Second-order thinking...

Na última semana recordei duas frases da autoria do Aranha:

• "Não me venha com os seus factos que eu tenho os meus argumentos!"
• "Quando o empresário português tem um problema, saca da carteira e compra uma máquina!"

Na mesma última semana várias conversas acabaram por aflorar dois temas clássicos no blogue:

• A pedofilia empresarial;
• Os amadores a jogarem bilhar.

Há um ditado que volta e meia Nassim Taleb usa:

• Good fences make good neighbours

Hoje em dia, quando vejo imagens de gente que quer deitar para o caixote do lixo da História a existência de fronteiras penso sempre nos jogadores amadores de bilhar e no tal ditado.

Há dias, enquanto conduzia ouvi "Chesterton’s Fence: A Lesson in Second Order Thinking". Recomendo vivamente a leitura:

"When we seek to intervene in any system created by someone, it’s not enough to view their decisions and choices simply as the consequences of first-order thinking because we can inadvertently create serious problems. Before changing anything, we should wonder whether they were using second-order thinking. Their reasons for making certain choices might be more complex than they seem at first. It’s best to assume they knew things we don’t or had experience we can’t fathom, so we don’t go for quick fixes and end up making things worse."

Este trecho que se segue fez-me recordar "Most thinking stops at stage one":

"Second-order thinking is the practice of not just considering the consequences of our decisions but also the consequences of those consequences. Everyone can manage first-order thinking, which is just considering the immediate anticipated result of an action. It’s simple and quick, usually requiring little effort. By comparison, second-order thinking is more complex and time-consuming. The fact that it is difficult and unusual is what makes the ability to do it such a powerful advantage." 

Na última Terça-feira vimos as imagens do primeiro-ministro holandês fazer um discurso sobre novos comportamentos e, depois, o seu lado "fast" actuou e instintivamente fez o contrário do que tinha acabado de pregar. Pena que a cena dos amadores a jogar bilhar seja tão comum quando se toma a decisão de comprar uma máquina e, não se considera se ela viola as orientações estratégicas à la Terry Hill.

Monitorizar o contexto

Ainda ontem me perguntavam acerca das ferramentas que podem ser usadas para monitorizar o contexto externo. Entretanto, li este texto com algumas ideias muito interessantes:

"The reason the company had not considered these and other areas of potential disruption had to do with its entrenched habits and cherished beliefs. The team was accustomed to a rigorous — but narrow — approach to planning. They built financial projections, tracked their immediate competitors, and followed R&D within their industry sector. That was it.
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What I observed is hardly unique. When faced with deep uncertainty, teams often develop a habit of controlling for internal, known variables and fail to track external factors as potential disrupters. Tracking known variables fits into an existing business culture because it’s an activity that can be measured quantitatively. This practice lures decision makers into a false sense of security, and it unfortunately results in a narrow framing of the future, making even the most successful organizations vulnerable to disruptive forces that appear to come out of nowhere. Failing to account for change outside those known variables is how even the biggest and most respected companies get disrupted out of the market.
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Futurists call these external factors weak signals, and they are important indicators of change. Some leadership teams lean into uncertainty by seeking out weak signals.
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As a quantitative futurist, my job is to investigate the future, and that process is anchored in intentionally confronting uncertainties both internal and external to an organization.
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I use a simple tool to apply the future forces theory to organizations as they are developing strategic thinking. It lists 11 sources of macro change that are typically outside a leader’s control.

It might go against the established culture of your organization, but embracing uncertainty is the best way to confront external forces outside your control. Seeking out weak signals by intentionally looking through the lenses of macro change is the best possible way to make sure your organization stays ahead of the next wave of disruption."

Trechos retirados de "The 11 Sources of Disruption Every Company Must Monitor"

Isto é sobre Mongo

"A key change that marketers need to recognize is that customers had to rely solely on the manufacturer for information about the product and brand (through advertising, promotions, public relations [PR] exercises, etc.). However, today, customers can easily access information about products and brands from experts, friends, colleagues and users of the product across the world, thanks to the Internet.
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This means that brand as a surrogate of quality is becoming irrelevant; this also means that customer expectations are far more realistic before buying a product or service. It must be mentioned here that brand would still be relevant in several other ways—as ‘badge’ value, [Moi ici: Fazer parte da tribo] as a manifestation of trust and in the consumer goods sector.
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Given these changes, it makes sense for marketers to start thinking about moving from product and brand focus to a focus on the customer—from creating brand equity to creating customer equity, from having a chief brand officer to having a chief customer officer.
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This movement from brand to customer also means that the organization needs to shift from a production-oriented mindset and capability to a mindset of ‘mass customization’ where each customer is a market of one—[Moi ici: Isto é Mongo!!!] this is when the organization can create real value, for customers, shareholders, employees and other stakeholders. However, this may also be the biggest barrier in an organization’s metamorphosis from brand to customer. Given that what gets measured gets managed, the starting point for the change must be clearly defined customer metrics that is closely related to business outcomes."

Trechos retirados de "From Brand to Customer" de Ajit Rao publicado no Journal of Creating Value.

Por que não generalizar?

Trabalhei vários anos numa empresa da indústria química que operava 24 horas por dia, 7 dias por semana. Durante a semana fazia-se o controlo da qualidade e ao fim de semana havia um turno de laboratório que continuava o controlo da qualidade. Depois, enveredei pela vida de consultor. Foi nessa vida que conheci uma empresa que também operava 24 horas por dia, 7 dias por semana e realizava uma bateria de testes de controlo da qualidade durante os dias da semana, mas ao fim de semana não fazia qualquer controlo. Achava aquilo absurdo.

Outro absurdo conheci na introdução de um livro que li há uns anos e registei num postal aqui no blogue em Abril de 2006 "Simplex". Os supervisores de uma refinaria diziam que eram impossível mantê-la a funcionar com 2700 trabalhadores. Os trabalhadores entraram em greve e os mesmos supervisores com os engenheiros, cerca de 450, conseguiram mantê-la a funcionar durante os 4 meses  que durou a greve.

Lembrei-me disto ao começar a ler este artigo "Harvard to Make All Classes Online March 23, President Says":

"Harvard is asking students not to return to campus after its spring break amid coronavirus concerns.
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The Ivy League university is seeking to completely transition to virtual classes for all courses by March 23, when they were originally due to begin after the recess, president Larry Bacow said in a message to the community."

Se isto é possível... por que não generalizar? Por que não abandonar o modelo clássico e apostar a fundo neste modelo para o futuro? Uma espécie de híbrido, as aulas clássicas passarem a virtual e o regime presencial para workshops? E já agora, por que não introduzir o "flip the classroom"?

Talvez estas experiências feitas por necessidade contribuam para mostrar a obsolescência actual.

Wrong customer?

A propósito deste artigo "How Under Armour Bet Everything on the Wrong Customer" algumas divergências com o seu conteúdo:

"The “performance” corner of the athletic-wear market — meaning products made for actual sports use, not for sitting on the couch in front of the game — is where Under Armour made its name. [Moi ici: A Under Armour começou com um certo tipo de cliente-alvo que valorizava a performance.]

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Under Armour went on to live out the axiom that if you win over the most demanding consumers (in this case, serious athletes), then the wannabes fall in line and follow whatever trend those influencers set.[Moi ici: A Under Armour confiou no impacte dos influencers]
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But lately, the company’s strategy hasn’t been a winner. ... Under Armour announced disappointing results and a gloomy forecast, its stock has suffered accordingly, and among other problems, a federal probe is reportedly exploring whether the company used accounting tricks to massage its sales-growth curve.
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What went wrong? One compelling answer is that Under Armour misread the rise of the so-called athleisure trend and put too much focus on performance. In short, this maker of gear for authentic athletes may have been better off catering more to the poseurs and couch potatoes.
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It’s not that a brand can’t be successful with a strict focus on performance, ... But a brand with mass aspirations shouldn’t get overly obsessed with an elite customer niche. “[Under Armour] clearly needs to understand that [performance] is very much the smaller part of the market,” he says. “And a shrinking part of the market.”

A Under Armour quis crescer para o mass market. Por isso, teve de procurar servir um outro tipo de cliente que não o da performance. Ora, parece que os influencers não determinam as compras para esse mercado. Será que o cliente errado da Under Armour é o da performance, como pensa o artigo, ou o do athleisure? Será que a Under Armour tem vantagens competitivas para ter sucesso no mass-market?

Wrong customer ou wrong strategy?

Quantas empresas? (parte VIII)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI e parte VII.

Ontem numa empresa discutíamos o futuro do calçado em Portugal. Enquanto essa conversa decorria, pensava neste texto que tinha lido durante a caminha matinal, "The End of the Jaffa Orange Highlights Israel Economic Shift":

"Since peaking in the early 1980s at 1.8 million tons a year, Israeli citrus production has dropped almost 75%.
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With a strengthening currency making exports less competitive and scarce water supplies raising the cost of cultivation, oranges—and many other crops—are no longer worth the effort. Agriculture has fallen to 2% of goods exports, from a peak above 40% in the 1950s,
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Just 1% of Israelis now work in agriculture, down from 18% in 1958, while the tech sector has shot up from virtually zero to 10% of jobs today, many developing software used outside the country. That’s helped double exports of services since 2008, to more than $50 billion last year—with services in 2020 poised to surpass goods exports for the first time. The shift “from basic agriculture like Jaffa oranges to top-of-the-line tech” makes economic sense,
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In regional rivals such as Egypt, Turkey, and Morocco, “labor is very cheap, and water is very cheap, and the currency is better for exporters,” says Nitzan Rottman, who oversees work on citrus at Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture. “We can’t compete with them.”
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Some farmers are shifting from crops such as oranges—water-intensive even with the best irrigation systems—to less-thirsty alternatives such as grapes, olives, and Argania spinosa, the nut tree that produces argan oil for shampoos and skin creams."

O calçado vai acabar em Portugal? Não.
Afinal por ano ainda se fabricam 23 milhões de pares em França e 35 milhões de pares na Alemanha (dados de 2016).

No entanto, com a subida do SMN e o cerco turco/romeno/marroquino, é preciso pensar numa Fase 4:

"O número de empresas vai voltar a diminuir
A quantidade de pares produzidos vai voltar a diminuir
O número de trabalhadores vai voltar a diminuir
O preço médio por par vai novamente dar um salto importante"

Recordar a Intel e a decisão: se estivesse a começar agora, apostava nisto ou mantinha-me a defender o negócio actual?

Value-based selling (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

Uma lista a não esquecer

"When is the VP not usable in value-based selling?.
When customer (1) wants to buy predefined specifications. instead of impact on his value, (2) is not willing to collaborate. When the value of the relationship is low.
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When the customer uses target costing that concerns cost reduction only, as managerial accounting device for knowledge transfer to suppliers
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When customer wants to buy predefined specifications instead of impact on their value
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When actors on supplier or customer side: (1) don't understand financial value drivers concept and (2) have motivation system which is loosely linked to their company's NPV"

Trechos de "Where is value in b2b value proposition? The concept of value in research on selling, innovation management and NPD" de Ryszard Kłeczek, publicado em Wroclaw University of Economics and Business em Abril de 2018.

"Customer Value Needs to Be Formally Managed" (parte I)

Gosto muito de ler Stephan Liozu. Este artigo, "Customer Value Is Not Just Created, It Is Formally Managed" de Stephan Liozu e publicado no Journal of Creating Value,  faz jus à tradição e representa um bom resumo do que procuro transmitir às empresas em que trabalho para subir na escala de valor.

"What value is depends on who it is created for and who is in charge of the value creation process. Three theoretical positions exist with three diverging scholarly views on what value means and who value is created for: resource-based view of the firm, value exchange and relationship value.
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Value Creation or Value Capture?
There is also lots of confusion among scholars and practitioners between the concepts of value creation and value capture.
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Value creation and value capture are, therefore, different concepts
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the value that a seller creates needs to be quantified in financial terms to be exchanged, shared with and captured from customers.
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Customer Value Needs to Be Formally Managed
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We posit that, like any process, customer value needs to be formally and intentionally managed. Customer value management includes three steps that form a sequence that cannot be broken

All three steps require a formal process and the development of strong capabilities. The process begins with value creation activities designed for and with customers. Generally speaking, these activities or initiatives are managed by innovation and marketing teams with the support of business development and sales teams in the field. [Moi ici: Sorri ao ler isto. Estou sempre a pregar que para subir na escala de valor é preciso ter uma equipa unida em torno do marketing, comercial e inovação/desenvolvimento] During this first step, value for the customer is created but can also be co-created as partnerships and collaborative projects. In both instances, customer value is identified and potentially created. It is not yet extracted or captured. Following this first step, marketing and pricing teams need to zoom in on the second step of the value management process, which is value quantification.
Value quantification is an essential step in the process and is most often neglected or forgotten. The goal in this step is to assess and quantify the value potentially created for the customer. [Moi ici: Recordar Total Value Ownership] This external quantification process, in the form of value-in-use analysis, total-cost-of ownership calculations, life-cycle costing models or customer value models, is essential to calculating the value pool generated by a supplier and potentially shared with customers.
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This, of course, requires testing and validation with the customer that value is indeed created and eventually delivered. Because one cannot capture something which is not measured, value  quantification has received increased attention in scholarly and practitioner publications in the past 24 months. After the customer value pool is clearly calculated, the last step of the value management process is value capture. At this stage, prices are set within the value pool in combination with cost and competition information. Pricing and marketing teams can, therefore, decide how much value can be captured through price premiums versus competition and how much value can be shared with customers. That process of sharing and exchanging happens during the value capture process through the hard work of value-based selling and negotiation for value.
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In summary, value for customers is first created, then quantified using formal methods, then captured through price-setting and price-getting activities. This value management process is essential to a firm’s go-to-market strategy. It involves all the key players and functions of such a strategy, beginning with innovation teams and ending with sales teams,

Continua.

O mundo que conhecemos nos últimos 20 anos pode mudar drasticamente (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

Um texto interessante com analogias interessantes, "Covid-19 is foisting changes on business that could be beneficial":

"IN FEBRUARY 2014 a strike on the London Underground offered management theorists a lesson in resilience and adaptation. Because the shutdown closed some but not all Tube lines, frustrated Londoners were forced to rethink their commutes to and from work. Researchers at Oxford and Cambridge universities subsequently found that around 5% of passengers stuck to their new itineraries even after normal service resumed. The long-term economic gains of one in 20 travellers adopting new and improved ways to get to work turned out to be greater than the short-term costs of the disruption.
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Some companies will, like most of London’s commuters, revert to autopilot once the threat recedes. But for others the interruption will have a lasting effect, accelerating trends in business organisation that were already under way.
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 And for firms already worried about rickety supply chains amid a trade war, the virus gives another reason to reconfigure them.
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The coronavirus will not make business travel or lean global supply chains disappear. Chinese factories are cranking up again and high-flyers will, in all likelihood, be back in airport lounges soon enough. But the crisis offers a chance to experiment with new ways of doing things—and to question the wisdom of old habits. Chief executives should not be immune to the opportunity."

E ainda:

"What’s happening to Italy’s fashion industry is likely a preview of the coronavirus’ impact on the global economy more broadly. Companies in a wide range of industries are dependent on China as both a manufacturing behemoth and billion-plus-consumer market. But as life in some parts of the country comes to a near-standstill in the face of the outbreak, that reliance looks more and more like a weakness.
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Like many other industries, the fashion world has long embraced China as a source of cheap manufacturing — the country is by far the world’s largest producer of textiles, and it produces many of the other elements that go into clothes, from buttons to zippers to thread. “The vast majority of certain products are only done in China,” says Gary A. Wassner, the CEO of Hildun Corporation and the chairman of Interluxe. “We became very dependent, and we allowed it to happen because it was cost-efficient, but that’s not the only thing to consider.”"

Trechos retirados de "How the Coronavirus' Effect On the Fashion Industry Reveals Flaws in the Global Economy"

Parlamento tuga vs vida real

O parlamento tuga dos direitos adquiridos, da impostagem crescente, da redistribuição sem criação de riqueza, do arrepio que provoca a menção de "reformas estruturais".

A vida real das empresas e das pessoas do sector privado, uma montanha russa de emoções, uma montanha de esperanças que não chegam a concretizar-se, de esperanças que deixam de concretizar, de sonhos que viram pesadelos.

Como explicar ao primeiro mundo o carrocel de emoções de viver no segundo mundo?

Como explicar ao primeiro mundo os custos do amanhã?

Foi disto que me lembrei ao ler "Coronavirus: Turquía sube precios y amenaza los márgenes de la moda en 2020":

"Ya no sólo el ecommerce amenaza los márgenes de la industria de la moda. Un nuevo elemento sobrevenido presiona a la baja los márgenes del sector. El traslado de forma repentina de producciones a Turquía está llevando a una subida de precios y los gigantes se preparan ya para un recorte de sus márgenes en 2020. “Hay colapso de capacidad: los que ya estaban allí han conseguido espacio, pero los que hemos llegado tarde o no tenemos opción o pagamos más”, afirma un ejecutivo del sector.
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La situación se repite en Marruecos, Túnez, Rumanía y Portugal, pero Turquía es el mercado por el que más están apostando los grupos de moda para hacer frente a la ruptura de la cadena de suministro por la paralización de las fábricas en China y la afectación de puertos y aeropuertos.
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Son varios los ejecutivos del sector que alertan ya de una subida de precios, principalmente en Turquía. El impacto de este movimiento de los proveedores turcos se notará, sobre todo, en la temporada otoño-invierno 2020, aunque los márgenes de todo el ejercicio están ya comprometidos."

Quantas empresas? (parte VII)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V e parte VI.

Na parte V usei esta figura:

Para ilustrar:

"Onde está a próxima etapa da cadeia com possibilidade de gerar diferenciação?
Será no desenho e diferenciação do que se faz?
Será no consumo e na forma como se chega a ele?"

Entretanto, ontem ao ler "Las certificaciones Gots se disparan un 35% en 2019":

"El número de compañías certificadas por la Global Organic Textiles Standard (Gots) se ha elevado un 5% en 2019
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En España, el número de empresas que han conseguido este sello durante 2019 ha ascendido un 71%.
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Los países con más certificaciones son India, con 2.411, Bangladesh, con 1.194, y Turquía, con 858."

Recordei-me da informação de que a certificação ambiental tem crescido muito entre as empresas de calçado. E fiz logo a ponte para a figura lá de cima e para o extremo do desenho.

E é suficiente? Convém recordar o canvas de Osterwalder:

Não basta coleccionar atributos. Há todo um mundo de ajuste e alterações a fazer no modelo de negócio. Por exemplo, quais as alterações na proposta de valor? Que diferentes prateleiras usar? Que diferentes actividades-chave?

Curiosidade do dia

"O grande medo que devemos ter não é tanto do vírus, mas das lideranças bipolares que não confiam na mobilização das pessoas e na sua ação colaborativa decisiva e esclarecida, como, também, é referido pelo bastonário da ordem dos médicos que  acrescentou, esta semana, "o combate depende de cada uma das pessoas individualmente" e, neste sentido, defendeu que "os cidadãos todos juntos conseguem derrotar o vírus com facilidade"."

Trecho retirado desta reflexão.

O bode expiatório

Ao apanhar este título no Jornal Económico de ontem:

Como não recordar o conselho de José ao faraó.
Como não recordar Nassim Taleb: Desconfiem sempre das conclusões, dos "so-called" especialistas, que vão ao arrepio das conclusões das nossas avós.

Como não recordar a crítica permanente deste blogue aos fragilistas:

• O exemplo que os políticos deveriam deixar para os vindouros (Agosto de 2019)
• O fragilista e o diabo (Agosto de 2019)
• O fragilismo (Junho de 2016)
• Sh*t happens (Fevereiro de 2016)
• O não-fragilista prepara-se para os problemas (Janeiro de 2016)

Recordo:

O coronavírus vai ser o bode expiatório de quem não soube preparar uma economia para os maus momentos. Os maus momentos ocorrem sempre! Não são uma questão de "se", mas uma questão de "quando". Não-fragilistas sabem que algures haverá turbulência. Por isso, em vez de criar situações fail-safe, preparam situações safe-fail. Recordar Alicia Juarrero -  "-THERE WILL BE TURBULENCE!" por isso, safe-fail (Maio de 2015).

"Stability ends of up getting killed by the next hurricane, the next pest, the next competitor, the next predator, ...."

Quando ouvirem as críticas ao bode expiatório lembrem-se deste gráfico:

Quando ouvirem as críticas ao bode expiatório lembrem-se das críticas deste anónimo engenheiro da província a uma cultura que não viu problema na evolução do padrão de exportações nos últimos anos como o aumento do Parcial II.

BTW, lembrem-se que nem todos estão no mesmo barco.

O mundo que conhecemos nos últimos 20 anos pode mudar drasticamente (parte II)

Parte I.

Um exemplo:

"A senior US official has hit out at countries including Germany, Russia and Turkey, that have rushed to introduce export controls to limit trade in medical supplies as they respond to the corona-virus outbreak - Peter Navarro, the White House's trade and manufacturing adviser, told the Financial Times that the moves showed the US was "alone" in confronting the outbreak and would have to reduce its dependence on global medical supply chains to "defend our citizens". "Just as in the H1N1 flu pandemic of 2009, actions by strategic competitors and putative allies alike once again demonstrate that in a global public health emergency, the US is alone," he said. "Such behaviour is precisely why it is important for the Trump administration to bring home its manufacturing capabilities and supply chains for essetial medicines.""(1)

Outro exemplo:

"Most downturns are Darwinian moments for capitalism: out go old, lumbering companies that failed to move with the times; in come their disruptive rivals in a blaze of creative destruction. Hardship focuses the mind, and companies find more efficient ways of running their businesses. The economy that emerges should be more productive than its predecessor. Yet in this crisis the opposite may be happening. The most efficient, which is to say the cheapest, way companies have found of manufacturing products is to use supply chains that straddle the globe in search of cheap labour. If something could be made for less on the other side of the world, so be it. Yet coronavirus, which threatens to constrain the free movement of people and goods, will deny companies this cheapest avenue. Companies will have to think long and hard about whether intercontinental supply chains make sense. Already some companies are shifting production back home and opting for home-built components. On the one hand that spells enormous disruption and could make all our lives more expensive.
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Of course, it’s quite possible life returns to normal after coronavirus. But one consequence of this disease could be that it forces us to take a long hard look at the way we run the world, and change it." (2)

(1) - "US official hits out at hoarding of coronavirus medical supplies"
(2) - "Coronavirus can trigger a new industrial revolution"

Há que repensar a actuação futura num mundo diferente (parte II)

Parte I.

"Almost a quarter of retailers have suffered a significant impact on their business because supplies have been disrupted by the spread of coronavirus.
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The findings, in a survey by Retail Economics, a consultancy, highlight the pressure being imposed on shops by the outbreak.
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Only 7 per cent of retailers said that they had enough flexibility to be able to switch suppliers, according to a survey of 30 big retailers in the fashion, food and health and beauty sectors.
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About 24 per cent said that they were facing big problems. Another 28 per cent said that they had suffered disruption but were managing the situation, while 48 per cent said that they had experienced no disruption.
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Just under half — 45 per cent — said that sales had fallen and 75 per cent expected to suffer a slump in sales if the outbreak persisted.
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 “Retailers are battling against significant disruption to supply chains as the coronavirus has choked off production in China. While the impacts may not yet be apparent on shop shelves, about a third of retailers suggested that “continuity of supply” was their biggest concern at present.
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A separate survey of 2,000 consumers by Retail Economics, in conjunction with Squire Patton Boggs, a law firm, suggested that a quarter of consumers would avoid shopping centres and the high street if the virus spread. More than a third think that the coronavirus poses a high level of threat, up from 23 per cent two weeks ago."

Trechos retirados de "Supply problems take toll on nation of shopkeepers" publicado no The Times de ontem.

Crendice!

No JN da última  quarta-feira:

Extraordinário!

Estão a ver os patrões que dizem que a produtividade aumentaria se os trabalhadores não fossem malandros?

Existe uma imagem no espelho para essa afirmação, acreditar que a produtividade aumenta se os trabalhadores forem melhor tratados, ou trabalharem menos, ou se forem mais felizes no trabalho.

Acreditar que se se trabalhar menos a produtividade aumenta é um conto de fadas para adultos.

A produtividade aumenta a sério quando deixamos de usar chpa de metal para fazer enxadas e pás e começamos a fazer máquinas. Depois, deixamos de fazer máquinas analógicas e passamos a fazer máquinas digitais. Depois, deixamos de fazer máquinas digitais e ...

Ontem, enviaram-me este artigo "Werkzeugbauer kurz vor dem Kollaps" - Fabricantes alemães de ferramentas de estampagem e afins para a indústria automóvel e complementares, à beira da falência. O mesmo que se passa com os fabricantes de calçado em Portugal, está a acontecer na Alemanha com   o crescimento de marcas chinesas que estão a paulatinamente subir na escala de valor. Como é que as empresas alçemãs vão responder? Terão de aumentar a produtividade! Ou seja, vão reduzir o tempo de trabalho para assim serem mais produtivas. [Estou a ser irónico]

Claro que não. Terão de subir na escala de valor, vender algo por mais dinheiro e em menor quantidade o que, como consequência, resultará em mais produtividade e menos horas de trabalho.

Quantas empresas? (parte VII)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V e parte VI.

Voltemos à evolução do número de empresas de calçado em Portugal:

A azul os dados da APICCAPS publicados nas sucessivas monografias estatísticas anuais.
A vermelho curvas de tendência.

Consideremos a evolução de uma empresa em particular:

Inicialmente a empresa por tentativa e erro procura uma alternativa que lhe permita sobreviver, e quiçá, ter sucesso. 
FASE II - Muitas empresas não conseguem encontrar/criar o truque, o modelo de negócio e ou fecham ou prolongam a agonia como zombies. Subitamente uma empresa, depois outra e outra começam a ter melhores resultados e parecem ter chegado a um modelo que parece funcionar. 
FASE III - Por spillover o novo modelo é progressivamente adoptado pelas empresas existentes e o sucesso atrai novos empreendedores. Fase de exploração em que se faz render o modelo ao máximo.
FASE IV - Inevitavelmente, porque o contexto externo e interno muda, quer a nível de concorrentes, quer a nível do resto do ecossistema do negócio (clientes-distribuição, retalhistas, consumidores), o modelo começa a falhar e progressivamente começam a encerrar empresas incapazes de se sustentarem.

Ajustando as duas figuras temos, para uma empresa-tipo:

Richard D'Aveni no velhinho livro "Hyper-competition: Managing the Dynamics of Strategic Advantage" escreve, a propósito da segunda figura acima (a figura é uma adaptação da que D'Aveni usa):

"The pursuit of a sustainable advantage has long been the focus of strategy. But advantages last only until competitors have duplicated or outmaneuvered them.
...
Once the advantage is copied or overcome, it is no longer an advantage. It is now a cost of doing business. Ultimately the innovator will only be able to exploit its advantage for a limited period of time before its competitors launch a counterattack [Moi ici: Não gosto desta liguagem de "contra ataque". Os concorrentes não nos atacam. Os concorrentes precisam dos mesmos recursos financeiros que nós. Esses recursos financeiros estão nos bolsos dos potenciais clientes. Os concorrentes não nos atacam. Os concorrentes arranjam uma alternativa que serve melhor os potenciais clientes, proporcionando-lhes mais valor]. With the launch of this counterattack, the original advantage begins to erode (see Figure 1-1}, and a new initiative is needed."

Há muito que uso aqui no blogue este gif para ilustrar que as estratégias nunca são eternas:

No final da FASE III a vantagem competitiva está perdida e volta-se à estaca zero, procurar uma nova vantagem competitiva. O interessante é que ao longo das décadas, parece que a duração da fase de exploração parece que se vai encurtando.

Às vezes oiço empresários, meio a sério, meio a brincar, a defender que é preciso importar bangladeshis ou chineses. Isso era o que se fazia antigamente quando os concorrentes que se tinham tornado mais competitivos tinham melhorado a sua competitividade nuns "pós" percentuais, estes concorrentes estão muito melhor habilitados para este campeonato. Por isso, tentar extender o tempo da exploração é perder tempo e gastar recursos que deviam ser colocados ao serviço da procura do próximo modelo de negócio bem-sucedido.

D'Aveni usa uma linguagem colorida:

"So what is the harm of trying to sustain an advantage for as long as possible? In an environment in which advantages are rapidly eroded, sustaining advantages can be a distraction from developing new ones. It is like shoveling sand against the tide rather than moving on to higher ground.
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Trying to sustain an existing advantage is a harvest strategy rather than a growth strategy. It is designed to milk what assets you have now rather than to seek new assets to build on. Even in high-growth markets old advantages based on old assets may not be the ones that will be the source of future success. A strategy of sustaining the advantage created by your existing assets creates a danger of complacency and gives competitors time to catch up and become strong.
...
Attempting to sustain an old advantage can eat up resources that should be used to generate the next move, thereby inviting attack by savvy competitors who realize that complacency has set in. Sustaining advantage is effectively a defensive strategy designed to protect what a firm has. In hypercompetition the better defense is often a strong offense."

Continua

Value-based selling (parte II)

Parte I.

As vendas deviam ser transformadas, por quem vende, num investimento para quem compra.
No b2b se o cliente pagar x quanto vai ganhar, y, por escolher uma certa opção A em detrimento de uma certa opção B?
No b2c se o cliente pagar x que experiência vai poder viver se escolher por uma certa opção A em detrimento de uma certa opção B?

"In b2b market, both the supplier (when offering their products/solutions) and the buyer (when choosing among alternative offers) aim at increasing their own value (NPV). Both the supplier and the customer can increase their values by eight dimensions that are called financial value drivers.
1. Sales increase. Additional sales increase (ceteris paribus) value.
…
2. Operating profit margin. Bigger operating profit margin increases (ceteris paribus) value.
…
3. Tax rate. Reduction of tax paid increases (ceteris paribus) value.
.
4. Effectiveness of working capital investment. Working capital equals current assets (cash, accounts receivable and inventory) minus accounts payable. The effectiveness of working capital investment can be measured as a relation between operating profit, cash frozen in accounts receivable, and inventory (the bigger the relation, the better) or determined by the time of outflows and inflows of cash (the shorter time between cash payments for buying parts and materials, and cash inflows from sales, the better).
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5. Effectiveness of fixed asset investment. The improvement of relation of operating profit to cash frozen in fixed assets increases (ceteris paribus) value.
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6. Cost of capital. Smaller cash paid by company to debtors (interest rate) and the owners (return) for their capital increases (ceteris paribus) value.
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7. Value creation period. The longer a business can generate cash on the expected level (ceteris paribus), the bigger value.
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8. Launching an additional business unit (new product, additional source of value) increases (ceteris paribus) value.
…
VP is defined as translating the differentiating feature (design attribute) of an offering into monetary impact on customer's business value in value-based selling.
…
tell the story about the offer's impact on customer's business operating profit margin (by reducing one of operating costs), so about one of eight financial value drivers.
…
The "product differentiating feature/design attribute" is the real cause of the impact on the customer's both non-financial and financial value driver (s). VP translates the offer's feature (as a cause) into quantified non-financial and financial effects. Thirdly, the differential impact of the offer on the customer's business value justifies its higher price that is presented as an investment for the customer. The supplier avoids price competition this way."

Trechos de "Where is value in b2b value proposition? The concept of value in research on selling, innovation management and NPD" de Ryszard Kłeczek, publicado em Wroclaw University of Economics and Business em Abril de 2018:

Quantas empresas? (parte VI)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV e parte V.

Na parte V recordamos Clayton Christensen e a continua transição entre comoditização e de-comoditização. Na passada segunda-feira o Wall Street Journal trazia o artigo "Specialty Grocers Lose Natural Edge":

"Gourmet grocers are losing their edge as natural foods become mainstream. Supermarket chains and discounters are selling more fresh, natural and organic foods at lower prices, drawing shoppers who used to seek out those products at specialty grocers.... As a result, specialty grocers are having a hard time convincing customers to pay a premium to shop in their stores. And without the revenue and reach of bigger chains, they have also been hesitant to match price cuts or to invest in new services like delivery....“Differentiation can be ephemeral. Retail is an open book of copycats,”...“What was special 10 years ago isn’t special anymore,”...New Seasons Market, based in Portland, Ore., is trying to stand out from the competition with hyperlocal products, Chief Operating Officer Mark Law said. The chain of more than 20 stores in the Pacific Northwest works with local chefs to prepare oven-ready meals and buys dairy products from nearby farmers. Samestore sales growth rate nearly doubled last year.
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“Organic has been commoditized,” Mr. Law, a former Whole Foods executive, said. “You can’t differentiate with your product mix alone.”
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Other specialty grocers also are emphasizing services to stand out. But offering better services can push up costs, executives said.
.
“You not only have your cost of goods but you’re trying to provide a higher level of customer service to differentiate yourself,”

Este tema já apareceu aqui: "As estratégias nunca são eternas ponto"

Outro artigo recente "Fairway Is So Crowded! How Can It Be in Bankruptcy?"

Há que repensar a actuação futura num mundo diferente

Outro exemplo, retirado da realidade do dia-a-dia, que ilustra como o mundo pode mudar rapidamente.

"In the cellar of the 18th-century Château du Pavillon in Bordeaux are 70,000 bottles of wine that nobody seems to want to drink. Olivier Fleury, 48, the château owner, had earmarked them for the United States, where they usually sell for between $25 and $60 (£20-£45) a bottle. That was before President Trump imposed a 25 per cent tariff on $7.5 billion worth of European exports including Scotch whisky, Italian cheese and still French wine containing less than 14 per cent alcohol.
...
At the same time there has been an unprecedented supply of grapes and wine in California.
...
Falling demand from a slowing Chinese market, coupled with the effect of the coronavirus, are also taking a toll, prompting a leading French wine merchant to warn that Bordeaux’s most prestigious châteaux will have to cut prices to avoid a collapse in sales.
...
Bordeaux’s wine-making bodies reported a 46 per cent fall in exports to the US since the tariffs. Across the French wine industry, exports to the US were 18 per cent down in the last quarter of 2019 compared with the quarter before."

Não basta uma reacção rápida, há que repensar a actuação futura num mundo diferente.
E a sua empresa? Como é que o mundo está a mudar para ela? Que alternativas de actuação?

Trechos retirados de "Winemakers pressed to cut prices in face of glut" publicado no The Times de 02.03.2020

O mundo que conhecemos nos últimos 20 anos pode mudar drasticamente

Os nabateus deixaram-nos uma grande lição nas ruínas de Petra.

"BTW, este fim de semana vi num canal do cabo, tipo National Geographic(?), um documentário sobre os Nabateus e a civilização de Petra. Uma parte desse documentário não me sai da cabeça... a parte em que se refere a técnica dos Nabateus para transportar água ao longo de km e km. Eles desenhavam a inclinação das tubagens não para a máxima eficiência de caudal transportado mas para a mais eficaz. A máxima eficiência leva à rotura frequente das tubagens."

Pois:

"Systems with slack are more resilient." 

Ontem, no Financial Times apanhei esta figura:

E pensei no exemplo das farmacêuticas, referido nesta "Curiosidade do dia".

Cheira-me que este choque, que esta disrupção nas cadeias de fornecimento, provocada pelo coronavírus, vai ser um momento de viragem... como as cheias em Bangkoque para a Ecco.
Entretanto, ontem no mesmo Financial Times apanho "Margins are going to be squeezed":

"If there is a simple lesson to be drawn from last week’s market rout, it is that there is fragility in complexity. The coronavirus outbreak has, like the 2011 Japanese tsunami and Thai floods that disrupted auto and electronics businesses, or the 1999 earthquake in Taiwan that brought the semiconductor industry to a halt, shown us the vulnerabilities of our highly interconnected economy and global supply chains.
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This time around, the trigger is an outbreak spreading outwards from China, still the factory of the world as well as its second-largest economy.
...
Goldman Sachs last week warned investors to expect zero profit growth from US companies this year, mainly because of the growing impact of the virus. But I wonder how much profit growth big corporations will be able to expect even after the infections play out and the results of the November US presidential elections come in.
...
The healthy margins of today’s highly optimised, extremely complex multinational corporations have largely depended on their ability to manufacture in China, sell in the US and Europe, and stash wealth wherever it makes most sense — particularly in favourable tax destinations like Hong Kong, Dublin or the Cayman Islands.
...
I’ve wondered for years when the fragility inherent in complex global multinationals would force them to shift their business models, and I think we’ve reached that moment. I believe coronavirus will speed the decoupling of the US and Chinese economic ecosystems, increasing regionalisation and localisation of production. That may result in “supply chains that are less efficient but more resilient”,
...
If decoupling continues, multinationals will have to make costly choices around labour, productivity and transport in order to manage a shift away from China."

O mundo que conhecemos nos últimos 20 anos pode mudar drasticamente.

BTW, e estão a ver o impacto do coronavírus nos hospitais-cidade? E nas escolas-cidade?

Quantas empresas? (parte V)

Parte I, parte II, parte III e parte IV.

O desafio que as empresas de calçado estão a sentir de novo é o desafio da comoditização.

A globalização, fazendo da China a fábrica do mundo criou este modelo:

Preços baixos, mas uma janela de 150 ou mais dias desde o desenho até à montra:

"By relocating most production for North America and Europe to Southeast Asia and putting retailers on 150-day order windows, the shoe industry has created a marvel of low cost at the factory gate in combination with an extraordinary array of styles"

O que o calçado português aprendeu foi a tirar partido da proximidade entre produção e consumo e

 permitir reduzir o tempo do desenho à montra, o que permitiu mais flexibilidade e acelerar o bailado entre oferta e procura.

O que recentemente a Turquia, o Norte de África e a Roménia conseguiram foi criar novos centros de produção de confiança próximos do consumo e mais baratos.

Aqui, fui ao meu exemplar de "The Innovator's Solution" e mergulhei no capítulo "How to avoid commoditization" e reli:

"It turns out that there is hope. One of the most exciting insights from our research about commoditization is that whenever it is at work some-where in a value chain, a reciprocal process of de-commoditization is at work somewhere else in the value chain. And whereas commoditization destroys a company's ability to capture profits by undermining differentiability, decommoditization affords opportunities to create and capture potentially enormous wealth. The reciprocity of these processes means that the locus of the ability to differentiate shifts continuously in a value chain as new waves of disruption wash over an industry. As this happens, companies that position themselves at a spot in the value chain where performance is not yet good enough will capture the profit.
…Making highly differentiable products with strong cost advantages is a license to print money, and lots of it. We must emphasize that the reason many companies don't reach this nirvana or remain there for long is that it is the not-good-enough circumstance that enables managers to offer products with proprietary architectures that can be made with strong cost advantages versus competitors. When that circumstance changes—when the dominant, profitable companies overshoot what their mainstream customers can use—then this game can no longer be played, and the tables begin to turn. Customers will not pay still-higher prices for products they already deem too good. Before long, modularity rules, and commoditization sets in. When the relevant dimensions of your product's performance are determined not by you but by the subsystems that you procure from your suppliers, it becomes difficult to earn anything more than subsistence returns in a product category that used to make a lot of money. When your world becomes modular, you'll need to look elsewhere in the value chain to make any serious money.
…Note that it is overshooting—the more-than-good-enough circum-stance — that connects disruption and the phenomenon of commoditization. Disruption and commoditization can be seen as two sides of the same coin. A company that finds itself in a more-than-good-enough circumstance simply can't win: Either disruption will steal its markets, or commoditization will steal its profits. Most incumbents eventually end up the victim of both, because, although the pace of commoditization varies by industry, it is inevitable, and nimble new entrants rarely miss an opportunity to exploit a disruptive foothold. There can still be prosperity around the corner, however. The attractive profits of the future are often to be earned elsewhere in the value chain, in different stages or layers of added value. That's because the process of commoditization initiates a reciprocal process of de-commoditization. Ironically, this de-commoditization — with the attendant ability to earn lots of money — occurs in places in the value chain where attractive profits were hard to attain in the past:
…Firms that are being commoditized often ignore the reciprocal process of de-commoditization that occurs simultaneously with commoditization, either a layer down in subsystems or next door in adjacent processes. They miss the opportunity to move where the money will be in the future and get squeezed — or even killed — as different firms catch the growth made possible by de-commoditization. In fact, powerful but perverse investor pressure to increase returns on assets (ROA) creates strong incentives for assemblers to skate away from where the money will be. …Executives who seek to avoid commoditization often rely on the strength of their brands to sustain their profitability — but brands become commoditized and de-commoditized, too. Brands are most valuable when they are created at the stages of the value-added chain where things aren't yet good enough. When customers aren't yet certain whether a product's performance will be satisfactory, a well-crafted brand can step in and close some of the gap between what customers need and what they fear they might get if they buy the product from a supplier of unknown reputation. The role of a good brand in closing this gap is apparent in the price premium that branded products are able to command in some situations. For similar logic, however, the ability of brands to command premium prices tends to atrophy when the performance of a class of products from multiple suppliers is manifestly more than adequate. When overshooting occurs, the ability to command attractive profitability through a valuable brand often migrates to those points in the value-added chain where things have flipped into a not-yet-good-enough situation. These often will be the performance-defining subsystems within the product, or at the retail interface when it is the speed, simplicity, and convenience of getting exactly what you want that is not good enough. These shifts define the opportunities in branding."

Onde está a próxima etapa da cadeia com possibilidade de gerar diferenciação?
Será no desenho e diferenciação do que se faz?
Será no consumo e na forma como se chega a ele?

Better management review meetings

When presenting the webinar "How to perform management review according to ISO 9001:2015" I use the following slide as an example:

If you look with care you can see that for each "Agenda Item" I include a question. The main question, or the main challenge under each agenda item.

Last night I started reading "How to Create the Perfect Meeting Agenda" and smiled when I found:

"Instead of designing your agenda as a laundry list of topics to be broached, consider creating your agenda as a set of questions to be addressed. In its simplest form, the meeting exists to answer a set of compelling questions in an allotted time.
...
By populating the agenda with questions rather than topics, you’ll begin to think and act differently as you design the meeting. You’ll become strategic, thinking critically about the meaning of a topic and what your ultimate outcome is — the true reason to bring the collective together. In addition, this method fosters intentionality.
...
Think about creating agenda questions for meeting attendees like you would go about creating goals for your employees. Why? Goal-setting theory demonstrates that goals energize, focus attention, and promote persistence, all of which lead to better performance."

Another suggestion in the article is very useful for the effectiveness of management review meetings:
"Privilege the most important questions first.
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Meeting science shows that content at the start of an agenda receives disproportionate amounts of time and attention, regardless of its importance. The implication is clear: put your most compelling questions at the start of the meeting. This will not only assure coverage of key issues; it is also a way of quickly grabbing attendee attention and conveying the value of the meeting. And while it is fine to start a meeting with 5 minutes or so of news and notes, after that concludes, go all in addressing the most challenging, important, and vexing questions.

At the webinar I also recommend:

Management review process starts with the gathering and analysis of the data, that is sent to top management. Before meeting together, top management should review the prepared information and take notice of what is going according to planned, what is having a behavior different from planned, positive or negative, and what is and may happen in the context that may affect future performance of the management system.

In the article one can find:

"After your set of questions is finalized, distribute the meeting agenda in advance so people have time to think about and prepare for the questions to be addressed. [Moi ici: Attention, my advice is more radical than this one. I recommend not only distributing the agenda in advance but also distribute the content in advance. The meeting is not for watching a presentation or analysing information. That can be done in advance] There is no “magic time” per se; vexing strategic questions likely require around a week of lead time, but for most other questions, three days lead time should suffice."

BTW, next webinar about this topic is scheduled for Thursday, March 5th.

Analítica versus experimentação

Via Nassim Taleb cheguei a esta sequência:

Entretanto, tinha lido "Two Words That Kill Innovation":

"Over the past 50 years, management practices have become ever more scientific and quantitative. Managing by the numbers, using business analytics and leveraging Big Data are all considered to be unalloyed goods, indicative of enlightened management. Without question, data and analytics have their roles and their benefits. But they have a really important dark side too, and when managers don’t see that dark side, they accidentally kill innovation.
.
The implicit logic behind the scientific management doctrine is that you must prove — analytically, and in advance — that a decision is correct before making it. To be clear, it is not the explicit doctrine — few managers think this themselves, but they’re swayed by their training to be scientifically analytical. This works productively for most of their everyday decisions.
...
But when genuine innovation is required, there’s a problem.
...
— it is not possible to prove analytically that a new idea is a good one in advance. Why? It’s pretty simple when you think about it. There is no data about how a genuinely new idea will interact with the world in advance of said new idea actually interacting with the world. Therefore there is no way to prove it will work in advance.
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This creates a real problem for managers who believe that their job in life is to make sure that a decision should be made only when there is analytical proof that it is the right decision.
...
To change this dynamic, managers need to distinguish between when they are honing and refining an existing system and when they are attempting to create something genuinely new. In the former situations, it is totally fine to come in with analytical guns blazing. In the latter, they need to put away the guns and take an entirely different approach. Here, they need to borrow from the design thinking toolbox by engaging in prototyping. Try innovative ideas, but do so in small ways without a lot of up front investment. Generate data through experimentation rather than assuming that there is pre-existing data to be harvested. Iterative experimentation will migrate the solution to an ever more compelling state — and spin off new data along the way."

Trechos retirados de "Two Words That Kill Innovation".

Value-based selling (parte I)

Uma das minhas paixões é o value-based selling. Gostei particularmente deste artigo "Where is value in b2b value proposition? The concept of value in research on selling, innovation management and NPD" de Ryszard Kłeczek, publicado em Wroclaw University of Economics and Business em Abril de 2018:

"(1) the VP as the device for knowledge transfer in both sales (value-based selling) and new product development processes in the company, (2) reinterprets results of current research (the research revealed some scope of financial value drives used in real business cases: some value drivers were used in crafting VPs,
...
A value proposition (VP) is a statement that translates the features (design attributes) of supplier offering into monetary impact on customer business value, for instance: "feature X translates into energy saving of 1000 kWh and energy costs of 225 per year" or "feature Y translates into maintenance time reduction by 200 hours and, consequently, maintenance cost of 6000 per year".
...
VP is a device that: (1) enhances knowledge transfer between actors that collaborate in value creation, (2) overcomes the weaknesses of vague promises like "cost reductions" or "increased efficiency", and traditional concepts like „perceived customer benefits” and "product quality" in explaining b2b relations, (3) creates an alternative for developing and selling the components at prices allowable (by customer) and enables negotiation of differentiated (high) prices for differentiating impact on customer business value.
...
VP is crafted iteratively by actors collaborating in value creation processes on both supplier and customer side.
...
VP in b2b value-based selling. How to communicate the current offer's impact on customer business value and get the differentiated price?...
VP concept to explain the sales process in b2b settings. The managerial question here is how to change the selling process from selling the offer's functionalities into selling its impact on customer business value to get the appropriately high price (to show the price as investment for the customer's business). ... the VP, crafted and communicated by the salesperson, as the supplier's offer's impact on the customer's business value expressed in monetary terms (not in functional terms only), compared with the next-best alternative for the customer (the VP is understood as a managerial accounting device that enables knowledge transfer between salespeople and the customer). The salesperson crafts the VP based on identified value drivers for adding substantial value to the customer's business. Because customers are sometimes unaware of, or unable to explain their value increase potential, understanding customer needs (as they are articulated by customer) is not enough to craft the value proposition.
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Understanding the customer's business model is required as well. Value-based (value proposition) selling converges upon finding and offering the best long-term solution for the customer's business, which shifts the focus of purchasing from looking for the lowest price to making business investment decisions."

Continua.

Quantas empresas? (parte IV)

Parte I, parte II e parte III.

Na introdução no Linkedin ao postal "Uma lição para as PME portuguesas" escrevi:

"Fugir da corrida para o fundo do poço, fugir da armadilha mental que só interessa aos gigantes. Deixar de vender substantivos e vender adjectivos para nichos."

No referido postal sublinho:

"Instead, they decided to produce milk that could be certified as grass-fed and organic.
...
The price he commands for grass-fed organic milk isn’t double that of regular milk, but it’s close," 

O que é que isto quer dizer para os fabricantes de calçado?

Por exemplo:

• Deixarem de produzir sapatos para produzirem sapatos de segurança
• Deixarem de produzir sapatos de segurança para produzirem sapatos de segurança para operar no ambiente X com as condicionantes Y

Curiosidade do dia

No DN de hoje:

"Farmacêuticas e afins com impacto reduzido
.
Com o mundo preocupado e a urgência no desenvolvimento de uma vacina em tempo recorde, fora dos laboratórios o setor farmacêutico tem visto uma corrida a máscaras e produtos de desinfeção, mas a Apifarma (Associação Portuguesa da Indústria Farmacêutica) garante que o "risco de impactos negativos na produção e fornecimento de medicamentos é muito reduzido". A indústria desenvolveu "rigorosos métodos de gestão das cadeias de fornecimento que permitem reagir a problemas internos e a choques externos como o atual", explica, lembrando que há sempre os planos de contingência. "O acesso às matérias-primas para a produção de genéricos e biossimilares não está afetado", confirma João Madeira, presidente da Apogen, garantindo que as empresas estão a monitorizar ativamente as cadeias de stock, para antecipar constrangimentos."

No Wall Street Journal de ontem:

"In U.S., a Risk to Drug Supply Emerges
China is a key provider of raw materials, chemicals for medicines popular abroad.
Factory shutdowns across China because of the coronavirus have exposed an uncomfortable health-care reality: Many medicines rely on raw materials that are made in that country.
...
For several weeks, the FDA has been contacting more than 180 drug manufacturers, reminding them to provide notification of any expected supply shortages. That includes the makers of roughly 20 products the agency has identified as containing key pharmaceutical ingredients from China. Most vulnerable are generic drugs, which make up some 90% of the medicines taken by Americans. Nongeneric, or branded, prescription medicines tend to have supply lines linked to other parts of the world."

Por que é que não me cheira bem?