There is a difference between faster production or higher productivity and speed-to-market, just as there is a difference between reduced prices (whether FOB, DDP, wholesale or retail) and lower costs. Faster production and reduced prices are the result of applying successful tactics. Speed-to-market and lower costs are strategic.
This concentration on the short term traps us in the world of competition, where local factories vie against other local factories for increased orders, and where regional and national retailers vie against other regional and national retailers for a greater share of the consumer market."

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"Again this is not a case of something better. It is about something different. This is all about strategy. Tactics is about competition — winning the game against your competitors. Strategy is about excellence. And, if excellence is a game, there is only one player — you."

O choque chinês num país de moeda forte (parte V)

Continuado daqui: Parte I, Parte II, Parte III e Parte IV.

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Mais uma achega para o tema "Survival of the Best Fit: Exposure to Low-Wage Countries
and the (Uneven) Growth of U.S. Manufacturing Plants"

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"U.S. firms respond to the pressures of international trade by altering their product mix
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We focus on US trade with low-wage countries.
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Given their high relative wages, it is virtually impossible for U.S. firms to earn profits producing labor-intensive goods.
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labor-intensive plants are relatively more susceptible to low-wage country imports than are capital- and skill-intensive plants in the same industry. As a result, within-industries, activity should shift towards relatively capital- and skill-intensive plants. (Moi ici: Basta recordar o exemplo da Tema Home para ver a quantidade de novas funções na empresa parte I e parte II)
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We find evidence of reallocation in three dimensions. At the industry level, exposure to low-wage country imports is negatively associated with plant survival and employment growth.(Moi ici: Coincide com o exemplo do calçado português) Within industries, the higher the industry’s exposure to low-wage country imports, the bigger is the relative performance difference between capital- and labor-intensive plants. (Moi ici: empresas que sobrevivem como subcontratadas no quadrante A e empresas no quadrante D) Finally, there is a positive association between exposure to low-wage country imports and industry switching. Plants that switch industries shift into industries with less exposure to low-wage country imports and greater capital- and skill-intensity than the industries left behind. Together, these results support the view that U.S. manufacturing is moving away from comparative-disadvantage activities and towards comparative advantage industries via exit, growth and industry switching. (Moi ici: este abandono, sem explorar as oportunidades de negócio no sector, como tão bem explica Suzanne Berger, não há sectores obsoletos há é estratégias obsoletas, depois gera situações que levam ao descrédito das marcas, por exemplo aqui a propósito de "The triple-A Supply Chain”, da autoria de Hau L. Lee, publicado pela Harvard Business Review em Outubro de 2004, sob o subtítulo “The perils of efficiency”.

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Por tudo isto que escrevi nesta série e por muito mais que tenho escrito neste blogue, não posso deixar de pensar que há sempre uma solução, há sempre uma alternativa, há sempre forma de fugir ao insucesso, pode é não estar à vista de forma clara. Não podemos é querer combater no terreno que dá vantagem ao concorrente, nem podemos colocar o poder de resolver o problema no exterior.

Porque precisamos do conhecimento codificado...

Para quem acredita que as estratégias são eternas e, para quem acha bem que o estado português financie experiências de multinacionais, convém ler este trecho:

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"Strategies, and especially business concepts, tend to follow a common life cycle. They start as new and unproven, and it takes some time before the development gains speed. Then there is a period of steady growth. At the top of the cycle it is time for harvest; the prospects for high earnings have never been better, and will not improve in the future as the concept stagnates, declines and finally dies. It is wise to check the present place on this cycle of your strategies and business concepts. This is particularly interesting if you combine it with an assessment of whether you or your competitors have (or can have) the prerequisites to improve or even achieve a unique position.
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It shows (a figura) that the company had a huge problem, as the strategy that had made the company a success is in the extreme top-right position. There were some other strategy suggestions that offered great opportunities for the company; they were more likely to succeed than those of the competitors, and they were also at the stage where the development was gaining speed and could be accelerated. The competitors had certain advantages when it came to other strategies at the same stage of the development cycle; these strategies could be adopted by the company, but there would be a great deal of work to be done to catch up with the competition.
Then there were some high-risk strategies that might offer advantages in due course, but they were new and as yet unproven.
This analysis of course needs to be deepened, but it provides a good foundation for further discussions."

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Trecho retirado de "Scenario Planning The link between future and strategy" de Mats Lindgren e Hans Bandhold.

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Algo na mesma linha do que escreveu Suzanne Berger e Eric Beinhocker, deste último recordo esta poesia retirado do fabuloso livro "The Origin of Wealth":

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"Soon, something else began to happen in the pulsing soup of strategies— innovations began to appear. Mutations that added genes caused agent memory sizes to grow, thus enabling the agents to look further back in history and devise strategies that were more complex. Many of the mutants were nonsensical strategies that died off quickly. But, in general, more memory is a big advantage, and new strategies that were successful began to emerge and reproduce.
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So who was the winner? What was the best strategy in the end? What Lindgren found was that this is a nonsensical question. In an evolutionary system such as Lindgren's model, there is no single winner, no optimal, no best strategy. Rather, anyone who is alive at a particular point in time, is in effect a winner, because everyone else is dead. To be alive at all, an agent must have a strategy with something going for it, some way of making a living, defending against competitors, and dealing with the vagaries of its environment.
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Likewise, we cannot say any single strategy in the Prisoner's Dilemma ecology was a winner. Lindgren's model showed that once in a while, a particular strategy would rise up, dominate the game for a while, have its day in the sun, and then inevitably be brought down by some innovative competitor. Sometimes, several strategies shared the limelight, battling for "market share" control of the game board, and then an outsider would come in and bring them all down. During other periods, two strategies working as a symbiotic pair would rise up together—but then if one got into trouble, both collapsed.”

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Porque as estratégias não são eternas, porque a realidade é como uma corrente em permanente movimento, não basta o conhecimento tácito. Há que dominar o conhecimento codificado.

Um grande, senão talvez o maior exemplo positivo dos últimos anos

Quando se fala ou escreve de PMEs competitivas, exportadoras, da necessidade de subir na escala de valor, de fugir da proposta de valor do preço, imediatamente vêem-me à mente os vários campeões escondidos que tenho tido a felicidade de conhecer no sector do calçado português no último ano:
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"Segundo salienta a APICCAPS, nos últimos 10 anos a indústria portuguesa de calçado "evoluiu de forma notória", conseguindo "migrar a produção para segmentos de cada vez maior valor acrescentado e afirmar-se internacionalmente como um produtor de calçado de excelência, que alia a tradição e o saber acumulado às tecnologias de ponta".

"O sector apostou igualmente nos factores imateriais da competitividade", realça, afirmando que o "design, moda, qualidade, inovação, marca e diferenciação passaram a constituir argumentos competitivos cada vez mais preciosos para uma indústria que exporta mais de 90 por cento da sua produção".

Em 2008, as exportações portuguesas de calçado somaram 1.348 milhões de euros, mais 2,15 por cento do que no ano anterior e em alta pelo terceiro ano consecutivo.

Segundo dados da APICCAPS, desde 2005 as vendas do sector para o exterior cresceram mais de 10 por cento, o que faz de Portugal "um dos principais exportadores à escala mundial" nesta indústria.

Actualmente, a indústria portuguesa de calçado representa cinco por cento da produção, sete por cento das exportações e 17 por cento do emprego a nível europeu."
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Recorte retirado do Público "Sector do calçado apresenta amanhã nova imagem e plano de promoção no estrangeiro"
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Em simultâneo, a situação da Rhode e a lista deste postal de há bocado vem demonstrar aquela frase que aprendi com Suzzane Berger:
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"No livro “How we compete” de Suzanne Berger and the MIT Industrial Performance Center, publicado em Janeiro de 2006, pode ler-se:
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Na página 255: “… there are no “sunset” industries condemned to disappear in high wage economies, although there are certainly sunset and condemned strategies, among them building a business on the advantages to be gained by cheap labor” (Moi ici: Please rewind and read again!!! Then rewind and read again!!! Then rewind and read again!!!! Repetir a leitura até perceber o significado, o poder da mensagem incluída na frase, e o mundo novo de oportunidades que abre.)