A propósito de Mongo e do Estranhistão

Tal como pensamos aqui no blogue, em vez de um futuro com um mundo plano, um futuro com o mundo cada vez mais localizado, regionalizado, diversificado, com mais variedade.
.
Aquilo a que se chama globalização foi o último ato, o estertor do século XX. E o pico da globalização já passou: "Go Mongo: "We will find a place (To settle) Where there's so much space"", o século XXI voltará a ser um século de artesãos e de variedade:

"The real problem with The World Is Flat is not so much that it overstates—even considerably—the flatness of today’s world. The crucial conceptual error in Friedman’s thesis is that he assumes his 10 flatteners would automatically and rapidly lead to a more interconnected and, therefore, flat world. But the opposite has often been the case. The empirical evidence suggests that the global economy is increasingly being driven by urban clusters and, if anything, becoming more instead of less “curved.” (Moi ici: A caminho de Mongo, ou seja, o Estranhistão)
...
The danger of Friedman’s flat-world thesis is that it could cause executives to misinterpret the trends they observe in their own businesses and make potentially serious strategic errors. Instead of pursuing an aggressive localization strategy, for example, executives from multinational firms often decide to “wait it out” in emerging markets such as China and India. They hold the mistaken belief that demand-side and supply-side conditions will soon flatten and converge with those in developed markets. They may, for instance, believe that China’s retail environment will consolidate relatively quickly; as a result, they may fail to invest in localized distribution channels that are more appropriate for today’s market conditions. In reality, such consolidation is highly unlikely to occur within any reasonable planning horizon. And the impact of such wishful thinking is far from trivial. It could result in missed profit opportunities, and could also cause multinationals to fail to check the advance of competitors from these emerging markets until it is too late.
.
The world is still far from flat today, and, in many industries, it’s likely to retain its curvature for quite some time to come. Executives should be wary of relying too much on Friedman’s superficially persuasive, but seriously flawed, evidence."

Trechos retirados de "The Flat World Debate Revisited"

E a "Via Negativa"? (parte I)

Sempre que não resisto a ler Jaime Quesado, invariavelmente acabo a leitura  com a recordação do que Popper dizia acerca de quem não escreve de forma clara, deliberadamente.
.
Em "O fomento industrial" leio:

"ou se reinventa por completo o modelo económico (Moi ici: Reinventar por completo? Será que é mesmo preciso arrasar tudo? E que mente sabe o que deve ser arrasado e o que deve substituir o que foi arrasado? E os macacos sabem voar?)

...
"Falta em Portugal um sentido de entendimento colectivo de que a aposta nos factores dinâmicos de competitividade, numa lógica territorialmente equilibrada e com opções estratégicas claramente assumidas é o único caminho possível para o futuro." (Moi ici: Tirando a vertente do "territorialmente equilibrada", não tem sido isto que se tem feito no último século? Os governos interpretarem o "entendimento colectivo" e torrarem dinheiro em medidas de fomento top-down?)
...
"Uma nova economia, capaz de garantir uma economia nova sustentável, terá que se basear numa lógica de focalização em prioridades claras." (Moi ici: E quem define quais são as prioridades claras? E quem sabe quais são as prioridades claras? Eu tenho medo de prioridades claras!!! Acredito em prioridades claras para uma empresa, tenho medo de prioridades claras para um colectivo de empresas - prefiro pensar em ecossistema de empresas com diferentes abordagens e que enriquecem a diversidade "genética" de um sector económico - e sei que prioridades claras para uma economia é uma receita certa para a desgraça)

Este tipo de pensamento está nas antípodas do que acredito. Eu não acredito no Grande Planeador, eu não acredito no CyberSyn, eu não acredito no bem intencionado "Espanha! Espanha! Espanha!".
.
O mundo é demasiado complexo para que um Grande Geometra bem intencionado saiba o que há a fazer. E, porque as prioridades claras de hoje, amanhã se transformam numa armadilha mortal, o truque é não haver prioridades claras para uma economia. O truque é não apostar no intervencionismo ingénuo, mais uma vez, bem intencionado mas perigoso.
.
Cada vez mais, comparo a biologia com a economia. E a biologia dá-nos uma grande lição... (ao recordar Valikangas tive uma surpresa.)

"Life is the most resilient thing on the planet. I has survived meteor showers, seismic upheavals, and radical climate shifts. And yet it does not plan, it does not forecast, and, except when manifested in human beings, it possesses no foresight. So what is the essential thing that life teaches us about resilience?
Just this: Variety matters. Genetic variety, within and across species, is nature's insurance policy against the unexpected. A high degree of biological diversity ensures that no matter what particular future unfolds, there will be at least some organisms that are well-suited to the new circumstances."

Ontem terminei a audição de "Antifragile"... e já tenho saudades!!!

"in the fragile category, the mistakes are rare and large when they occur, hence irreversible; (Moi ici: Os inevitáveis erros do Grande Planeador) to the right the mistakes are small and benign, even reversible and quickly overcome. They are also rich in information. So a certain system of tinkering and trial and error would have the attributes of antifragility. (Moi ici: Os inevitáveis erros do actor individual, que levam a uma variedade de abordagens, a uma multiplicidade de alternativas... talvez algumas resultem agora, talvez algumas resultem amanhã, talvez os erros de agora, porque pequenos são comportáveis, permitam aprender algo que falta para criar uma abordagem que resulte amanhã) If you want to become antifragile, put yourself in the situation “loves mistakes” - to the right of “hates mistakes”- by making these numerous and small in harm. We will call this process and approach the “barbell” strategy.
...
Nature is all about the exploitation of optionality; it illustrates how optionality is a substitute for intelligence. Let us call trial and error tinkering when it presents small errors and large gains.
...
All this does not mean that tinkering and trial and error are devoid of narrative: they are just not overly dependent on the narrative being true - the narrative is not epistemological but instrumental. (Moi ici: Por isso é que os empreendedores com a 4ª classe avançam e os que têm um doutoramento hesitam e não avançam. Os primeiros não dependem de uma narrativa de "prioridades claras" simplesmente tentam e tentam e tentam até que, eventualmente, encontram algo que resulta. David não era militar de carreira, não tinha experiência de combate militar, e isso libertou-o para uma abordagem não canónica. Os doutorado na ciência da guerra não viam alternativa no combate com Golias... é preciso apostar na arte (da guerra))
...
When engaging in tinkering, you incur a lot of small losses, then once in a while you find something rather significant. Such methodology will show nasty attributes when seen from the outside - hides its qualities, not its defects.
...
Evolution proceeds by undirected, convex bricolage or tinkering, inherently robust, i.e., with the achievement of potential stochastic gains thanks to continuous, repetitive, small, localized mistakes. What men have done with top-down, command-and-control science has been exactly the reverse: interventions with negative convexity effects, i.e., the achievement of small certain gains through exposure to massive potential mistakes."

E parece que não aprendemos nada...

"“não são apresentadas [DEO] políticas de relançamento da actividade económica com maior efeito multiplicador no emprego," 

Abençoada troika, senão este também dançava ao som desta música de Quesado.
.
E a "Via Negativa"?

Percepcionar a realidade

Há dias sublinhei aqui no blogue esta citação:

"a reminder not that the world we know is false, but that it is always the world as we observe it."

Nós nunca vemos a realidade intrínseca, o que vemos são os sinais que a nossa mente consegue recolher, processar e enquadrar no nosso modelo mental.
.
Vivemos hoje com modelos mentais muito influenciados por componentes gerados ao longo de séculos de imperialismo ocidental: somos o centro do mundo.
.
O que dizer disto:

Viver dentro ou fora do círculo não é intrinsecamente bom ou mau. No entanto, faz todo o sentido pensar como informações deste tipo nos ajudam a voltar a percepcionar a realidade de uma forma diferente.
.
Quem percepciona melhor (com menos erros) a realidade do mundo pode ter uma vantagem.
.
Recordar 

Como aproveitar isto?

Curiosidade do dia

Agora que cada vez mais se escreve e se elogia o "Big Data" que tudo vai revelar:

"More data means more information, perhaps, but it also means more false information.
...
There is a certain property of data: in large data sets, large deviations are vastly more attributable to noise (or variance) than to information (or signal).
...
If I have a set of 200 random variables, completely unrelated to each other, then it would be near impossible not to find in it a high correlation of sorts, say 30 percent, but that is entirely spurious.
...
The fooled-by-data effect is accelerating. There is a nasty phenomenon called “Big Data” in which researchers have brought cherry-picking to an industrial level. Modernity provides too many variables (but too little data per variable), and the spurious relationships grow much, much faster than real information, as noise is convex and information is concave.
.
Increasingly, data can only truly deliver via negativa-style knowledge - it can be effectively used to debunk, not confirm."

Trechos retirados de "Antifragile" de Nassim Taleb.

Uma oportunidade de negócio digna de Mongo

Ontem de manhã tinha uma reunião às 10h30 em São João da Madeira, por isso, aproveitei para cortar o cabelo logo pela manhã.
.
Enquanto esperava pela minha vez, folheei o Jornal de Notícias e fui atraído para a leitura deste artigo:

Interessante a história de alguém que a partir da sua necessidade, imaginou uma oportunidade de negócio  digna de Mongo: Chupetas personalizadas.

O que é que nos motiva?

Um artigo interessante, "Do you play to win or to not lose?":

"Motivational focus affects how we approach life’s challenges and demands. Promotion-focused people see their goals as creating a path to gain or advancement and concentrate on the rewards that will accrue when they achieve them. Promotion-focused people are comfortable taking chances, like to work quickly, dream big and think creatively.
...
 for the promotion-focused, the worst thing is a chance not taken, a reward unearned, a failure to advance.
.
Prevention-focused people, in contrast, see their goals as responsibilities, and they concentrate on staying safe. They worry about what might go wrong if they don’t work hard enough or aren’t careful enough. They are vigilant and play to not lose, to hang on to what they have, to maintain the status quo.
...
Sometimes even minor tweaks in how you think about a goal or the language you use to describe it can make a difference.
...
Your aspiration is to score at least three times.” Or “You are going to shoot five penalties. Your obligation is to not miss more than twice.” You probably wouldn’t expect a small change in wording to affect these practiced, highly motivated players.
.
But it had a big impact. Players did significantly better when the instructions were framed to match their dominant motivational focus, which the researchers had previously measured. This was especially true for prevention-minded players, who scored nearly twice as often when they received the don’t-miss instructions.
...
Promotion-focused people tend to increase their efforts when a supervisor offers them praise for excellent work, whereas prevention-focused people are more responsive to criticism and the looming possibility of failure."

Gostava que mais gente partilhasse desta perspectiva

"In 1980, China and India together accounted for less than 5% of global output. Last year, the two were responsible for over 20% of world GDP. The transition from the one figure to the other was responsible for massive and highly disruptive changes across the global economy. The world trade order has been stood on its ear. The movement of hundreds of millions of new workers into global labour markets has had an enormous impact on real wage growth and real interest rates and, consequently, on innovation and investment. The strain on supplies of all sorts of goods and resources, from oil and gold to wine and art, has generated wild price gyrations and remarkable economic knock-on effects in producing and consuming countries.
.
It is this era of major and disruptive economic transformation that seems to be at an end.
...
The era of disruptive BRIC ascendence is over. What that might mean for advanced economies is very tough to say. It could mean better times ahead for workers who experienced a steady erosion in their bargaining power over the past three decades. Unless, that is, the main effect of cheap emerging market labour was to delay labour-saving technical change. Commodity prices could be in for a long period of stagnation as slowing demand growth from emerging markets interacts with soaring supply.
...
What comes next isn't clear, but the world does appear to be entering a new phase of global growth."

Gostava que mais gente partilhasse desta perspectiva e pudesse equacionar hipotéticos futuros e hipotéticas assimetrias a aproveitar.
.
Receio, contudo, que muita gente continue a ver o mundo com o modelo formatado pela experiência dos últimos 20 anos e não consiga visualizar o potencial das oportunidades que se abrem. Há aquela frase sobre o estado-maior do exército francês em 1939/40, estava preparado para combater a guerra de 1914/18, mas a guerra tinha mudado. Também agora sinto que há demasiadas pessoas cegas pelo padrão dos últimos 20 anos, incapazes de ver que as derivadas já mudaram de sinal.
.
Trechos retirados de "Welcome to the post-BRIC world"

O empreendedorismo é o fim último da humanidade

"Onde está a nascer o novo emprego?"

"Com os números do desemprego em Portugal a atingirem os 17,5% - o nível mais alto dos últimos 27 anos -, há números que trazem esperança: mais de 60% do novo emprego, criado entre 2007 e 2011, foi responsabilidade das pequenas empresas, com um número de empregados igual ou inferior a 50 pessoas; as empresas jovens, com idade igual ou inferior a cinco anos, já representam 46% do emprego criado em cada ano. E as ‘start-ups', nascidas em cada ano, representam 6,5% do tecido empresarial, mas são responsáveis, em média, por 18% do emprego criado em cada ano."

Associado a este mesmo tema, recordo o artigo "Onde está a nascer o novo emprego?" no Caderno de Economia do Expresso do passado Sábado, que termina associando-se à nossa metáfora de Mongo como um mundo de artesãos e de prosumers:

"o crescimento económico de um país está directamente ligado ao número de empreendedores que consegue criar", concluindo que "nada é mais humano do que a criação de coisas. O empreendedorismo é o fim último da humanidade".

Curiosidade do dia

"It may well be that the uncertainty principle, along with other curious aspects of quantum theory, is another such interstice of unreason, a reminder not that the world we know is false, but that it is always the world as we observe it."

Trecho retirado de "On Borges, Particles and the Paradox of the Perceived"

"Processos e experiência dos clientes" (parte V)

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

"You can’t run service operations like a factory, because customers just walk onto the factory floor and mess everything up. They interfere. You can’t schedule when they show up. They just come in massive waves at the most inconvenient times. Then they get angry when they have to wait. Why can’t they make an appointment? They don’t understand how things work, so you have to train them to use the equipment. Sometimes they can be really slow to figure things out.
.
They ask for things that aren’t on the menu. They want everything to be customized and personalized for them. They have no interest in efficient operations.
.
They don’t follow the processes we lay out for them.
...
And customers want to get on with their days. They don’t want to wait in the waiting room or stay on hold for the next customer representative. They want services to be convenient for them.
...
As customers, competitors, and partners make adaptive moves and countermoves, they not only affect each other but they affect the landscape itself, so an organization that was fit for yesterday’s world cannot be certain that they will be fit for tomorrow’s world. Our companies have all been optimized for a perfect one-way stream, the line of production, and these pesky customers are mucking about in our operations, and we have now a completely different problem to solve. We need to optimize not for the line of production but for the line of interaction, the front line - the edge of the organization - where our people and systems come into direct contact with customers. It’s a whole different thing.
...
Many service companies just aren’t designed for service delivery. They are designed like factories, optimized for the mass production of inputs into outputs. This makes perfect sense in a rapidly-industrializing economy. But in an economy where manufacturing is shrinking and services are expanding, it doesn’t work anymore. Traditional management thinking looks at a customer service call as an input to the service factory. For a factory, it’s not difficult to get standard inputs from suppliers. But inputs from customers come in all kinds of different shapes and sizes. Every problem, every job that customers need to do, has its own unique profile. Most companies try to standardize these inputs as much as possible so they can process them efficiently. The factory’s job is to produce “resolutions.” This is how we end up with complicated voice menu systems that attempt to route calls to the appropriate department while keeping costs as low as possible. As companies try to fit customer demands into standard boxes, customers become frustrated and angry. They give up. Sometimes they leave to find another provider, but even then they often hold little hope that anything will change."

Trechos do Capítulo 4, "Services are complex", do livro "The Connected Company" de Dave Gray.

Parar para pensar de forma diferente

"Find the Customers Your Competitors Are Offending" e "If you were competing with your own company, what would you do?", dois artigos com pistas pistas interessantes para quem opera no mercado interno.
.
"If you were competing with your own company, what would you do?" é ver o mundo de uma perspectiva diferente.
.
É, muitas vezes, uma forma de abandonar "custos afundados" que teimam em impedir-nos de ver o óbvio e libertar-nos mentalmente para uma abordagem mais fresca e menos desempoeirada.
.
O mundo mudou, os clientes mudaram... aliás, os clientes estão em trânsito permanente, se competisse com a sua empresa, como tentaria conquistar a sua atenção e preferência?
.
A outra achega, "Find the Customers Your Competitors Are Offending"... também me parece interessante:

"1) Get Personal: Cohorts with shared demography, like Hispanic consumers, are too large to treat as a monolith. You need to drill down to understand the needs of sub-cohorts.
...
4) Look at Whom You're Excluding: If your company focuses on selling consumer electronics to men under 35, for example, pause and consider who feels unfairly excluded from the marketing narrative, such as baby boomer consumers aged 46-64 who spend more on technology than any other demographic. A good example of this marketing reorientation comes from the video gaming industry, which is finally waking up to the fact that their ads were alienating the 47% of "girl gamers" who buy their products.
...
6) Start with Empathy: If you pay attention to your customers, and treat them with consideration, they'll reward you. If you don't, they won't. Good marketers like Apple remember that spending is emotional. It starts with asking customers who they are, not just what they want."

Esta última frase "It starts with asking customers who they are, not just what they want."
.
.
.
Quantas empresas pensam que sabem o que o cliente quer?
E, por isso, ficam-se pelos atributos, pelas especificações.
.
Tanta publicidade que nos apresenta o argumento do preço mais baixo e, contudo, não creio que os seus criadores andem todos de Fiat Panda.

Fugir do atractor do feedback-loop

"To crystallize, take this description of an option:
.
Option = asymmetry + rationality.
The rationality part lies in keeping what is good and ditching the bad, knowing to take the profits. As we saw, nature has a filter to keep the good baby and get rid of the bad. The difference between the antifragile and the fragile lies there. The fragile has no option. But the antifragile needs to select what’s best—the best option.
...
Unlike the researcher afraid of doing something different, it sees an option - the asymmetry - when there is one. So it ratchets up - biological systems get locked in a state that is better than the previous one, the path-dependent property I mentioned earlier. In trial and error, the rationality consists in not rejecting something that is markedly better than what you had before.
...
An option hides where we don’t want it to hide. I will repeat that options benefit from variability, but also from situations in which errors carry small costs. So these errors are like options—in the long run, happy errors bring gains, unhappy errors bring losses."

Acho que é isto que eu vejo em "assistia do seu acampamento, amedrontado, acobardado, aos desafios arrogantes do gigante Golias e..." e que permite fugir do atractor do feddback-loop que rebola encosta abaixo como uma avalanche.

Trecho retirado de "Antifragile" de Nassim Taleb.

Curiosidade do dia

"The Memoto camera can be clipped to your clothing or worn on a chain around your neck. There is no shutter release, no display and no on-off button. The camera simply takes a picture automatically every 30 seconds, which comes to 120 pictures an hour or 2,880 a day. To stop the camera, you have to put it in your pocket. For each photo, the device stores the time and the GPS coordinates of where it was taken. The result is a giant photo diary, or "Lifelog," a term coined by the web community.
.
Naturally, the images don't remain in the camera. The Memoto app transfers them to the company's server or, more precisely, to a server Memoto rents from Amazon in the United States to store its customers' data.
.
The Memoto software sorts the photos, organizes them by subject and time, and highlights the best ones from a technical standpoint. The user can then use his or her own computer or smartphone to look at current pictures, search for old ones or post images to a social-networking site, such as Facebook.
.
These features make Memoto the ideal toy for people who have made online self-expression their mission in life. If the idea takes hold, there will be no events in the future that don't exist in image form. Forgetting will become a thing of the past, and we will no longer be able to sugarcoat our past experiences. Memory will no longer be subjective, but merely an image file on an Amazon server."

Trecho retirado de "Total Recall: Mini-Camera Records All (and Perhaps Too Much)"

A chave da mudança está nas emoções

Ontem, ao pesquisar "Resonate" de Nancy Duarte, encontrei uma citação de Seth Godin que me remeteu para aqui:

"Business plans with too much detail, books with too much proof, politicians with too much granularity... it seems as though more data is a good thing, because data proves the case.
.
In my experience, data crowds out faith. And without faith, it's hard to believe in the data enough to make a leap. Big mergers, big VC investments, big political movements, large congregations... they don't usually turn out for a spreadsheet.
.
The problem is this: no spreadsheet, no bibliography and no list of resources is sufficient proof to someone who chooses not to believe. The skeptic will always find a reason, even if it's one the rest of us don't think is a good one. Relying too much on proof distracts you from the real mission--which is emotional connection."

E recordei logo John Kotter em "The Heart of Change":

"Changing behavior is less a matter of giving people analysis to influence their thoughts than helping them to see a truth to influence their feelings. Both thinking and feeling are essential, and both are found in successful organizations, but the heart of change is in the emotions. The flow of see-feel-change is more powerful than that of analysis-think-change. These distinctions between seeing and analyzing, between feeling and thinking, are critical because, for the most part, we use the latter much more frequently, competently, and comfortably than the former." 

Acerca da estratégia

"Emergent strategy is the view that strategy emerges over time as intentions collide with and accommodate a changing reality.  Emergent strategy is a set of actions, or behavior, consistent over time, “a realized pattern [that] was not expressly intended” in the original planning of strategy. Emergent strategy implies that an organization is learning what works in practice. Given today’s world, I think emergent strategy is on the upswing.
...
Henry’s emergent strategy ideas simply seem to be more relevant to the world we live in today – they reflect the fact that our plans will fail. This is not to say that planning isn’t useful, but other than some long term technology plans, the day of the 5 year and even 2 year plans has faded and emergent strategy is the reality in most industries that I work with.  You must be much more fleet of foot, strategic flexibility is what we are looking for in most industries. The boundaries are more fluid now. For many, albeit not all, knowing what industry you are in is not as clear cut as it once was. This makes industry analysis less easy.  The value chain (Moi ici: No meu trabalho é fundamental conhecer e caracterizar a cadeia da procura, o ecossistema da procura, muito mais do que a clássica cadeia de fornecimento) is now shared across firm boundaries and at times, in part, in common with competitors."

Trechos retirados de "Porter or Mintzberg: Whose View of Strategy Is the Most Relevant Today?"

"should never tell us what to do"

Uma verdade importante:

"Sometimes, even when an economic theory makes sense, its application cannot be imposed from a model, in a top-down manner, so one needs the organic self-driven trial and error to get us to it. For instance, the concept of specialization that has obsessed economists since Ricardo (and before) blows up countries when imposed by policy makers, as it makes the economies error-prone; but it works well when reached progressively by evolutionary means, with the right buffers and layers of redundancies. Another case where economists may inspire us but should never tell us what to do."

.
Recordar o grito "Espanha! Espanha! Espanha!"
.
Fugir sempre dos crentes no Grande Planeador, no Grande Geometra, os tais intervencionistas ingénuos.
.
Complementa bem a mensagem deste postal "Não é fácil fazer a transição"

Trecho retirado de "Antifragile" de Nassim Taleb.

"Pessoas de mais a queixarem-se e de menos a agir"

Na passada Quinta-feira, no meio de uma conversa, parei para anotar a frase que tinha acabado de ouvir:

"Pessoas de mais a queixarem-se e de menos a agir"

Voltei a recordar esta frase, ontem à noite, ao ler isto no Caderno de Economia do Expresso, roubado em casa da minha mãe:

"Uma forma de o país sair mais rapidamente da crise é falarmos menos e trabalharmos mais? Não diria trabalhar mais, mas arriscar mais, ir à luta, fazer coisas diferentes, eventualmente errar e depois corrigir os erros, para podermos ir para a frente, apesar das dificuldades todas, que são imensas.
...
Deve-se trabalhar mais no sentido de aumentar a autoestima de Portugal?Alguma coisa tem de se fazer. Mas acho que mais do que falar, tem de se fazer. Dá-me a impressão, quando me pedem para falar em universidades, que há uma nova geração muito mais empresarial, com vontade de empreender. Há gente nova com graça, com ideias e com vontade de fazer coisas. Essa mentalidade mudou, se é por obrigação ou não é, não sei. E gosto disso."

Trecho retirado de "Em Portugal há um excesso de palavras, de opiniões, sobre tudo. Estou farto" (entrevista de Paulo Pereira da Silva, presidente da Renova)

Curiosidade do dia

"for many people, a wealth model built on chronic growth is no longer a desirable goal. They are deciding to opt out of this model by establishing "repair cafés" or "transition towns," communities that try to run things differently at the local level. But doubts about the growth dogma are even beginning to creep into politics.
...
can there be prosperity without growth and growth without environmental damage? How can jobs be preserved in a stagnating or even a shrinking economy? How can a government service its debts in such an economy, especially as the population shrinks?
...
The labor market he envisions is full of thriving repair and maintenance shops. He wants to see our society become more civilized with less: less material, less energy, less waste and less pollution. He also believes that resources should be managed more effectively. We should produce the kind of clothing, he argues, that can be handed down from one generation to the next instead of throwing things away after wearing them just a few times."

Trechos retirados de "Less Is More: Rogue Economists Champion Prosperity without Growth"

Acerca da estratégia

" “the core idea of strategy is to provide an overarching view on how a particular company is going to succeed in the marketplace.”
...
strategy is really a “mindset” that views “business life as not entirely random; stochastic but not random. While it may be absolutely necessary to revisit and revise choices more often than convenient, the assumption holds that effortful, determined, revisable strategy is better than simply letting happen whatever will happen.”
.
Strategy is about trying to take control and trying to win. Strategy is about trying to predict the future or at least enough of that future that will give you a competitive advantage. Strategy is about being specific. It is about helping you get from A to C by doing B. It’s about putting your cards on the table, placing your bets.
.
More than choosing what to do, it is about choosing what NOT to do. Because today, more than ever, there are far more things that you could do — but shouldn’t. These things distract and create complexity. They take valuable time and resources away from what really matters. Strategy is about understanding what really matters and acting on it.
...
strategy is about answering the following questions:

• What business or businesses should you be in?

• How do you add value to your businesses?

• Who are the target customers for your businesses?

• What are your value propositions to those target customers?

• What capabilities are essential to adding value to your businesses and differentiating their value propositions?"

Trechos retirados de "How Do You Know You Do Not Have a Strategy?"

Fazer o by-pass ao poder

Há bocado, no Facebook do Frederico Lucas, li esta reflexão:

"Quando pergunto a uma plateia de estudantes o que esperam da sua vida profissional, e um deles responde que isso depende do Primeiro Ministro ou do autarca local, renovo o amargo de boca que o conceito de Liberdade não atinge todos os cidadãos."

E fiz logo o paralelismo com os empresários e, sobretudo com os líderes das associações empresariais.
.
É triste quando um empresário abdica do seu quinhão, da sua quota parte de agente de mudança do mundo  (o melhor tipo de mudança: a mudança "bottom-up", a mudança concreta, a mudança que pode ser revertida se não resultar), e deposita toda a sua esperança num outro agente exterior ao seu mundo.
.
É triste ver o líder da Confederação do Comércio Português depositar toda a sua confiança na salvação do sector nas decisões dum governo.
.
Agora imaginem que um governo baixava o IVA e aumentava o salário mínimo... como reagiria se os consumidores, em vez de voltarem a encher as lojas, entupissem o comércio online? Difícil? Recordar:

"90 percent of retail sales growth in Britain, France and Germany between 2012 and 2016, or 91.5 billion euros, is expected to be online"

Descubro, cada vez mais, empresas anónimas que há muito seguiram o conselho que este blogue veicula há muitos anos, quando ainda não era "in" dizê-lo, e fizeram "by-pass a este país".
.
Agora é a altura dos agentes que vivem do e para o mercado interno seguirem outro conselho, "fazer o by-pass ao governo". A este e aos que se hão-de seguir. Concentrem-se naquele terreno onde se conjuga o que gostam de fazer com o que é diferente e atrai clientes, construam uma identidade evolutiva em torno desse conceito e acreditem que tudo se consegue com esforço.
.
Como dizia Popper: "Viver é resolver problemas"... o que conjuga bem com a frase de Taleb "Stressors are information"