O futuro passa por aqui

"Bloom grew out of work pursued by three scientists at Switzerland's École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, where they developed a process to extract lignin and cellulose from plant material - substances commonly discarded as waste, but which can be used to create high-value chemicals.

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Bloom has now started working with partners, including the European flavourings and chemicals giant DSM Firmenich, to develop plant-based products for use in cosmetics, perfumes, food additives and packaging.

Bloom co-founder Florent Héroguel told me that its future products would be safer for users and less damaging to the environment, in terms of both carbon emissions and toxic waste.

While the technology could also be used to produce liquid fuels, he said,

Bloom will focus for the foreseeable future on low-volume, high-value speciality products. "That's the way to get margins in the development phase," Héroguel said.

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Flamini argues that his sector has opportunities to benefit as European regulators tighten standards around "forever chemicals" and other potentially toxic products.

...

in order to gain serious scale, they will need to focus on eliminating the cost premium of their product over the existing fossil-based options."

Trechos retirados do FT de hoje em "Switzerland's Bloom hopes to lead a resurgence in biomaterials sector" 

Um mar de heterogeneidade (Parte I)

"Why are some companies more productive than others? And why do certain divisions within those companies perform better than others do? Research has shown that top performers tend to invest more in research and development, adopt better technology, and employ a more educated workforce. [Moi ici: Poderíamos resumir, depois do que temos lido de Felin e Zenger que "Top performers haver better theories"]
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Nicholas A. Bloom [Moi ici: Um velho conhecido deste blogue] ... found that management practices accounted for about one-fifth of the variation in productivity among plants. Management style had the same effect as R&D spending — and twice the impact of technology spending — in explaining productivity differences.
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“There’s an overwhelmingly strong relationship between structured management and performance,” Bloom says.
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The researchers found that plants where managers carefully monitored the manufacturing process, production targets, and employee performance, and used that data to inform decisions, were more successful. Plants where leaders infrequently reviewed performance indicators and targets, and promoted employees based on tenure or connections rather than achievement, fared worse. These links remained strong after controlling for workers’ education level, the age of the plant and firm, and a wide range of other factors. Plants with more structured management performed better than other sites within the same firm, and plants that adopted more of these strategies saw their performance improve over time.
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One takeaway of the study was just how differently plants are managed, even within the same state or industry. In fact, 40% of the total difference in productivity was among plants within the same firm. [Moi ici: Algo sobre o qual escrevemos aqui há milhares de anos] That means that the attributes of a CEO, corporate governance, and company ownership can’t easily explain a large share of the differences in management practices.
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“It’s astounding,” Bloom says. “Some managers monitor huge amounts of data, and others seem to operate entirely by gut instinct.” [Moi ici: Uma classificação que quem anda no terreno nunca faria, é o pão nosso de cada dia]
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“You would think all firms would be well-managed and doing the right thing, but they’re not,” Bloom says. “I guess firms are like people — we all have our faults.” [Moi ici: Come on Bloom, esperava que já estivesses mais calejado nestas cenas]"

Trechos retirados de "How Much Does Management Matter to Productivity?"

Desigualdade e empresas

Há anos que escrevo e defendo esta tese "Corporations in the Age of Inequality".

Basta pesquisar o marcador "distribuição de produtividades" e a frase "há maior variabilidade dentro de um mesmo sector de actividade do que entre sectores de actividade"

Na economia do século XX havia basicamente uma estratégia a seguir, a do preço, a do crescimento da quota de mercado, a do aumento da eficiência, a da localização no denominador da equação da produtividade.

Há medida que a economia do século XXI avança, uma economia onde há muito mais estratégias alternativas que não a do preço tout court, e recordo a imagem:

Diferentes abordagens estratégicas geram diferentes distribuições de produtividades e permitem diferentes rentabilidades. Assim, as diferenças entre empresas do mesmo sector começam a aumentar.

"Whereas many economists focus on inequality between individuals, Bloom’s view is filtered through his early work as a consultant at McKinsey, where he became interested in the impact of good management on the economy. “Economists have long dismissed the importance of management practices and were often skeptical of the value of management research,” says Bloom.
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Bloom was amazed by the variation in management practices he saw among clients — and by how convinced each client was that theirs was the best way.
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Bloom shares his research on the role firms and management play in the rise of income inequality. He highlights how competitive forces and corporate decision making have contributed to divergent outcomes for individuals and suggests that inequality can’t be fully understood without thinking about companies.
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Companies can contribute to rising income inequality in two ways. As we’ve just discussed, pay gaps can increase within companies — between how much executives and administrative assistants are paid, for example. But studies now show that gaps between companies are the real drivers of income inequality.
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We found that the average wages at the firms employing individuals at the top of the income distribution have increased rapidly, while those at the firms employing people in the lower income percentiles have increased far less.
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In other words, the increasing inequality we’ve seen for individuals is mirrored by increasing inequality between firms. But the wage gap is not increasing as much inside firms, our research shows. This may tend to make inequality less visible, because people do not see it rising in their own workplace."

Mas claro, eu só sou um anónimo engenheiro da província (parte VI)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV e parte V.
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A propósito de "O défice da gestão portuguesa" publicado no JdN da passada quinta-feira fiquei a matutar em alguns pontos.
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Depois de ler o artigo, e como sou um apreciador do trabalho de Bloom, um valioso aliado na minha pregação de que a produtividade das empresas poderá melhorar com melhores práticas de gestão, em vez de confiar em benesses concedidas pelos governos, resolvi ir à fonte referida, "The Radical Beauty of Three Simple Management Practices", e fiquei a pensar no que se segue.
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Na semana passada, numa conversa numa empresa, para recolha de elementos, para a elaboração de uma proposta sobre a implementação de um sistema de gestão baseado no balanced scorecard (BSC), colocaram a pergunta sacramental:

"- E quanto tempo será necessário?"

Respondi:

"- 3 a 4 meses para desenhar o mapa da estratégia, definir indicadores e construir as iniciativas estratégicas e o sistema de monitorização. Depois, a fase de comunicação e acompanhamento pode, ou não, ser incluída no projecto."

E, imediatamente comecei a pensar nos casos que lia há dez anos sobre a implementação de BSC, e sobre os anos que duravam... e, pensei na dimensão média dessas empresas dos casos estudados e na dimensão do seu mercado doméstico e fiz o confronto com a realidade das PMEs portuguesas.
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Há défice de gestão nas empresas portuguesas? Claro que há, basta pesquisar Bloom e Reenen neste blogue, basta recordar o gráfico daqui e o marcador "Distribuição de produtividades". No entanto, cuidado com a importação das práticas americanas para as empresas portuguesas.
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No artigo de Bloom e Reenen, citado pelo JdN pode-se ler:

"As part of our research, we partnered with the World Bank to offer manufacturers in Tarapur, India, (Moi ici: Um país com escassez de oferta face à procura e com produção nacional protegida da entrada de concorrentes) the opportunity to participate in an experiment. Fourteen plants got free, high-quality advice from consultants, who taught them about three management fundamentals: setting targets, establishing incentives, and monitoring performance. The consultants showed the companies how to support long-term goals with tough but achievable short-term performance benchmarks, how to reward high performers with promotions and bonuses while retraining or moving underperformers, and how to collect and analyze performance data to identify opportunities for improvement.
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The interventions transformed the plants. On average, the manufacturers cut defects by more than 50%, reduced inventory by 20%, and raised output by 10%. (Moi ici: Estes resultados são bons mas, para muitas empresas portuguesas, as que competem no sector dos bens transaccionáveis, seriam insuficientes para contrabalançar o efeito China. Estes resultados têm tudo a ver com olhar para dentro e tornar-se mais eficiente, têm tudo a ver com fazer bem as coisas, mesmo quando essas coisas deixaram de ser as coisas certas) They also became far easier for their CEOs to manage, which allowed for the addition of new facilities and the expansion of product lines."

Há défice de gestão nas empresas portuguesas? Claro que há!!! Agora, cuidado com o pensamento homogeneizador que parte do princípio que as práticas americanas e alemãs são transplantáveis para Portugal tout court. As práticas que são necessárias para gerir corporações ou empresas multi-site que operam ao nível de continentes e têm dezenas de milhares de trabalhadores não são as mesmas que as requeridas para gerir empresas com dezenas ou centenas de trabalhadores, operam em um ou dois sites e vêem o resto da Europa como mercado de exportações.
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BTW, esta parte final é deliciosa:

"como refere Ricardo Reis, "Portugal é pobre por ser pouco produtivo, a raiz deste problema está na má gestão das empresas portuguesas. Uma solução é melhorar a qualidade dos nossos gestores. (…) Uma maior qualidade de ensino produzirá também melhores gestores. Mas, para isso, é preciso também que estes melhores gestores possam competir, em termos justos, com os maus gestores instalados"."

Como é que os maus gestores instalados são protegidos?

• Recordar esta curiosidade do dia 
• Recordar este desabafo de Daniel Bessa "... faltou sempre o dinheiro que o "Portugal profundo" preferiu gastar na "ajuda" a "empresas em situação económica difícil"..."
• Recordar a diferença entre o calçado e o têxtil  e a anedota da argumentação da revista Visão: "Se há uma guerra entre os sectores, o calçado terá tido o tempo a favor. Ao contrário dos têxteis, obrigados a enfrentar a liberalização do mercado apenas em 2005, os sapatos começaram a competir com os grandes asiáticos mais cedo, uma vez que não beneficiaram de um período de transição, com quotas de exportação para a Europa." (Moi ici: Anedota porque põe em causa os programas de transição e as ajudas, de resto estou de acordo com ela)

Mas claro, eu só sou um anónimo engenheiro da província.

ISO 9001: ainda faz sentido para as PME?

A norma não está ultrapassada. Mas a forma como muitas empresas a aplicam, sim.

Comecei a trabalhar com a ISO 9001 entre 1989 e 1990. Na altura, Portugal era visto como um país de mão-de-obra barata dentro da recém-alargada Comunidade Económica Europeia, e eu acreditava que a ISO 9001 traria organização e disciplina às PME portuguesas, ajudando-as a competir num mercado cada vez mais exigente.

Era o tempo em que se exaltava a “Normalização” com cartazes em salas de formação — e a crença ingénua de que bastava seguir normas para atingir a excelência. Hoje, sei que isso não basta.

O colapso das PME protegidas

A semana passada assinalaram-se os 40 anos da entrada de Portugal na CEE. Esse momento histórico abriu fronteiras e eliminou barreiras alfandegárias que protegiam milhares de empresas. A consequência foi brutal: uma parte significativa da nata das PME desapareceu, incapaz de competir com as marcas europeias. As que apostavam apenas no preço ainda tiveram algum fôlego — até que a China lhes retirou até esse último trunfo.

Entretanto, muita coisa mudou. Como explica Eric Beinhocker em The Origin of Wealth, o mundo empresarial tornou-se uma paisagem competitiva enrugada, em constante mutação. Quando a vantagem do baixo custo desapareceu, as PME mais ágeis descobriram o valor da flexibilidade, da rapidez, da capacidade de adaptação. Foi esse impulso que permitiu ao peso das exportações no PIB nacional saltar de 27% para cerca de 50% num espaço de poucos anos.

Nesse mesmo período, encerrei um capítulo da minha vida profissional — a marca Redsigma, que havia fundado nos anos 90. Foi o fim de um ciclo. Mas não do meu envolvimento com a qualidade.

A ISO 9001 ainda é útil? Depende.

Hoje, continuo a acreditar que a ISO 9001 pode ser uma ferramenta valiosa para PME que não competem apenas pelo preço. Mas é fundamental que a norma seja aplicada com inteligência e intenção estratégica. O sistema de gestão da qualidade não pode existir por si só. Tem de estar ao serviço da execução da estratégia da empresa.

Infelizmente, vejo com frequência o oposto: empresas onde a ISO 9001 serve apenas para “manter o certificado”. Perdeu-se o sentido original — e, com ele, a oportunidade de transformação.

Felizmente, também tenho participado em projectos onde a ISO 9001 é muito mais do que um exercício burocrático. Nestes casos, torna-se um catalisador para melhorar processos, alinhar equipas e reforçar a competitividade.

A grande lição de Bloom e Oberholzer-Gee

Recentemente, revisitei uma ideia poderosa no livro "Better, Simpler Strategy" de Felix Oberholzer-Gee: há mais variação de desempenho entre empresas do mesmo sector do que entre sectores diferentes. Ou seja, empresas a operar no mesmo país, no mesmo sector de actividade, sob as mesmas leis, impostos e mão-de-obra, apresentam resultados muito diferentes. Porquê? Pela estratégia que escolhem e pelas práticas de gestão que adoptam.

Muitos acreditam que as boas práticas de gestão estão amplamente difundidas. Mas Nicholas Bloom e John Van Reenen demonstraram o contrário em estudos amplamente citados. A sua investigação, publicada no Quarterly Journal of Economics, mostra que as diferenças na qualidade da gestão são profundas — mesmo entre empresas semelhantes.

O que estes dados nos dizem é claro: há milhares de empresas que continuam a não fazer o básico bem feito. A ISO 9001, aplicada com seriedade, pode ser esse “básico” — mas tem de ser usada como instrumento de melhoria do desempenho, e não como um selo decorativo de conformidade.

Se é empresário e sente que o seu sistema de gestão da qualidade já não serve os propósitos actuais da sua empresa — ou se precisa de criar um sistema de raiz que realmente apoie o crescimento sustentável do seu negócio — contacte-me para uma conversa inicial, sem compromisso: metanoia at metanoia.pt

Não basta certificar. É preciso transformar. E isso começa com uma decisão.

ISO 9001: ainda faz sentido para as PME? (parte II)

Ainda antes de ter publicado aqui no blogue "ISO 9001: ainda faz sentido para as PME?" já tinha publicado uma versão mais curta no LinkedIn "Does ISO 9001 still make sense for SMEs?" na manhã de 16 de Junho.

Termino os meus textos com uma referência aos trabalhos de Nicholas Bloom et al sobre a dificuldade no spillover das boas práticas de gestão entre empresas do mesmo sector de actividade económica num mesmo país. Como se existisse uma fricção que diminui a velocidade de propagação.

Entretanto, durante a tarde de 16 de Junho Roger Martin publicou "Influenceability, Society & Strategy - Don't Choose the Path of an Intellectual Hermit":

"the problem with uninfluenceable people

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Society is what we construct when individual people in it interact with one another. When they interact, they influence one another and that pattern of interaction and influence shapes society.

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People who are completely uninfluenceable can’t participate in that societal building and shaping process. By definition, uninfluenceable people can’t learn, can’t get better, and get completely stuck. 

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If you are influenceable, you would want help from others in coming up with the most useful interpretation of the law or Bible or anything else. If you are uninfluenceable, that is simply not an option.

Why it Matters for Strategy

Influenceability is important to contemplate in strategy because strict constructionism dominates in the modern practice of strategy. The mantra is to do the analysis and then do what the analysis says. Anything else is considered to be negligent and abhorrent. The analysis is viewed as providing ‘the right answer.’ If you don’t concur, you are an anti-analysis business floozy. And that reinforces the dominant culture.

My experience of executives is that under this strict constructionist regime, they tend to become more uninfluenceable as their careers progress. They get more inclined to say: I know this business, this is the way it is always done, the analysis agrees with me, so it is what we are going to do."

Talvez exista, afinal, uma ligação entre a fraca difusão das boas práticas de gestão e a incapacidade de muitos dirigentes para se deixarem influenciar por perspectivas externas. Bloom et al mostram-nos que, mesmo dentro do mesmo sector e país, as diferenças de desempenho entre empresas podem ser abissais — não por falta de acesso à informação, mas por falta de absorção. Roger Martin, por sua vez, sugere que a influência mútua — e a abertura à influência — é condição essencial para o progresso individual e colectivo. Quando a cultura organizacional cristaliza em torno de certezas analíticas e de "modelos de sempre", deixa de haver espaço para o verdadeiro diálogo, para a escuta, para a aprendizagem.

Talvez por isso a ISO 9001, apesar da sua natureza genérica e da sua longa história, continue a fazer sentido: porque obriga a escutar, a medir, a rever e a melhorar. E, como lembra Martin, só melhora quem se deixa influenciar.

"Let a thousand business models bloom"

Este texto "Our Obsession With Scalability Must End" deixou-me sem palavras.

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Encontrar um texto escrito por alguém num outro continente, a 30 de Outubro de 2014, e tão sintonizado e alinhado com o que aqui escrevemos há muitos anos. Quando escrevemos sobre Mongo, sobre o Estranhistão, sobre o eficientismo, sobre o denominador versus o numerador, sobre a interacção para co-criar valor, sobre a polarização dos mercados, sobre o não querermos, como clientes, ser tratados como miudagem, ser tratados como plankton.
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Isto é música celestial para PME, pena que a mensagem não chegue com a celeridade necessária aos empresários:

"Our obsession with scalability is getting in the way of unleashing the potential of the 21st century. [Moi ici: Escala versus interacção, volume versus à medida, vómito versus personalização] We are so fixated with scalability we have taken our eye off of delivering value at every scale including the most important scale of one. [Moi ici: O cliente deixa de ser uma pessoa, uma empresa concreta e, passa a ser um substantivo colectivo, como a miudagem, como o plankton] The Industrial Era did that to us. Reaching the mass market takes precedence over delivering value to each customer.
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The Industrial Era brought us the reign of the predominant business model. Every industry quickly became dominated by one business model that defined the rules, roles, and practices for all competitors and stakeholders. We became a nation of share takers clamoring to replicate industry best practices to gain or protect every precious market share point. Companies moved up or down industry leadership rankings based on their ability to compete for market share. Business schools minted CEOs who became share-taking clones of one another. It was all about scale. Bigger was always better.
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Institutional leaders are even more obsessed with scalability than entrepreneurs. They fixate on protecting their current scale and assess all new customer value creating ideas through the lens of their current business model.  ...  This is why CEO’s are so hungry for merger and acquisition opportunities. It’s all about scale, not changing the customer value equation.  New business models force institutional leaders to rethink scalability.
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We live in an era that screams for less share taking and more market making. Market makers don’t accept the idea that a predominant business model has to dictate the industry landscape.  [Moi ici: E falamos aqui sobre ecossistemas e market scripting, desenhar mercados como um pintor pinta quadros] They create a new market with a different playbook. ... Today’s consumers refuse to accept that there is only one predominant business model in every industry and that they have to take or leave its offerings.  Consumers now demand personalized experiences, products, and services.
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Consumers are bringing the era of the predominant business model to an end. Business models don’t last as long as they used to. Predominant business models are crumbling all around us.
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It’s time end our obsession with scalability. There are too many consumer, student, patient, and citizen needs left unmet by predominant business models in every industry. There are too many new business model concepts stuck on white boards and in consulting decks.  We are still allowing predominant business models to slow down and block the emergence of new business models that can better meet our needs.  It’s time to move from the era of the predominant business model to the era of business model proliferation. Let a thousand business models bloom." [Moi ici: Recordar]

Este texto resume bem as ideias deste blogue e da mensagem de esperança que elas encerram.

O presidente da Galp é que sabe... e os bentos-lovers também

Arquivo de fontes para uso futuro:
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"How competition improves management and productivity":
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"But what determines productivity, or the amount of output that can be produced from a given set of inputs?
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In the 1990s, Stephen Nickell led a team of CEP researchers to address the productivity question head on. ... The first finding was a descriptive fact that has stood the test of time: there are huge differences in productivity between firms even in narrowly defined industries that last for many years. Yet the existence of persistently less efficient firms encountered in Nickell’s research was hard to square with the standard economic model of perfect competition, which assumed that such inefficiency could not persist.
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increases in competition provided a large and persistent boost to firm productivity. Competition could be increased in a number of ways: more openness to trade, lower barriers to entry and greater consumer choice.
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In the 2000s, Nicholas Bloom and I built on the insight that firms’ internal organisation was the key to  productivity by launching a major effort to measure management and organisation within firms (Bloom and Van Reenen, 2007).
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It turns out that the original intuition of the 1990s work was right: management really does matter in explaining productivity differences. And furthermore, a key factor in boosting management quality in both the private and public sectors is competitive intensity. This worked not only within firms, as Nickell emphasised, but also between firms. In other words, competition raise average productivity in a nation through a Darwinian selection effect where the low productivity firms are driven out of the market and the high productivity firms expand.
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Protecting inefficient firms from going under is a major reason for lower European productivity. The direction of policy is to make space for the more efficient firms to grow and prosper."
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À atenção do presidente da Galp (meu Deus...) "A range of recent econometric studies suggest that (i) competition increases management quality and (ii) improved management quality boosts productivity." e "Management Practices Across Firms and Countries":
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"On average, we find that in manufacturing American, Japanese, and German firms are the best managed. Firms in developing countries, such as Brazil, China and India tend to be poorly managed. American retail firms and hospitals are also well managed by international standards, although American schools are worse managed than those in several other developed countries. We also find substantial variation in management practices across organizations in every country and every sector, mirroring the heterogeneity in the spread of performance in these sectors. One factor linked to this variation is ownership. Government, family, and founder owned firms are usually poorly managed, while multinational, dispersed shareholder and private-equity owned firms are typically well managed. Stronger product market competition and higher worker skills are associated with better management practices. Less regulated labor markets are associated with improvements in incentive management practices such as performance based promotion.
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From a policy perspective, several factors seem important in influencing management quality. Product market competition has a critical influence in increasing aggregate management quality by thinning the ranks of the badly managed and incentivizing the survivors to improve. Indeed, much of the cross-country variation in management appears to be due to the presence or absence of this tail of bad performers. One reason for higher average management scores in the US is that better managed firms appear to be rewarded more quickly with greater market share and the worse managed forced to rapidly shrink and exit. This appears to have led American firms to rapidly copy management best practices from around the world,"
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taxes and other distortive policies that favor family run firms appear to hinder better management, while general education and multinational presence seem valuable in improving management practices."
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E os que defendem a saída do euro para proteger as empresas nacionais mal geridas ou que fizeram opções erradas, ou que se dedicaram a apostas válidas até à pouco... incapazes de ver o sucesso de tantas e tantas PMEs que lançaram pés ao caminho.
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BTW, daqui retirei este gráfico:

Está tudo ligado: China; colapso do mercado do meio-termo com a polarização dos mercados, a inovação, o aumento da dispersão de produtividades, a subida na escala de valor, a espiral aberta virtuosa e a espiral fechada viciosa, a aposta na eficiência versus a aposta na eficácia, denominar versus numerador, custos versus valor, ... "Changes in Wage Inequality"

Porque falham as transformações

"The Four Most Common Failure Modes for Transformative Innovations in Large Organizations

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Too late.  Leaders recognize the need for new growth but don’t commit to it until their competitors have already seized the opportunity.

Too few resources.  Leaders appropriately organize and adopt long-term growth initiatives but fail to allocate sufficient dollars, the right people, and enough of their own mindshare to sustain them.

Impatience for growth.  Many transformative ventures are slow to bloom. Perhaps an early business experiment fails or has slower than expected results. Instead of redesigning the experiment to learn more, senior leadership pulls the plug. Or maybe it experiences some early-stage success and senior leadership demands that it be scaled up before all of its premises have been thoroughly tested, causing the venture to make a fatal stumble.

Competition from the core.  A challenge with growth in the core may cause resources to be diverted away from a promising new venture. Or, in a misguided attempt to restore organizational efficiencies, leadership might “cram” a successful new venture back into the core prematurely, causing it to lose the unique attributes that were responsible for its success."

Eu acrescentaria um quinto factor: a falta de foco, a falta de instinto de matador. Até se indentifica a necessidade de mudança, mas não se muda, mas não se tem fogo no rabo.

Trecho retirado de “Lead from the Future” de Josh Suskewicz.

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

Parte I, parte II, parte III e parte IV.
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Escrevemos, no primeiro postal de 2012:
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"As dificuldades criam, geram, proporcionam, escondem oportunidades.

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"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity" (Einstein).
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As dificuldades podem ser a chispa que desencadeia a revolução que estava por detrás da rolha, o tsunami preso pelas comportas.
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As crises podem ter o condão de criar a oportunidade de libertar os factores aprisionados a velhas fórmulas, a velhos modelos.
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Claro, os incumbentes de espírito tentarão até à última defender o status-quo... os que não têm nada a perder arriscam e constroem o futuro."

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Bem na linha de "A Trapped Factors Model of Innovation" de Nicholas Bloom, Paul Romer e John Van Reenen, publicado em Outubro de 2010.

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"When will reducing trade barriers against low wage country cause innovation to increase in high wage regions like the US or EU?

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We develop a model where factors of production (such as skilled labor) are used to either produce or innovate. (Moi ici: Exploitation versus exploration) Because of sunk investments (like learning bydoing) they become “trapped” in producing old goods. In this model, trade liberalization with a low wage country reduces the profitability of the old good and so the opportunity cost of innovating falls. (Moi ici: Talvez a escassez de capital que vivemos, a par do colapso na procura interna, reduzam os custos da inovação, reduzam os custos de retirar recursos escassos (capital, gente talentosa, tempo, ...) de apostas que passaram o seu prazo de validade, para novas apostas) Interestingly, the “China shock” is more likely to induce innovation than liberalization with high wage countries, as richer countries will compete in both old and new goods."  (Moi ici: Gente perigosa... De acordo com o que sucedeu a Portugal com a entrada na CEE. Os produtos alemães não vinham competir com os produtos portugueses, os produtos portugueses é que foram competir pelo preço com os produtos alemães naquela questão 

"Para um dado nível de desempenho, quão barato o podem oferecer?")

.

"we show, paradoxically, that increased trade with a low-wage trading partner, which drives down prices and forces firms to shut down some lines of production, can also increase the rate of innovation. Instead of increasing the return to innovation, this kind of trade effect reduces the opportunity cost of the resources used to innovate." (Moi ici: evolução dos euros produzidos por trabalhador na indústria do calçado e na do têxtil e vestuário)

"workers acquire human capital that is specific to a firm and the goods that it produces. This makes the human capital used by each firm a “trapped factor”. If a factor of production is trapped in a firm, a trade shock that reduces the value of this factor in specific lines of production can encourage the firm to reallocate this factor to other activities including innovation. Because the human capital is firm-specific, the shock reduces the opportunity cost of the human capital that it uses without having any effect on the cost of human capital to other firms.

...

The nature of the market failure is that skilled workers should specialize in innovation but they do not because the private incentive to innovate is below the social incentive. Their product specific skills cause them to be “trapped factors” from planner’s point of view.

...

we describe the predictions of this theory for innovation in a high wage country under two types of trade shock: a “China shock” (liberalization of goods with a low wage country) and an “OECD shock” (liberalization of trade with a high wage country). We show that the positive effect of liberalization holds only for the China shock."

.

E das Conclusões:

.

"In this paper we have considered a “trapped factor” model where some factors of production due to sunk costs are partially irrerversible and are therefore “trapped” in a firm (e.g. when there is firm-specific human capital from learning by doing). We show that in such a model that when a rich OECD country reduces trade barriers with a low wage country like China this can act to speed up the rate of innovation and therefore economic growth in the OECD country. This is because the trapped factor will be used (in part) to produce old goods and this sets the opportunity cost of innovation. A China shock reduces the profitability of producing these old low tech goods and therefore reduces the opportunity cost of innovation. Abstracting from market size effects, integration with a high wage OECD country does not have these pro-innovation effects.

...

First, opening up to trade with China appears to have generated faster technical change in firms in richer countries (like Europe and the US) not simply from reallocation but also through within firm innovation. Secondly, the effects of opening up to trade with countries like China appears to have stronger effects on innovation than trade integration with other rich countries."

.

Por que é que esse choque em Portugal foi tão violento, levando à morte de tantas empresas?

.

Porque a maioria das empresas portuguesas competia no mesmo campeonato da China, usando como vantagem competitiva os preços baixos, ou seja, muitas empresas estavam longe da fronteira do seu sector:

.

"It is important to understand the factors that infl‡uence a country’s transition from the production of low-quality to high-quality products since the production of high-quality goods is often viewed as a pre-condition for export success and, ultimately, for economic development. In this paper, we provide the fi…rst evidence that countries ’import tariffs affect the rate at which they upgrade the quality of their products. We analyze the effect of import competition on quality upgrading using highly disaggregated export data to the U.S. from fi…fty-six countries in 10,000 products using a novel approach to measure quality. As predicted by recent distance to the frontier models, we fi…nd that lower tariffs are associated with quality upgrading for products close to the world quality frontier, whereas lower tariffs discourage quality upgrading for products distant from the frontier."
...
"we show that there is a signi…cant relationship between import tariffs and quality upgrading. The direction of the effect depends importantly on how far the product is from the world quality frontier. For products close to the frontier, low tariffs encourage quality upgrading whereas for products distant from the frontier, low tariffs have the opposite effect, discouraging quality upgrading. (Moi ici: O exemplo que nos vem do Brasil!)
...
Our findings support the theories by Aghion and Howitt (2005) and ABGHP (2009) that highlight two forces: one, the “escape-competition ”effect that induces a fi…rm close to the frontier to invest in quality upgrading in order to survive competition from potential new entrants; and two, the “appropriability” effect that discourages …firms distant from the frontier from investing in quality upgrading because they are too far away from the frontier to be able to compete with potential new entrants. Our results show that support for these theories is strongest in countries with good business climates, a fi…nding that is perhaps not surprising given that lower tariffs are unlikely to alter signi…cantly the competitive environments in countries that face many other restrictions on competition."
.
Trechos retirados de "Import Competition and Quality Upgrading" de Mary Amitiy e Amit K. Khandelwalz, publicado na versão final em Novembro de 2011.
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Ah! E para os que acham que o problema é do euro... recomendo a figura 2 na página 24.

Um mar de heterogeneidade (Parte II)

Parte I.

Resolvi ir à procura do paper na origem do artigo citado na Parte I. Assim, cheguei a "What Drives Differences in Management Practices?" de Nicholas Bloom, Erik Brynjolfsson, Lucia Foster, Ron Jarmin, Megha Patnaik, Itay Saporta-Eksten, e John Van Reenen, publicado por American Economic Review 2019, 109(5): 1648–1683, e valeu a pena:

"There are compelling theoretical reasons to expect that management matters for performance. ... management practices are a key reason for persistent performance differences across firms due to relational contracts. ... “engagement traps” can lead to heterogeneity in the adoption of practices even when firms are ex ante identical.
...
The relationship between management practices and performance also holds over time within plants (plants that adopted more of these practices saw improvements in their performance) and across establishments within firms at a point in time (establishments within the same firm with more structured management practices achieve better performance outcomes).
.
The magnitude of the productivity-management relationship is large. Increasing structured management from the tenth to ninetieth percentile can account for about 22 percent of the comparable 90–10 spread in productivity. This is about the same as R&D, more than human capital, and almost twice as much as Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). ... variation in management practices is likely a key factor accounting for the much-discussed heterogeneity in firm productivity. Technology, human capital, and management are interrelated but distinct: when we examine them jointly, we find they account for about 44 percent of productivity dispersion.
...
First, there is enormous inter-plant variation in management practices. Although 18 percent of establishments adopt three-quarters or more of a package of basic structured management practices regarding monitoring, targets, and incentives, 27 percent of establishments adopt less than one-half of  such practices. Second, about 40 percent of the variation in management practices is across plants within the same firm. That is, in multi-plant firms, there is considerable variation in practices across units. ... Third, these variations in management practices are increasing in firm size. That is, larger firms have substantially more variation in management practices. This appears to be largely explained by the greater spread of larger firms across different geographies and industries.
...
To investigate learning spillovers,
...
Comparing the counties that “won” the large, typically multinational plant versus the county that narrowly “lost,” we find a significant positive impact on the management practices of incumbent plants in the county. Importantly, the positive spillovers only arise if the plant is in an industry where there are frequent flows in managerial labor from the MDP’s industry, [Moi ici: MDP = Million Dolar Plant] suggesting that the movement of managers is a mechanism through which learning occurs. We also show positive impacts on jobs and productivity."

Produtividade e gestão

"We turn to a long-standing question in economics, stretching back to at least Walker (1887), of how much of the variation in national and firm performance can be accounted for by di erences in management practices?
...
Overall, on average 30% of the cross country gap in TFP appears to be management related. This fraction varies a lot between countries. In general we account for a smaller fraction of the TFP gap between the U.S. and low income countries like Zambia (6.2%), Ghana (9.7%), and Tanzania (12%), which is likely to be because these countries have much greater problems than just management quality. We account for a larger fraction of the TFP gap between the U.S. and richer countries like Sweden (43.9%), Italy (48.9%) and France (52.3%). Figure A4 graphically illustrates this, showing that more developed countries have a higher share of their TFP gap accounted for by di erences in management.
...
Economists, business people and many policymakers have long believed that management practices are an important element in productivity."

Trechos retirados de "Management as a Technology?" de Nicholas Bloom; Raffaella Sadun e John Van Reenen. HBS Working Paper 16-133

Clientes de carne e osso, não ilusões ou fantasmas estatísticas

Outro interessante artigo na Harvard Business Review deste mês "Transforming Strategy One Customer at a Time" de Richard Harrington e Anthony Tjan (aqui).

Os autores propõem a utilização da metodologia quando:

"If your market is experiencing discontinuity.
...
If you lack clear value propositions.
...
If you rely too heavily on channel segmentation.
There is no single right way to segment a company’s revenue base, but too often companies confuse sales channel segmentation with end-user segmentation. Segmenting sales by channels like corporate and government buyers won’t uncover similarities and differences in the behavior of users in companies or government agencies—telling you, say, which are basic reference users and which do heavy analytics. Ask if you have a segmentation scheme that helps you better understand users’ behavior with your products. (como escreve Bloom, como faz a Electrolux e como já aqui escrevemos várias vezes, olhar para a menina do olho dos clientes-alvo. Clientes-alvo concretos, de carne e osso e não fantasmas estatísticos)
If you sense that you face new customer demands and competition."

As etapas propostas são 3
Step 1: Map Out Your Real Market
Our first step in devising a front-end customer strategy was getting a clear picture of the real, addressable market for a given business—not the entire universe of potential customers but those whose needs we could realistically serve, given the capabilities and products we had on hand." - (A figura "A Better Way to Map the Market") é elucidativa!
---
Step 2: Understand the Customers’ Objectives and Work Flow
Um pouco na linha do que Clayton Christensen propõe, para lá dos atributos de um produto, pensar nas circunstâncias em que esse produto é utilizado!
Como resultado "could then identify new opportunities for these users to interact with the company over the course of their jobs."
--
Step 3: Develop Products That Provide What Users Value Most
Once we had taken the company through the first two steps, we saw that the market was not as simple as we had thought. The next item on our agenda was to create products to fill gaps.
...
At this stage, it was critical to determine where there were pain points in the work flow that customers would pay to ease.

Curiosidade do dia

"The adverse judgment on Brexit is not a forecast. It is a reality. "The Economic Impact of Brexit", whose authors include Stanford's Nicholas Bloom, recently published by the US National Bureau of Economic Research, delivers the verdict: its estimates "suggest that by 2025, Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6 per cent to 8 per cent ... We estimate that investment was reduced by between 12 per cent and 18 per cent, employment by 3 per cent to 4 per cent and productivity by 3 per cent to 4 per cent." If this is even roughly correct, Brexit has been nothing short of an economic disaster. As a thought-provoking paper "Getting Britain out of the hole: A plan for the economy" by Andrew Sissons of the innovation agency Nesta and John Springford of the Centre for European Reform argues, the UK's biggest error has been to make war on its own strengths. Brexit is, arguably, the most striking example of this. 

...

No wonder so many people think Farage cannot be worse than what they have been experiencing. This is a forlorn hope: populists always make things worse. But orthodox politicians have been doing so poorly that it is indeed a perfectly natural temptation.

So, what do I hope for from Wednesday's Budget? Some sight of a workable and coherent long-term economic strategy. I do not expect it. It may already be too late. But, without that, it is hard to be optimistic about the UK's future."

 

Trechos retirados de "How to get the UK out of its economic hole" no FT de hoje. 

Desigualdade, heterogeneidade e produtividade

Um artigo interessante sobre o aumento da desigualdade entre assalariados nos Estados Unidos. As conclusões estarão em linha com outros estudos feitos para o Reino Unido, Alemanha, Suécia e Brasil.

"In this article, we study the contribution of firms and the role of worker composition between firms in the rise in earnings inequality in the United States using a longitudinal data set covering workers and firms for the entire U.S. labor market from 1978 to 2013. Our data set has several key advantages for studying firms and inequality: it is the only U.S. data set covering 100% of workers and firms for the entire period of the rise in inequality,...Our first main result is that the rise in the dispersion between firms in firm average annual earnings accounts for the majority of the increase in total earnings inequality.
…First, the rise in earnings inequality between workers over the past three decades is strongly associated with their employers. Two-thirds of the increase in the variance of log earnings from 1981 to 2013 can be accounted for by a rise in the dispersion of average earnings between firms and one-third by a rise in the differences in earnings between workers within firms..Second, examining the sources of the increase in between firm inequality, we find that it has been driven about equally by increased employee sorting (i.e., high-wage workers are increasingly found at high-wage firms) and segregation (i.e., highly paid employees are increasingly clustering in high-wage firms with other high-paid workers, while low-paid employees are clustering in other firms).…Third, the distribution of firm fixed effects themselves accounts for essentially none of the rise in inequality. Instead, about two-thirds of the rise in inequality is accounted for by rising variance in individual fixed effects, potentially due to rising returns to skill.…Fourth, the rise in within-firm inequality is concentrated in large firms with 1,000+ employees (and even more so in mega firms). This is driven by a fall in the earnings premium in large firms for median- and lower-paid employees and by rising earnings for the top 10% of employees."

Nunca esquecer o quanto os políticos, académicos e paineleiros (a minha famosa tríade) desconhecem esta realidade da heterogeneidade crescente entre empresas, mesmo dentro do mesmo sector. Recordar: "A distribuição de produtividades está a aumentar"

"Firming up inequality" de Jae Song, David Price, Fatih Guvenen, Nicholas Bloom e Till von Wachter, publicado por The Quarterly Journal of Economics - Vol. 134 2019 issue 1

Teorias e periferias

Ontem ao ler "How to Survive a Recession and Thrive Afterward" fixei-me neste trecho:

"In a 2017 study, Raffaella Sadun (of Harvard Business School), Philippe Aghion (of Collège de France), Nicholas Bloom and Brian Lucking (of Stanford), and John Van Reenen (of MIT) examined how organizational structure affects a company’s ability to navigate downturns. On the one hand, “the need to make tough decisions may favor centralized firms,” the researchers write, because they have a better picture of the organization as a whole and their incentives are typically more closely aligned with company performance. On the other hand, decentralized firms may be better positioned to weather macro shocks “because the value of local information increases.”"

Fiz logo a ponte para algo que li em "Seeing around corners" de Rita McGrath:

"Evidence of an emerging inflection point doesn’t present itself neatly on the conference table in the corporate boardroom. It is the people who are directly in contact with the phenomenon who usually notice changes early.
...
If snow melts from the edges, it behooves you to have mechanisms in place to see what is going on there.
...
A very common reason that leaders miss potentially important inflection points is that they are isolated from the people who could tell them what is really going on.
...
Snow melts from the edges. The changes that are going to fundamentally influence the future of your business are brewing on the periphery. To avoid being taken by surprise by an inflection point, you need to be exposed to what is happening at the edges.
The upheavals created by major strategic inflection points usually take quite some time to unfold. They are also not “complete” when you first see them. But if you are paying attention, you can begin to see the implications of their trajectory early on, when it is still possible to influence them."

E pensei nas empresas daqueles sectores que estão com evoluções negativas:

Já têm alguma teoria sobre o que se está a passar?

Quem está na periferia onde a neve derrete primeiro?

Acerca das barreiras

Recente, deste Abril passado, a versão de 2014 de "The New Empirical Economics of Management" de Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur e John Van Reenen.
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Algumas ideias:

"management does indeed appear to be important in accounting for the large differences in cross-country Total Factor Productivity (TFP) as well as within-country differences. [Moi ici: Por isso, é importante não erguer barreiras à entrada ou à saída. Por isso, é importante não proteger os incumbentes. Os clientes, com o seu bolso, que escolham livremente quem tem direito a viver]
...
Competitive intensity is one important and robust factor in raising management quality,  [Moi ici: Como não pensar no lastro mental de centenas de anos de influência da CoroaEstado para minimizar a concorrência, para manter o status-quo e impedir a destruição criativa. A elite não pode ser prejudicada e correr o risco de perder] as is ownership and governance (e.g. family firms appear to have weak management on average).
...
Much of aggregate productivity growth is from the reallocation of output away from less productive firms towards more productive firms.  [Moi ici: Por isso, é importante não erguer barreiras à entrada ou à saída. Por isso, é importante não proteger os incumbentes] This reallocation can take place on the extensive margin as less productive firms exit and more productive firms enter. ... But reallocation can also take place on the intensive margin as market shares get reallocated among incumbents away from the least efficient and towards the more efficient firms.
...
analyzed data from US manufacturing plants and argued that over a five year period about half of a typical industry’s TFP growth was due to the reallocation of output between plants rather than ongoing incumbent within plant productivity growth."  [Moi ici: Por isso, é importante não erguer barreiras à entrada ou à saída. Por isso, é importante não proteger os incumbentes]

Continua.

Um conselho para as Seguradoras

Na sequência do artigo do DN de hoje "Seguradoras admitem cortar custos dos PPR", assinado por Pedro Ferreira Esteves, tomo a liberdade de dar um conselho às Seguradoras.
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O que se retira do artigo?
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"um produto (o PPR público) surge no mercado com condições mais favoráveis"
""O PPR do Estado vai ter impacto no mercado e irá obrigar os privados a reagir. É provável que se verifiquem alterações nas comissões", reconheceu o director de uma das maiores distribuidoras portuguesas de PPR, que pediu para não ser identificado."
"os certificados de reforma serão cerca de dez vezes mais baratos que os PPR privados comparáveis (risco moderado)."
"A APS sublinhou, ontem, aos jornalistas que o PPR público é uma forma de concorrência directa"
--
Antes que as Seguradoras desatem a competir num guerra desenfreada com o PPR público, parem, respirem fundo e analisem o mercado.
Quem compra os vossos PPR's? Por que compra os vossos PPR's?
Em que é que os vossos PPR's são diferentes dos públicos? Como podem alargar essas diferenças? Como podem ampliar essas diferenças?
A quem fará sentido, a quem interessará um produto como o vosso?
---
Se assumirem que os compradores de PPR's são todos iguais, OK então o vosso instinto inicial estava certo.
Mas se os compradores não são todos iguais... a quem se querem dirigir? Como podem fazer a diferença para esse grupo-alvo? Qual a vossa proposta de valor?
--
"What works in one market or with one customer does not necessarily work with others. One size does not fit all - a well-known fact, but one that's frequently overlooked... it's not enough to define your customer as a market statistic - you can't get to know a statistic."
...
"That's why you must think of your customer or potential customer in the singular - as one living and breathing person. That person you can get to know, and you can develop a close relationship with him or her.
Knowing your customer - fully understanding his or her needs, preferences, and prejudices - is vital to creating a robust and effective growth strategy for your business. Quite simply, you'll have a much better chance of selling your product or service to someone you know and understand."
Robert Bloom em "Th Inside Advantage"

We will be weird

Regressando ao primeiro postal em que usei a designação "Estranhistão", recupero esta figura do livro "We are all weird" de Seth Godin:

Tudo por causa deste trecho:

"The most-downloaded e-books in the three months were Inferno and titles by self-published authors using Kindle Direct Publishing, including No-One Ever Has Sex On a Tuesday by Tracy Bloom and The Magpies by Mark Edwards."

O que resta da massa compra o Dan Brown, mas o que a massa compra é igualado pelo que as tribos compram.
.
Este trecho, também é um sintoma do que se passa:

"As lojas de discos independentes (Moi ici: Não são comandadas centralmente por uns gestores que só lêem folhas de excel e não têm grunhos ignorantes a aturar clientes nas lojas, têm à frente do balcão gente que fala com os clientes e que tem acesso a quem decide a vida da loja. Lojas independentes cheira sempre a David e a estratégias de guerrilha) no Reino Unido registaram um aumento homólogo de 44% nas vendas nos primeiros seis meses do ano, apoiadas sobretudo na venda de álbuns em vinil. (Moi ici: Tribos, tribos, tribos)
De acordo com uma análise da associação de retalhistas do Reino Unido, hoje noticiada pela revista britânica Uncut, a queda de 1,5% no global das lojas contrasta com um aumento expressivo de vendas nas lojas independentes. (Moi ici: Um contraste significativo!!! Este é o sintoma que devia ser o alvo das atenções. É o excêntrico que está a crescer não o mainstream!!!)
...
Em 2012, as vendas de vinil em todos os géneros subiram 15% no Reino Unido, o maior avanço desde 2004, revela a associação de retalhistas." (Moi ici: Parece um fenómeno em ascensão)

O fim da globalização (parte IV)

Recently leaked China's population data confirm my estimates: births began to decline in 1991, with no peak in 2004 or 2011; Population is now less than 1.28 billion, not the official 1.41 billion; Population began to shrink in 2018, not 2031 as officially predicted. pic.twitter.com/xCge7cTRFS

— 易富贤YI Fuxian《大国空巢》 (@fuxianyi) July 9, 2022

Parte I, parte II  e parte III.

"The average grocery store today has about forty thousand individual items, up from about two hundred at the dawn of the twentieth century.

...

Take this concept of utter availability, apply it to absolutely everything, and you now have a glimmer of the absolute connectivity that underpins the modern, globalized economy. The ingredients of today’s industrial and consumer goods are only available because they can be moved from—literally—halfway around the world at low costs and high speeds and in perfect security. Phones, fertilizers, oil, cherries, propylene, single-malt whiskey . . . you name it, it is in motion. All. The. Time. Transportation is the ultimate enabler.

...

The East India Company traded about 50 tons of tea a year at the start of the nineteenth century and 15,000 toward the end of it. Today that same 15,000 tons is loaded or unloaded somewhere in the world every forty-five seconds or so.

...

In the age of globalization, everyone could get in on global access, manufacturing, and mass consumption. No longer was value-added work sequestered to the Imperial Centers. Manufacturing elsewhere required fuel and raw materials. Expanding industrial bases and infrastructure elsewhere required the same. Expanding middle classes elsewhere demanded even more.

...

In a world "safe" for all, the world's "successful" geographies could no longer lord over and/or exploit the rest. A somewhat unintended side effect of this was to demote geography from its fairly deterministic role in gauging the success or failure of a country, to something that became little more than background noise. Those geographies once left behind could now bloom in safety.

...

The ability to diversify supply systems over any distance means it is economically advantageous to break up manufacturing into dozens, even thousands of individual steps. Workers building this or that tiny piece of widget become very good at it, but they are clueless as to the rest of the process. The workforce that purifies silicon dioxide does not and cannot create silicon wafers, does not and cannot build motherboards, and does not and cannot code.

This combination of reach and specialization takes us to a very clear, and foreboding, conclusion: no longer do the goods consumed in a place by a people reflect the goods produced in a place by a people. The geographies of consumption and production are unmoored."

Segundo o autor de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning", Peter Zeihan, a globalização está a descarrilar pelo descalabro demográfico nos países produtores e consumidores, e pelo fim da Ordem Americana. Há muito que escrevo sobre a desglobalização, mas por causa de Mongo. A demografia é uma variável que raramente é considerada como refiro na parte III.