"the conviction that the coarse structure of the economy can exhibit no regularities that are not results of the fine structure, and that those aggregates or mean values, which alone can be grasped statistically, give us no information about what takes place in the fine structure."Sou um acompanhante e promotor da idiossincrasia das empresas como grande factor competitivo. Por isso, apreciei muito estes trechos:
"Competitive advantages and superior resource positions are the outcome of an idiosyncratic and path-dependent process. In the extant literature scholars have argued that this path is both enabled and constrained by firms’ knowledge and capabilities. Our arguments suggest that superior market positions and superior resource complementarities may also act as self-reinforcing mechanisms that shape a firm’s evolutionary path and may amplify differences in competitive positions (at least in the absence of discontinuous environmental change).
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ultimately, it is managers that must make decisions about acquiring or building resources. Managerial judgment concerning the value creation potential of a resource and the factors that enable and constrain it are key factors in determining what resources a firm acquires or builds and, thus, what path toward a distinct competitive position it takes
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Arriving at a position of competitive advantage often requires the orchestration of complex resource acquisition, development, and disposal strategies consistently over an extended period of time. We can depict managers as using the mechanisms of superior market position, superior resource complementarities, and superior network position strategically to turn initial asymmetries to their advantage through a set of resource orchestration decisions that evolve and unfold over time. Managers can shape their firm’s resource base in a way that allows for competitive improvement at a later stage—for example, through anticipating future market positions or future complementarities and through acquiring at an early stage some of the resources that are needed for building a market position later..These resources will not be as valuable unless the firm successfully acquires or builds other complementary resources in the future. Such a strategy may be particularly beneficial when resources take time to develop..Our arguments suggest that, under uncertainty, resource value is subjective and at least partly depends on the identity and characteristics of managers. Given their unique knowledge and experience, managers differ in terms of how much value they attribute to a resource and, subsequently, how much value they are able to create with a resource.…our results highlight the role of value creation in strategic management theory, as opposed to value capture, which depicts strategy as a zero-sum game, where the gain of one is the loss of the other. Value capture implies a focus on bargaining and pricing but neglects demand-side opportunities and taking into account or even influencing what customers are willing to pay. Considering value creation opens up new perspectives on demand-side opportunities that firms are able to exploit—for example, through diversification. Recently, both in the marketing literature and the strategy literature scholars have suggested that attention to how customers perceive value, how value is created from using products, and how firms are able to boost customers’ willingness to pay are key contributors to firm performance. Strategies aimed at increasing value creation by taking into account demand-side factors, as well as aimed at shaping such factors, are central to strategic management (and not only to marketing) but are very much an understudied topic..Furthermore, the demand side entails an opportunity space that allows firms to establish, enhance, or retain the value of their resources. Understanding the environment, particularly customer preferences, allows firms to acquire or build those resources or extract those services from resources that generate the most value for customers."
"We further emphasize how the role of demand-side factors, [Moi ici: Heterogeneidade da procura] as well as the understanding and active shaping of such factors by managers, is a source of heterogeneity in firms’ resource endowments. [Moi ici: Heterogeneidade de recursos] Thus, our results show how two understudied areas in strategic management—the role of managers in resource management and the role of the demand side as an opportunity space — can be fruitfully combined to gain new insights into how firms achieve positions of competitive advantage."
“Os nossos concorrentes são todos fora de Portugal. O nosso maior concorrente é um grupo alemão, muito, muito grande com uma quota de mercado de 40%”, afirma Isabel Furtado.Sublinhados do artigo e que podem ser relacionados com a cláusula 4.2:
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Para a gestora não há dúvida: “A nossa vantagem face a eles é que somos mais flexíveis, talvez mais inovadores em muitos aspetos, mas temos o problema de sermos periféricos, não só face ao centro de decisão que está na Alemanha, mas também em termos de distância, uma vez que as matérias-primas vêm do centro da Europa”
"A falta de engenheiros a saírem das UniversidadesPartes interessadas relevantes:
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o nosso maior problema são algumas engenharias como polímeros de materiais e têxtil.
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confirma essa ligação a que acrescenta ainda a Universidade do Porto. “Ministramos os estágios dessas faculdades aos alunos dos mestrados”. A gestora fala ainda na proximidade, a mesma que invoca para justificar a grande proximidade que têm com os centros tecnológicos. “Temos que pensar que os detentores de conhecimento são os centros tecnológicos"
"Should brick-and-mortar retailers set different prices in-store and online? If Amazon (or another web retailer) is not significantly stealing business away, it doesn’t make sense to slash online prices. Best to accept the minimal customer loss, maintain current prices, and be thankful.Imagino que o preço que a multinacional está a propor aos clientes do retalho físico permite que estes ganhem dinheiro e, por isso, permite que os que vendem online tenham retornos muito interessantes. E isso não criará uma janela de oportunidade para que produtores concorrentes, dedicados a servir a distribuição online, possam oferecer produtos semelhantes que podem ser vendidos a preços mais baixos?
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However, if a web retailer is successfully poaching a sizable number of customers, it’s time to reconsider whether having identical online and in-store prices makes sense. Making this decision gets at the pricing dilemma faced by many brick and mortar retailers: If a company sets rock-bottom prices in order to compete against internet rivals, it will lose money on in-store purchases due to the store’s higher costs (employees, high rent locations, etc.). But if prices are set at what’s profitable for in-store purchases, web prices won’t be competitive. A one-price-fits-all-channels mandate can result in a disadvantage in one market.
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Retailers should view their online and in-store channels as unique services, much like gas stations offering self-service and full-service options. Relatively higher prices can capture the premium that some customers place on purchasing in-store. Web prices can be lower to compete against aggressive e-tailers.
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Will discount web prices mean that everyone will purchase online? No. Many people choose to purchase in stores and pay premiums even though they can order from Amazon. In the third quarter of 2016, e-commerce accounted for 7.7% of all retail sales."
"To succeed in the modern world of retail, executives need to embrace web and in-store as unique operations that cater to customers with different needs and price sensitivities"Trechos retirados de "How Retailers Should Think About Online Versus In-Store Pricing"
"Se ainda não leram o Plano, óptimo, porque é assim mesmo na vida real (ou deveria ser assim). Antes de investirmos um nano-segundo que seja no desenvolvimento, na criação do conteúdo do plano, devemos começar por definir o ponto de chegada.E pensei, puxar versus empurrar. Já escrevi sobre isso...
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Começar pelo fim!!! Onde queremos chegar?"
"Across five studies using various planning paradigms, we demonstrated that backward planning leads to greater motivation and better goal-directed behavior than does forward planning. Furthermore, relative to forward planning, backward planning allows people to more clearly anticipate the necessary steps and follow the original plan to reach the set goal; backward planning also leads to higher goal expectancy and less time pressure when coordinating the steps required to accomplish the goal is complex.Grande lição que aprendi com Stephen Covey em "The seven habits of highly effective people", "Begin with the end in mind"
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A recent study also examined order of planning and found that (relative to forward planning) backward planning allows people to clarify important steps as well as potential obstacles to goal achievement. At first glance, the anticipation of obstacles in backward planning appears to contradict our finding that backward planning leads to higher goal expectancy and less time pressure. However, we expect that, in line with fantasy-realization theory, backward planning allows a clear view of essential steps, including obstacles, and effective management of goal pursuit, ultimately leading to higher goal expectancy and lesser time pressure than an unclear view predicted in forward planning.
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A variety of goals, such as academic degrees, career choices, and financial planning, require complex plans to accomplish. Our findings indicate that planning in reverse chronological order may not only help people have a clearer view of tasks to execute but also improve their actual performance."
"Putting strategy into practice is notoriously difficult. In our experience, the primary obstacle to strategy execution is a failure to balance the inherent tensions that characterize any major execution effort. Successful strategy execution calls for skillful orchestration of sometimes opposing forces and competing needs. In particular, there are four core tensions that leaders need to balance.Trechos retirados de "Good Strategy Execution Requires Balancing 4 Tensions"
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Tension #1: An inspiring end-state versus challenging targets.
A vision of an inspirational ”end state” is essential for getting people to commitment to change: a simple narrative that articulates not only why change is necessary but also what life will look and feel like once change is successfully implemented.
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Tension #2: Top-down control versus democratization of change.
When everyone in the organization feels empowered to make decisions that can influence change, it creates a palpable energy: People tend to work harder, offer more ideas, and become far more invested in the process. If every activity is the result of a command from on high, the company runs the risk of sucking all the energy out of the room. But the flip side can be myriad groups of enthusiastic change agents dashing off in multiple, uncoordinated directions.
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Tension #3: Capability development versus pressure for results.
Many strategies call for significant changes in the ways a company works, which raises questions of whether the organization needs to develop new capabilities. But the pressure to deliver immediate results is often so intense that an organization may be forced to forge ahead with its existing capabilities.
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Tension #4: Creativity versus discipline.
Creativity is a part of any distinctive strategy. Fearing that discipline will stifle creativity, it is not uncommon for executives to choose to “let the creatives run free.” At its best this can lead to unanticipated insights and outcomes, but at its worst it can lead to chaos and complete unaccountability for results. In fact, creativity and discipline are not mutually exclusive — yet this tension can be the hardest one to balance.
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Getting strategy done well often calls for trade-offs between delivering short-term results and implementing foundational changes that require time. Yet companies that can achieve a balance between opposing forces are far more likely to realize successful strategies that endure."
"It's already been a terrible year for traditional retailers.O artigo é sobre a Nike, o artigo é sobre o comércio tradicional, o artigo é sobre as fábricas que produzem bens.
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Thus far, the industry has announced plans to close 6,700 stores this year, more than any other year on record, and there's still two months left in 2017.
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It's clear what's driving this shake-up. The rise of e-commerce is making brick-and-mortar stores less appealing, and mall traffic has subsequently declined, pressuring even strong companies.
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Nike ... more than two thirds of growth is expected to come from the digital channel during that time.
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More importantly, Nike announced a massive revamp of its wholesale strategy, which includes emphasizing just 40 retailers out of the current 30,000 retailers it distributes to.
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"undifferentiated, mediocre retail won't survive," adding, "We will be shifting away from this over the next five years."
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It's clear now that the company's focus will be on the digital sales channel and premium in-store experiences like the ones above. Simply distributing sneakers to stores is no longer a priority. The internet makes those access points unnecessary.
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The old industry saying, "Pile 'em high and watch 'em fly," no longer plays. Retailers who want to survive will need to heed suppliers' wishes and become more experience-focused. In the digital age, the storefront, that once-crucial middleman, is no longer necessary. As Nike's Edwards said, some retailers will inevitably get left behind.
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If 2017 was a bonfire for the retail sector, the coming years could turn it into a full-fledged inferno."
"Real and meaningful value is less about what you do and more about what the customer receives. [Moi ici: Feels, experience, recognize] Many sellers feel that value is what they do or provide to the customer; however, that's only a small part of the overall equation. There is both a science and an art to value-added documentation. The science component includes those things provided that have commercial billable value—such as an emergency after-hours delivery from local inventory. At the minimum, the seller should document billable services, support, and items provided to the customer at no or a reduced charge. This is the easy part and the equivalent of swimming in the shallow end of the pool. The pitfall of only documenting items of this nature is that the customer can easily rebut them by saying "this is your job," "this is what we expect" or "you competitor can do the same thing." The art of value-added documentation and communication is identifying what the customer received as a result of your efforts. Typically what the customer receives is worth many times more than what you provided. Let's use the example of an emergency after-hours delivery from location inventory. If you waived the call-out charge and subsequently developed a value-added document for what you did (the science), the document would show $250 in cost avoidance. However, as a result of your responsiveness, that after-hours delivery of critical components may have reduced two hours of unscheduled downtime at $5,000 per hour. The "science" side of your documentation is worth $250, but the "art" provided them $10,000 in value. When you understand and communicate the "art" of your value, you are now in an area where many customers cannot compare you with the competition. They can refute those items of your job that you quantify, but they are hard pressed to dismiss the benefits they received from you performing your job with a high degree of efficiency and precision."
"The Joint Sphere: Value Co-creation Opportunities.Trechos retirados de "On Value and Value Creation in Service: A Management Perspective" de Christian Grönroos publicado por Jornal of Creating Value.
In the joint sphere, the customer’s value creation is different. In this part of the value process, the two actors meet and interact with each other.
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What may happen in such direct interactions, if the actors allow it, is that the provider’s and the customer’s processes—the firm’s service-providing process and the customer’s consumption and value-creating process—merge into one interactive, collaborative and dialogical process. The two processes become one, and a platform of co-creation emerges. Such direct interactions can be both face-to-face interactions and interactions with smart technologies. If both actors are willing to do it and know how to do it, the service provider may engage with the customer’s value-creating process and co-create value with him or her at this stage of the value process. If they do not want to or do not know how to do it, no value co-creation takes place, in spite of the existence of a platform of co-creation. In that case, the provider’s role is restricted to continue facilitating the customer’s value creation.
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Thus, in the joint sphere, the role of the firm may be that of a value co-creator, where the firm’s goal is to, when needed and appropriate, actively influence the customer’s value-creating process and, thus, his or her value fulfilment. On the other hand, the customer’s role is to be the value creator and perhaps also a value co-creator with the provider. The customer’s goal is the same as in the customer sphere: to use and integrate resources with the aim to become better off. In the joint sphere, the actors may switch roles, and the provider becomes the customer and the customer becomes the service provider of, for example, actionable information and feedback. Viewed from below, from a managerial micro-perspective, co-creation only takes place in direct interactions, provided that a platform of co-creation is formed. In all other situations, the firm can only facilitate the customer’s value creation.
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From a managerial point of view, co-creation can have both positive and negative consequences.[Moi ici: Quando o tema não é abordado de forma preparada, planeada, é provável que por vezes quem interage não tenha consciência das prioridades e das consequências dos seus actos e comportamentos]
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From the micro-vantage point, one also observes that the firm can do much more than only offer value propositions. If the actors’ processes indeed merge in the joint sphere into an interactive, collaborative and dialogical process and a platform of co-creation comes into existence, the firm has the opportunity to influence the customer’s value process and how this process develops, and in the end, the customer’s value fulfilment. Because this also may have an impact on the customer’s preferences and future purchasing decisions, it also has fundamental implications for marketing. In the service marketing literature, this part of the marketing process is called interactive marketing, and the service employees involved in it are termed part-time marketers."
"These aren’t normal distributions at all. They’re totally different – they’re bifurcated distributions where one factor is dominating over all of the other factors. Either you care about X, or you don’t. Either you care about Y, or you don’t. And what used to be the happy middle – the fat part of the normal distribution, where most of the demand is supposed to lie – is all of a sudden quite sparse.
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The world seems to be steadily moving in this direction: from one where our demands and preferences are normally distributed to one dominated by these weird, bifurcated, two-tier balances."
"Except I didn't buy 1,000 dollars worth of Bitcoin in 2008. If I had, I'd have more than $40,000,000 today.Tão bom!!!
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It's not that I didn't know.
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It's that I didn't act.
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Two different things.
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I knew, but I didn't know for sure. Not enough to act.
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All the good stuff happens when we act even if we don't know for sure."
"O optimismo não documentado é um assunto que separa a ténue fronteira entre o arriscar com fundamento e o arriscar com base na fé."BTW, este optimismo não documentado pode ser relacionado com aquela fase de neblina em que o mundo muda e as receitas anteriores deixam de funcionar. Então, alguns optimistas (ou desesperados) arriscam, fuçando. A maioria falha, um acerta e depois começa a aprendizagem dos empríricos por spillover.
"To develop a managerially relevant understanding of value and value creation, these phenomena must be analysed on a micro level. Seen from above, they lack a microfoundation. In the present article, value and value creation are discussed from a micro position, based on a service logic (SL) analysis of the service perspective on business and marketing."E continuou:
"Viewing from above, or taking a macro-perspective, ... it can be observed that a whole host of actors, such as firms in various stages in the supply chain and end users, contribute to the value that emerges for the end user and other actors in the process. ... However, although a macro- analysis reveals phenomena which are not visible from below, ... at the same time, micro-level phenomena can only be observed from below and remain disguised for an analysis on a system- of-actors level. [Moi ici: Como não recordar os encalhados da tríade, qual Sarumans incapazes de abandonarem o alto das suas torres, incapazes de apanharem o que um anónimo engenheiro da província observa todos os dias há anos] The many different ways in which the actors contribute to value cannot be observed from above and, therefore, are not analysed in detail. ... ‘value co-creation is difficult to observe empirically’, and in order to theoretically develop the service perspective further, researchers must pay more attention to the micro-foundations that underpin SDL’s macro- constructs. ... ‘[M]acro scholars too often work with firm-level constructs which often unclear microfoundations, and proceed as if there are direct causal relations between macro variables (e.g. arguments that capabilities cause performance), where, in fact, the real causal relations involve lower level actions and interactions’.A micro-economia sabe coisas que a macro-economia ou ainda não sabe ou nunca chegará a saber. E, escrevo que "ainda não sabe" porque, quando o mundo muda, os encalhados continuam a tentar explicar o mundo com base nas sebentas em que aprenderam. Os "ignorantes", como não sabem, por tentativa e erro, o nosso querido fuçar, descobrem ao nível micro as opções que funcionam no novo mundo.
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What takes place on an actor level, in contrast to a level of systems of actors, is invisible to macro- analysis. ... the need to avoid the ‘black- boxization of concepts’ . In macro-analysis, the roles and goals of the actors cannot be observed, and even the nature of value as value-in-use is difficult to capture ... To be able to draw conclusions about this, interactions must be observable and the nature of interactions clearly understood.
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First, analysing the service perspective from below reveals that the nature of value-in-use is partly different from what is postulated in a macro-analysis. Indeed, value-in-use is determined in an idiosyncratic and phenomenological manner by customers, as suggested by SDL, but how value emerges or is created is not observable in a macro-analysis."
pena q os vieiras da silva desta vida ñ levem um enxerto de porrada qd acabar a mama https://t.co/H1zdEKrBtb— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) October 20, 2017
"While strategic plans identify what your organization should do differently, [Moi ici: É isto que fazem as iniciativas estratégias que ajudo a construir, como transformar uma empresa no terreno, alinhada com a estratégia] very few provide a roadmap for how to build the skills, knowledge, and processes needed to carry out and sustain the critical changes. But without building these capabilities, it’s very difficult to achieve the results you want.
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Capabilities lie at the heart an organization’s ability to achieve results, [Moi ici: Estão na base do mapa da estratégia, as capacidade em que investimos] so it’s hardly a surprise that different results require different capabilities. [Moi ici: Recordar Bruce Jenner e os salami slicers] But strategic plans often get this simple equation wrong, for one of two reasons.
.Trechos retirados de "Your Strategy Won’t Work if You Don’t Identify the New Capabilities You Need"
First, many strategic planners and senior executives assume that if the strategy is logical, then people will figure out what to do, and don’t build capabilities development into their plans at all.
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At the other extreme, some planners like to be prescriptive and can spend significant resources mapping out in great detail what everyone should do differently. But a “paint by the numbers” approach to strengthening organizational capabilities rarely works. Developing capabilities requires experimentation, trial and error, and iterative learning to figure out what will work in each organization’s unique culture, functional structure, and environment.
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To get started with this approach, think about your company’s own strategy, and what capabilities are critical to achieving results. Then identify opportunities for teams to create or strengthen those capabilities while actually executing some aspect of the strategy. Doing this will ensure that capability development is a real and tangible part of your organization’s growth, instead of a hope or an afterthought."
"Companies and government organizations are discovering that innovation activities without a defined innovation pipeline result in innovation theater. And an innovation pipeline needs to be driven with speed and urgency and results measured by the impact on the top and bottom lines."Confesso que quanto maiores as organizations, e mais próximas estão de dinheiro fácil que não decorre da sua missão para clientes, mais sinto que assisto a "innovation theater".
"When customers perceive equality between two suppliers, it is easy for them to default to the one that offers lower pricing. If the only quantifiable data point containing a currency symbol that a seller has to engage a customer with is their unit pricing, they will be at a severe disadvantage during any type of negotiation. This lack of solid data will work against them especially if they're either the highest- or the lowest-price provider. Note the key word in the first sentence—"perceive." It's unfortunate, but far too many people today base decisions on their perceptions rather than on facts.Recordo esta frase:
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The old phrase "what you don't know will hurt you" will plague sellers during pricing and business negotiations with customers if they're unaware of the tangible value delivered. Qualitative, abstract, and general statements of activities and perceived benefits cannot effectively combat the thinking that "I can get the same thing cheaper from many other suppliers." Likewise, similar types of intangible statements of supposed benefits cannot consistently and effectively offset price objections for superior products, services, or technologies. Even if the seller and their organization is truly responsible for effectively implementing technology or process improvements that have increased efficiencies and/or reduced external expenditures, the customer will perceive that no formal value has been created."
"The key management capability is not being in control, but to participate and influence the formation of sense making and meaning. It is about creating a context that enables connectedness, interaction and trust between people"E esta outra:
"to move away from the traditional industrial view of the customer offering as an output of one’s production system to a view in which the customer offering is seen as an input in the customer’s value creating process"E ainda:
"Customers often think we are different not because we are different, but because we recognize what makes them different"Isto explica a dificuldade crescente das empresas grandes, empresas que têm tendência a tratar os clientes como plankton. Quando se tratam os clientes como plankton fazem-se contas gerais e genéricas sobre como um cliente médio criará, percepcionará valor a emergir na sua vida. Quando se tratam os clientes como membros de uma tribo específica ou melhor ainda, como indivíduos, fazem-se contas muito mais correctas e ajustadas. Aliás, algo que se confirma ao ler estes textos sobre pricing, as contas são tanto mais correctas e eficazes quanto mais resultarem de uma colaboração entre ambas as partes. Empresas grandes não têm ADN para esse tipo de abordagem. Tudo aponta para Mongo.
"The difference between economic competition and the successful procedure of science is that the former exhibits a method of discovering particular temporary circumstances, while science seeks to discover something often known as “general facts,” i.e., regularities in events, and is concerned with unique, particular facts only to the extent that they tend to refute or confirm its theories. Since this is a matter of general and permanent features of our world, scientific discoveries have ample time to demonstrate their value, whereas the usefulness of particular circumstances disclosed by economic competition is to a considerable extent transitory. ... By the nature of things, however, the theory of the market is unable to accomplish this in all those cases in which it is reasonable to make use of competition. As we shall see, the predictive power of this theory is necessarily constrained to a prediction of the type of structure or abstract order that will result; it does not, however, extend to a prediction of particular events.F. A. Hayek em "Competition as a Discovery Process"
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The basis for this point of view is the conviction that the coarse structure of the economy can exhibit no regularities that are not results of the fine structure, and that those aggregates or mean values, which alone can be grasped statistically, give us no information about what takes place in the fine structure. The notion that we must formulate our theories so that they can be immediately applied to observable statistical or other measurable quantities seems to me to be a methodological error which, had the natural sciences followed it, would have greatly obstructed their progress. All we can require of theories is that, after an input of relevant data, conclusions can be derived from them that can be checked against reality. The fact that these concrete data are so diverse and complex in our area of inquiry that we can never take them all into account is an unchangeable fact, but not a shortcoming of the theory. A result of this fact is that we can derive from our theories only very general statements, or “pattern predictions,” as I have called them elsewhere; we cannot, however, derive any specific predictions of individual events from them. Certainly, however, this does not justify insisting that we derive unambiguous relationships among the immediately observable variables, or that this is the only way of obtaining scientific knowledge—particularly not if we know that, in that obscure image of reality we call statistics, in aggregates and averages we unavoidably summarize many things whose causal meaning is very diverse."
