"Small brands are stealing share from big brands" (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

"Supply Economics.During the 50-year rule of big media, big retailers, and big brands, the FMCG playbook focused on scale in order to reduce unit costs in sourcing, manufacturing, brand marketing, trade spending, and overhead. Lower costs allowed companies to invest in innovation, key account management, and global functions, thus reinforcing their advantage over smaller players..Scale created superior economics and barriers to entry, but those advantages are now eroding. Small companies are increasingly able to access or even surpass the economics of much larger competitors in four key areas..Asset-Light Production. Small FMCG companies no longer need to own the means of production; they can effectively rent scale from a large comanufacturer. Through outsourcing, smaller companies can trade massive capital spending for more manageable variable costs at low volumes. [Moi ici: Como não recordar um nome e o que já aqui escrevemos: Font Salem]...Expanded Distribution Options. Small FMCG companies used to be stymied by a limited number of big retailers that carried a limited number of brands, plus their own private labels. Today, they find willing customers in fast-growing new retail formats, especially premium, convenience, and online. ... At Amazon and other online stores, shelf space is unlimited: small brands often have the same visibility as large ones..Some of these new channels offer small FMCG companies access to marketing and commercial tools and insights that were once the exclusive preserve of their larger peers. ...Variable-Cost Marketing. Social and digital media have given small companies the opportunity to build their brands and attract new customers without large upfront commitments to media spending. Unlike global consumer brands, smaller companies are not necessarily trying to reach a mass audience through paid media, such as TV advertising. Rather, they are trying to make personal and targeted connections, which social and digital media facilitate with variable-cost marketing..Ease of Coordination. The small attackers can often act more quickly and creatively than global companies in bringing brands to life. As founder-led companies, they are focused and efficient and do not bear the coordination and governance costs of large organizations. Their agility and simplicity allow them to outmaneuver large, siloed FMCG companies." [Moi ici: Ainda há dias exasperado, transmitia a uma multinacional uma mensagem dura para ver se acordam, se aceleram a tomada de decisão e se se focam. São presas tão fáceis nos tempos que correm]

Trechos retirados de "How Big Consumer Companies Can Fight Back"

"Small brands are stealing share from big brands" (parte II)

Parte I.

"WHY DAVID IS WINNING [Moi ici: Curiosa este recurso à metáfora de David e Golias. Quem estará a fazer o papel de Saúl?]
.
For the past five decades or more, multinational FMCG companies strengthened their brands, expanded their portfolios, steadily increased share and revenues, and created strong shareholder value. It was an era of big media, big retailers, and big brands. [Moi ici: E depois ...] But about five years ago, smaller companies and brands began to take share from their much larger rivals for the first time.
...

...
[Moi ici: Segue-se algo com o que não concordamos] Consumer Demand.
The belief that consumers’ preferences have shifted is understandable but misplaced. On the basis of our research in this area and our work over the past five years with global FMCG companies competing against smaller rivals in more than 20 categories, we have concluded that the fundamental drivers of consumer demand have remained consistent over time. [Moi ici: Continuem a laborar nesse erro para que as PME possam continuar a aproveitar]"

"Small brands are stealing share from big brands"

"Small brands are stealing share from big brands. [Moi ici: Em linha com a nossa metáfora de Mongo]
...
Conventional wisdom says that today’s consumers want healthy, natural food and personal-care options, and millennials, in particular, prefer authentic to mass-produced goods. To win back this new breed of consumer, the thinking goes, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies have few options. Either they can launch small brands, at the risk of fragmenting attention and resources, or they can try to increase earnings through deep cost cutting, emulating the approach the private equity firm 3G Capital has taken in its acquisitions of large consumer brands. In short, many believe organic growth from the core is over.
.
We disagree. Goliath can defeat David. Consumers’ tastes have changed, but their underlying needs and desires have not.  [Moi ici: Não consigo concordar com esta afirmação. Os consumidores já não sãos os mesmos, já não estão prisioneiros do que o industrialismo criou para eles. Em vez de massa passiva e obediente, tribos cada vez mais apaixonadas e intransigentes] What has fundamentally changed is the economics of supply. [Moi ici: Só isto é muito pouco, é verdade mas não é tudo] Scale was once all important. On its own, however, it no longer guarantees competitive advantage. [Moi ici: Verdade que muitos Sarumans na academia por cá ainda não descobriram] Even so, large FMCG companies can prevail over their supposedly nimbler foes. But they need a new playbook.
...
they need to engage with consumers in new ways, accelerating adoption of the viral, personalized, and experience- based methods that small brands have exploited.
.
Third, rather than fearing the complexity that comes with creating and marketing a wider variety of brands and products, they need to embrace it strategically. In a fragmenting world, the ability to serve a wide range of demand effectively and efficiently can be a competitive advantage.
.
Finally, they need to emulate the focus, coordination, and speed of their upstart rivals. Those companies rely on the agile principles, popular in entrepreneurial hubs around the world, of rapid prototyping, testing, and learning in continual cycles."

Acredito que é muito mais do que uma alteração na estrutura económica do fornecimento. Acredito que é muito mais radical e profundo e não creio que no longo prazo a maioria das empresas grandes subsista como tal. Mesmo que queiram mudar estão prisioneiras da necessidade de grandes séries para justificar as taxas de retorno exigidas pelos accionistas.

Trechos retirados de "How Big Consumer Companies Can Fight Back"

"Customers often think we are different not because we are different"

Trecho tremendo:

"if you not only know your customer really well, but ensure your customer recognizes that you know them really well, your customer will appreciate you more than the competition. This is due to my differentiation paradox: Customers often think we are different not because we are different, but because we recognize what makes them different."

Tão bom, tão cheio de sumo, tão adequado a Mongo e às suas tribos apaixonadas que valorizam o sangue.

Agora imaginem o quanto é preciso conhecer os clientes-alvo para que eles reconheçam esta diferença.

Trecho retirado de "Your Most Powerful Competitive Advantage"

We are all weird, and proud of it

Ainda me lembro de sair de casa por volta das 19h, já era noite de Outono de 2011, para correr a ouvir o livro "We are all weird" de Seth Godin. Logo escrevi "We Are All Weird - Um manifesto sobre Mongo".

Ao ler este texto de Seth Godin, "Beware of false averages", como não recordar com ironia os fantasmas estatísticos tão típicos do século XX e, sobretudo, sonhar com a esperança de um futuro baseado na metáfora de Mongo e na explosão de tribos.

A explosão de diversidade em curso

Um dia e a quantidade de artigos que se encontram e que têm tudo a ver com a tendência para Mongo, para o Estranhistão, para a explosão de diversidade de tribos, para o triunfo das pequenas séries e da autenticidade sobre a eficiência.

• Las cervecerías artesanales están transformando los vecindarios industriales de EEUU;
• In High Spirits
• This 10-Year-Old’s $2 Million Amazon Business Is Leaving Competitors In The Dust

Via "Strategy for a Networked World" de Ramirez & Mannervik cheguei a "Value Co-production: Intelectual Origins and Implications for Practice and Research" de Rafael Ramirez, publicado por Strategic Management Journal, 20: 49–65 (1999) de onde sublinho:

"A value co-production framework does not consider this outline to be entirely inapplicable, but it takes it to be applicable only in specific value creating conditions, inscribed in a wider topology of possible forms of value creation. A co-produced value creation framework is thus of a ‘higher logical type’ than the industrial one, and entails at least the following organizing characteristics:

1. Scope economics are as important as scale economics, allowing smaller units to compete against big ones — e.g., in steel making.

1. Short product life cycles and production runs becoming economically viable, enabling ‘micro-marketing’ and ‘tailor-made mass co- production’ to emerge.

1. Enhanced asset liquidity and reconfigurability are making fixed or sunk costs increasingly risky: activity-based costing, customer- centered analytic accounting, and other battles to eliminate ‘average’ and ‘fixed’ costing per- spectives are signs of this.

1. Co-production is inviting ‘hollow,’ holo- graphic, ‘virtual,’ ‘keiretsu’-like organizing. In many industries, these designs compete well with integrated industrial firms."

Fácil! Basta pensar em Mongo.

"Estudo da EY mostra valor recorde de projetos de Investimento Direto Estrangeiro em 2016, num total de 59. Mas nunca antes os empregos criados por cada projeto foram tão poucos: 42, em média."

Como interpretar esta redução da média dos empregos criados por projecto?

Fácil! Basta pensar em Mongo. Basta pensar em séries mais pequenas, basta pensar em unidades para abastecer a Europa e não o mundo, basta pensar em preço unitário em vez de custo unitário, basta pensar em eficácia em vez de eficientismo, basta pensar em tribos em vez de massa.

Trecho retirado de "Live. Nunca o investimento estrangeiro criou tão pouco emprego"

Acerca de Mongo

"When Voodoo launched, Friefeld said that the team began to realize that they were serving two different markets. The first market is made up of engineering companies that are launching new products and which need to produce a few thousand products for early testing and validation.Voodoo works with these firms to produce the first few thousand enclosures and other parts for their designs. The second market consists of marketing materials and other aesthetic products.
.
How can a 3D printing company compete with the $162 billion injection molding market? Voodoo accomplished this by purchasing off-the-shelf 3D printers, which require very little up-front investment when compared to an industrial manufacturing operation. Running a series of print farms, Friefeld said that his startup is cost-competitive with injection molding for runs of up to 10,000 units. For print runs above that, it usually makes more economic sense to have parts made with injection molding.
.
“With Voodoo, there’s no up-front investment,” Friefeld said.“We can get started with the file and get your part the next day, or 10,000 parts in two weeks. We’re fast and we have very little startup costs with our process.That’s all because we’re using 3D printers—digital manufacturing tools that can take in a digital file and produce a physical product with little human interaction. No tool, no tooling, no jigs, no fixtures. File in, product out.”
...
“Ultimately, we will be producing low-volume runs of any manufactured product anywhere in the world,” Friefeld said.“[We’re] starting with plastic today, but we’ll eventually expand into other materials and processes built on top of these digital tools like 3D printers.”"

Isto encaixa perfeitamente na narrativa acerca da caminhada para esse novo mundo económico que designo por Mongo. Um mundo de diversidade e com cada vez menos necessidade de grandes séries.

Há algum tempo discutia-se numa empresa a necessidade de investir numa unidade toda automatizada, ao estilo 4.0, para se especializar na produção de grandes séries. Sinto que os escandalizei quando os tentei convencer a fazerem o contrário: investir numa nova unidade pequena, mas para se concentrar nas pequenas séries.

As empresas grandes pensam nas séries grandes e não dão a atenção suficiente às pequenas séries e a um outro estilo de marketing, de actividade comercial e de produção que requerem. Pensem no Director Comercial de uma empresa grande. Pensem no desafio que ele tem de enfrentar todos os anos de aumentar as vendas para ir ao encontro de objectivos de facturação muito ambiciosos. Pensem como o volume de vendas é muito mais fácil de medir que o lucro unitário obtido com essas mesmas vendas. Pensem como esse Director terá tendência a matar/asfixiar todos os projectos de novos produtos e serviços que não prometam pelo menos X de vendas rapidamente. Julgo que a única hipótese que uma empresa grande tem de fazer a transição para Mongo, é a de criar spinoffs e colocar gente apaixonada  e obrigada a passar fome de recursos, à frente desses projectos. (Interessante como esta referência a gente apaixonada me fez recordar este podcast recente de Nassim Taleb, "Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Work, Slavery, the Minority Rule, and Skin in the Game")


Trechos retirados de "Voodoo Automates 3D Printing to Take on Injection Molding"

O exemplo da cerveja

Um texto, mais um, desta feita de Richard Florida, sobre o exemplo da evolução das cervejas artesanais nos Estados Unidos, "Can Craft Breweries Transform America's Post-Industrial Neighborhoods?".

Democratização da produção, diferenciação e um "live and let live" (empresas do mesmo sector, lado a lado geograficamente, mas que verdadeiramente não se consideram concorrentes, não é um jogo de soma nula, quanto mais o ecossistema criar valor mais todos ganham), regresso da indústria às cidades (um tema recorrente no que vou pensando e encontrando).

BTW, este é um outro exemplo da ascensão de artesãos do futuro:

"the craft beer revolution, ... is highly clustered. The good news is that many of these clusters are taking shape in places that have been subject to disinvestment and deindustrialization.
.
Craft breweries find it beneficial to locate near one another so they can sell each other excess grain and hops, share equipment, and even train one another’s staff. The smallest breweries, in particular, garner large proportions of their revenue from their taprooms. Locating in a thriving brewery district can drive up foot traffic and attract beer tourists.
...
While craft breweries do in fact compete against one another in these brewery districts, their products tend to be much more differentiated than those of the big brewers, making competition less direct.
...
The rise of craft brewing also tracks with a desire, most pronounced among millennial consumers, for “adventure” and “variety” in the products they choose, according to the study.
...
Even more importantly, brewpubs and microbreweries provide their neighborhoods with community gathering places, while craft beer brands convey a sense of pride and identity to places that could use a morale boost. And unlike traditional bars, taprooms and brewpubs tend to be family (and sometimes even dog) friendly."

Não é impunemente que se muda

Este texto "Applebee’s is done trying to win over millennials" julgo que pode ser usado como exemplo do dilema que as empresas grandes vão enfrentar com cada vez mais frequência à medida que o número de tribos e de nichos aumenta e que os seus membros se vão "radicalizando" nas suas escolhas, a tal assimetria que Nassim Taleb refere e recolhi em "Mongo e escolhas assimétricas".

Uma empresa grande procura servir a maior fatia do mercado. Por isso, aponta ao centro, aponta à caixa dos clientes/consumidores normais:

À medida que a dimensão, a quota desse mercado do "centrão" vai encolhendo, aumenta o interesse em servir nichos adjacentes. E ao procurar servir essas outras fatias de mercado acabam por descurar os clientes/consumidores onde anteriormente ainda tinham algum sucesso.

É destas barreiras informais, informais porque só existem na mente do potencial comprador, que falo quando digo: Promotor da concorrência imperfeita e dos monopólios informais

Não é impunemente que se procura mudar de um grupo de clientes-alvo para outro grupo de clientes-alvo.

Empresas com dinheiro o melhor que podem fazer é criar/comprar marcas que sirvam esses nichos adjacentes. Usar uma marca "histórica" forte para passar a servir outra tribo é muito arriscado, há muita bagagem atrelada.

Artesãos do futuro

Ao folhear muitos postais deste blogue é fácil relacionar entre si algumas palavras-chave:

• Mongo;
• tribos;
• diferenciação;
• paixão;
• artesãos;
• autenticidade.

Por exemplo, há dias escrevi:

"Em paralelo a esta evolução, que vai sugar os mais apaixonados para uma nova Idade de Ouro de artesãos do século XXI"

No caderno de Economia deste fim de semana encontrei um texto que relaciona estas mesmas palavras-chave, "À procura de artesãos no tempo dos ecrãs táteis":

"No entanto, quem aposta com visão em segmentos como o têxtil, a carpintaria, a latoaria, a joalharia, a encadernação, a cerâmica, os bordados, o restauro ou a cestaria pode ter um futuro promissor pela frente,
...
outra área de forte procura: o trabalho artesanal em madeira. “Todos os dias chegam pedidos de marceneiros, profissionais de serralharia artística.” São cada vez mais, também, os casos de sucesso de novos negócios, sempre de nicho, que começam no risco, chegam à autossustentabilidade e culminam na exportação.
...
Ao contrário do preconceito que possa persistir, de que o trabalho do artesão é pesado, sujo e moroso e de que a produção não se adaptou ao consumidor contemporâneo, “o artesanato não ficou estagnado”, sublinha Luís Rocha. O sector está a rejuvenescer e a qualificar-se.
...
a formação superior conjugada com a técnica adquirida nos cursos profissionais resulta na evolução criativa que tem dinamizado o sector. Ao mesmo tempo, “a procura [de produções artesanais] tem aumentado porque o mercado está cansado do produto massificado e quer, cada vez mais, objetos com forte cariz cultural, identitários e diferenciadores”. Cabe ao artesão “ganhar essa oportunidade”, analisa o diretor, que defende o investimento em marcas culturais com design de luxo.
...
Se nos domínios da carpintaria, marcenaria e costura, encontrar emprego por contra de outrem é relativamente comum, nos nichos da cerâmica artística, vidro ou bordados, muitos não esperam que o mercado chame por eles e criam diretamente oportunidades, uma situação que se terá acentuado nos últimos seis anos. “O desemprego fomentou o empreendedorismo e isso foi muito importante para dinamizar o sector”"

E na linha do que tenho reflectido aqui sobre o seru e a não-necessidade de máquinas-monumento , sobre o impacte de Mongo na dimensão das empresas, sobre o impacte da digitalização na redução da fricção de que falava Coase, na ascensão do DIY e dos makers, é interessante a referência aos ecrãs tácteis no título. Acredito que os artesãos do futuro trabalharão cada vez com mais tecnologia e mais valor acrescentado.



BTW, ontem fui a Rio Tinto com 4 moradas de lojas e fábricas de candeeiros. Ao chegar a uma delas, com todo o aspecto de oficina artesanal, deparei-me com caixas com marcas de renome e referências a feiras italianas. Fui recebido com atenção e simpatia mas comunicaram-me que tinham deixado de trabalhar para o público e começado a trabalhar para marcas portuguesas do segmento médio-alto e focadas na exportação.

Beyond Lean (parte II)

Na parte I procurámos demonstrar que o futuro será muito mais do que a automatização. A explosão de tribos de Mongo requer estruturas produtivas com um ADN diferente do que aquele que o século XX nos legou.

A evolução tecnológica vai trazer, também, a democratização da produção, a redução de barreiras à entrada e, por isso, a explosão no número de pequenas empresas life-style business.

Em paralelo a esta evolução, que vai sugar os mais apaixonados para uma nova Idade de Ouro de artesãos do século XXI, teremos a reacção das empresas grandes no seu combate final pelo domínio da decrescente fatia de mercado que representa os que continuam dentro da caixa e optam pelo preço como o critério prioritário de compra. Essas continuarão a optar pela automatização como forma de reduzir custos.

E em paralelo com as duas correntes anteriores teremos uma terceira impulsionada pela demografia e tão bem ilustrada em "Rise of the machines".

Até que ponto Portugal vai ter de ser pioneiro nesta terceira via?

Demografia, marxismo social e a atracção pela emigração, são uma combinação tremenda que só agora começa a ter o seu impacte. Recordar:

• Fico com a ideia de que muita gente ainda não percebeu isto
• 1 + 1 = 3 ?
• Empresas que não têm tempo para definir um futuro
• Curiosidade do dia

Tribos por todo o lado

Tribos por todo lado, nichos por todo o lado. Mongo é isto:

"all of them into this niche product that acts as a social identifier. For them, standing in line for a T-shirt or baseball cap is a way of telling the world that you know about something that not everyone is hip to.
...
“We become a little band of survivors, with a grim gallows humor to match,” Mr. Andrews wrote. “We’re all in this together.”"

Trechos retirados de "The Cult of the Line: It’s Not About the Merch"

O anónimo da província estava certo!

Mais um texto em linha com o que aqui defendemos há anos com base na nossa experiência empírica.  Enquanto os membros da tríade (académicos fechados nas suas torres de marfim, comentadores económicos e políticos) continuam a falar de competitividade com base no século XX e, por isso, estão prisioneiros do eficientismo e das manigâncias com a cotação da moeda, há um outro mundo:

"The manufacturing arm of operations management (OM) has limited itself to a narrow vision of what this key organizational function is supposed to be and do. OM scholars have quibbled about efficiency in factory and supply-chain operations, while giving little attention to tying production forward to end customers. Our view is that this single-minded focus on efficiency has effectively knocked OM research, theory, topics, methods, measures, and practitioner guidance off kilter.
On the industry side, a narrow view of OM mirrors the single- minded focus that we observe in academia. Manufacturers proudly display factories that have been cleared of targeted wastes and are marvels of short flow times, low work-in-process in- ventories, and high capacity utilization. They may also point to similar achievements with key suppliers. A closer look, however, often reveals a supply chain with extended lead times [Moi ici: Aposto que, como eu, não sabia que o Toyota Production System, essa maravilha de organização e eficiência (sem ironia) congela a previsão de produção com 8 semanas de antecedência] and swollen finished-goods inventories that dwarf the low in-plant inventories. The overall supply chain often loses the ability to compete on anything except cost. The resulting vulnerability to low-cost competition leads to offshoring.
Inability to synchronize with downstream demand increases production cost through supply-demand mismatches, delays in addressing quality issues - even mass product recalls, and customer defections. These negative outcomes are commonplace even in factories held up as bastions of “best practices”.
...
A major deterrent to CP [Moi ici: Concurrent production] adoption is the tendency both in companies and among the OM academic community to focus on localized efficiency to the neglect of responsiveness in fulfilling customer needs. Manufacturing people have limited interaction with final users, so the cost of valuing efficiency above responsiveness goes unnoticed. In consequence, manufacturing-improvement efforts tend to be limited to pursuit of within-factory efficiencies: short internal flows, smoothed sched- ules, and high capacity utilization.
...
manufacturers in their quest for operational efficiency prefer factory operatives to be always busy making products. CP, on the other hand, welcomes the situation in which both equipment and its operators are idle for lack of current demand.
...
Another managerial mindset that hinders CP implementation is the assumption that it is better to reduce changeover times on a single piece of equipment than to duplicate that equipment. Along similar lines, we have seen manufacturers replacing multiple units with a single large, flexible piece of equipment. ... done for the sake of “... improved efficiency and productivity”. This way of thinking culminates in “monument” machines: high-speed, multi-functional equipment that gives the impression of being extremely efficient. ... that engineers “... typically think at the process level,” seeking efficiencies “... by combining operations with[in] a single piece of equipment.” This “can cause a disconnect with general management who want to increase sales, make gains in market share, or find new sources of revenue by adding product lines.”"

Agora metam neste cenário os fanáticos da automatização que só pensam no eficientismo e se esquecem de Mongo: rapidez, flexibilidade e variedade crescente para servir tribos cada vez mais exigentes.

Continua.

Trechos retirados de "Missing link in competitive manufacturing research and practice: Customer-responsive concurrent production" publicado por Journal of Operations Management 49-51 (2017) 83-87

No-brainer

Escrevo aqui muito sobre Mongo, sobre a explosão de tribos, sobre a progressiva radicalização de cada tribo e sobre o problema das empresas grandes, habituadas a trabalhar para a grande caixa da massa central, a tentarem continuar a servir todos.

Tribos radicalizadas valorizam a autenticidade...

Como é que as empresas grandes vão lidar com o desafio:

"Startups can do anything..
Companies can only do what’s legal..
Startups can do anything One of the unheralded advantages of a startup is what at first glance appears to be its weakness. Initially, a startup has no business model and no market share to defend. Its employees and investors don’t depend on an existing revenue stream. If they select a business model that targets industry incumbents, they don’t have to worry about upsetting existing customers, partners or distribution channels.
.
Yet those very weaknesses give startups an overwhelming advantage in innovation.  Startups can try any idea and any business model—even those that are on the surface patently illegal.
.
At times laws and regulations are in place for the health and safety of consumers. But often the legal obstacles confronting startups have been put in place by companies that look to the government and regulators as their first line of defense against new market entrants. (Existing companies also use network effects of monopolies/duopolies, distribution channel kickbacks, etc., to stifle competition.)
.
In the past, these anti-innovation tools were sufficient to keep new entrants out. But today, investors realize that companies that depend on regulation and artificial market constraints are actually vulnerable. Once presented with an alternative to the status quo, customers who have been locked into rent-seeking companies flock to innovative startups with business models that provide better service, lower prices, etc. Enormous financial returns are available to startups taking on incumbents, regulators and the law. So, startup investors comfortable making a risk capital bet are actively encouraging startups to go after large, static industries that look prime for disruption.
...
Companies can do anything legal In the 20th century companies worried about increasing their market share, profit margins, return on investment and return on net assets. They tenaciously protected their existing markets from other existing companies that were using the same business model. They very rarely worried about disruption from new firms as the barriers to entry (financial, legal, regulatory) were so high.
.
Ironically once companies become locked in their entrenched market positions, it became difficult for them to compete by breaking the same laws or untangling their existing channel relationships. In contrast to startups, companies are constrained by local, state and federal laws and regulations.  The risk of breaking laws can result in large penalties and shareholder lawsuits.  The Justice Department and State Attorneys General find large companies attractive targets.
.
As a consequence, one of the roles of the legal department in large corporations is to protect the company from straying into any legal or regulatory danger."

Trechos retirados de "Steve Blank Why a Company Can’t “Be More Like a Startup”"

"What is going to be scarce is human imperfection"

"In the world of the future, automated perfection is going to be common. Machines will bake perfect cakes, perfectly schedule appointments and keep an eye on your house. What is going to be scarce is human imperfection.
...
If you have a world where the amount of perfect products we can produce increases almost infinitely by using AI, robots and clean energy, we’ll end up with a surfeit of supply, which will push the supply curve far to the right. It will come along with demand curve and ultimately the price will decline.
.
What will be plentiful will be the perfect product. What will be rare will be imperfect products; the products that got touched by the human hand.
.
A little bit like Persian rug which are produced with error in them. The waivers believed that only god can produce perfection. We might start to value the things that are less perfect, from the ones that are, from the less scarcity value.
...
Human-made will be valuable — I can imagine going into a supermarket and seeing on the shelf products labeled “not touched at all by a robot or machine”.
This will be one part of the artisan economy—the economy in which humans will have the space to excel in experiential, discretionary, and intimate. Robots will take all those things that are of high risk, seek reliability, and are repetitive."

Em linha com "Pensado e fabricado por humanos, de carne e osso".

Mongo passa por isto, pela arte, pelas tribos, pela diversidade.

Trechos retirados de "There is one thing that computers will never beat us at"

O fim da massa

Relacionar "Greatest hits are exhausting" com o fim do século XX e das economias baseadas na eficiência e na massa.

Recordar o que aqui costumamos escrever acerca da explosão do número de tribos e da sua crescente radicalizado de gosto.

"To make something popular, the creator leaves out the hard parts and amps up the crowd-pleasing riffs. To make something popular, the creator knows that she's dumbing things down in exchange for attention.
.
The songs you love the most, the soundtrack of your life--almost none of them were #1 on the Billboard charts. And the same goes for the books that changed the way you see the world or the lessons that have transformed your life."

"the dawning of the era of the independent"

Nos anos quentes a seguir ao 25 de Abril de 1974 era comum ouvir o refrão:

Os grandes ficam maiores e os pequenos desaparecem.

Estávamos em plena vigência do modelo de negócio dominante do século XX: o triunfo da escala e da concentração.

Entretanto, de acordo com a minha interpretação da realidade, estamos a embrenharmos-nos no modelo económico do século XXI: Mongo. E em Mongo a escala deixou de proporcionar a vantagem competitiva do passado.

Em Mongo "We are all weird" e já há mais gente fora do que dentro da caixa. Por isso, em dois ou três dias deparamos com casos como:

• "de como a beleza combate o low-cost"
• Trabalhar o numerador
• Não é possível querer ser tudo para todos ...

E recordo as séries:

• Acerca de Mongo
• Uma novela sobre Mongo

Que retratam a vida em Mongo e o triunfo das tribos sobre a escala, o triunfo da arte sobre o vómito, o triunfo do significado e da proximidade sobre  o padronizado.

E agora, tão estilo de Mongo encontro: "Americans Are Rejecting Big Restaurant Chains":

"Americans are rejecting the consistency of national restaurant chains after decades of dominance in favor of the authenticity of locally owned eateries, with their daily specials and Mom’s watercolors decorating the walls."

"enhance brand strength and business performance"

"As shown in figure 8.1, while 87 percent of consumers would like to experience a more meaningful relationship with their favored brands, only 17 percent believe companies are currently meeting their expectations. Three particularly promising opportunities to enhance brand strength and business performance warrant further exploration: personalization, community-based marketing, and customer dialogue."

Customização - fazer à medida, co-criação
Marketing - recorrer às tribos
Interacção -  co-criação


Trecho e figura retirados de "If You're in a Dogfight, Become a Cat!: Strategies for Long-Term Growth" 

Cuidado com a automatização

A propósito de "When Robots Miss the Minutiae":

"But the case for automation isn’t universally clear. For although they may lack certain human foibles, software programs also lack certain human attributes that can be enormously useful in business.
...
In time, of course, it’s possible that computers will develop the capacities of empathy, historical understanding, and social awareness that humans have. But it’s clear they are not there yet. And in the meantime, it poses a dilemma. The business of online advertising – as so many others do today – relies increasingly on automation. Insert more people into the process, and the price goes up while the pace of execution declines dramatically. That’s bad for margins. But there are clearly times when leaving the computers to their own devices can lead to results that drive clients to rethink their decisions to do business on a platform in the first place. And that’s even worse for margins."

Recordar "a Mercedes e a Toyota"