"46,6% del total de los retailers de Reino Unido, es decir, alrededor de 20.000 negocios, están en serio riesgo de quiebra."Talvez tenha algo a ver com:
"Indeed, as I investigated why incubators fail, I was astounded to find that many incubators assume that cheap real estate, co-working spaces, used furniture, plus a phone and Internet connection equate with business incubation. Jim Flowers, president of the Virginia Business Incubation Association, says, "They mistake cheap floor space for meaningful program content."Trechos retirados de "The Problems with Incubators, and How to Solve Them"
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Well, it isn't. Neither are discounted legal services, accounting, or other kinds of commodity services.
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Most incubators use funding as a success metric, which is a somewhat flawed criterion. Over 99% of companies should operate as organically grown, self-sustaining businesses — bootstrapped, without external financing. For them the goal is to achieve customer validation, not financing. Yet if the incubator uses financing as its success metric, it will try to force inexperienced entrepreneurs into an unnecessary financing round. And more often than not, they will fail."
"For perfect competition theory, demand is:
- a) heterogeneous across industries,
- b) homogeneous within industries, and
That is, at different configurations of price across generic product categories, for example, footwear, televisions, and automobiles, perfect competition theory allows consumers to prefer different quantities of each generic product. Within each generic product category or "industry," however, consumers tastes and preferences are assumed to be identical and unchanging through time with respect to desired product features and characteristics. Thus, neoclassical works speak of the "demand for footwear," and the group of firms constituting the footwear "industry" are presumed to face, collectively, a downward-sloping demand curve. Each individual firm in the footwear industry, however, faces a horizontal demand curve because of the homogeneous, intra-industry demand assumption. For perfect competition, the assumptions of homogeneity of demand and supply are necessary for drawing the industry demand and supply curves required for determining the market clearing, equilibrium price. Absent homogeneous demand, the concept of an industry demand curve and the market clearing price make no sense. Therefore, the existence of firms in an industry haying downward-sloping demand curves results from the kind of product differentiation that, according to Chamberlin (1950), consists of "irrational" preferences. That is, downward-sloping demand curves for individual firms are associated with preferences based on either "ignorance" or the "imperfect knowledge" that results from "the reprehensible creation by businessmen of purely fictitious differences between products which are by nature fundamentally uniform"."
- c) static.
"As PMEs portuguesas, sem capital suficiente para se deslocalizarem e sem acesso ao sector dos bens não transaccionáveis, fizeram o que se faz quando se está desesperado, saltaram da "burning platform". Muitas não resistiram e foram definhando com mais ou menos rapidez, com mais ou menos estrondo. Contudo, algumas empresas fuçaram e fuçaram até que começaram a descobrir o seu espaço, o seu ecossistema, o seu nicho. A Grande Contracção de 2008-2009 é que escondeu essa revolução estrutural nas PMEs portuguesas que passa despercebida aos olhos do mainstream.O ponto crítico é a necessidade de mudar de vida para fazer face à mudança do mundo e, é essa necessidade que obriga as empresas a subirem na escala de valor.
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O facto de uma empresa não se deslocalizar obriga-a a usar a sua herança como uma peça de um puzzle e a ir ao mercado testar e testar diferentes combinações de produtos, de clientes, de soluções até que a herança se case com algo de novo no exterior que resulta, que encaixa, que tem potencial para gerar capital. Depois, o spill-off acaba por contaminar outras empresas existentes e outras mentes, servindo de exemplo, de motivação, de prova de que há uma alternativa"
"That may make the US an attractive spot for multinationals, but economies that live by cheap labor costs can die by them, too."BTW, não acredito nestes números:
"The end result, according to the consultants, is that the US could capture $25 to $72 billion in exports from the four European countries and Japan, creating as many as 1.2 million factory jobs."Isto é assumir que a procura é homogénea, isto é assumir que os recursos são facilmente transmissíveis, isto é assumir que o custo/preço é tudo.
"“Acho que nas empresas viradas para os mercados exteriores, para serem capazes de produzir e vender mais barato aqui e ali, era vantajoso e um estímulo ser-lhes dada a possibilidade de aumentar o horário de trabalho até uma hora a mais, por exemplo”, afirma à Renascença, adiantando que esse aumento horário não seria acompanhado de um aumento de salário."Como se pudéssemos competir com a China nos custos... como se a exportação das PMEs se baseasse em commodities.
"When you walk into a fast food restaurant, the stated, measured, delivered-on goals are to get the transaction over with as cheaply and quickly as possible. The cashier, the fry cook, everyone is rewarded on running the line just a little faster and just a little more efficiently.Agora, leiam isto "Banca modernizou-se. Espalhou balcões, com menos funcionários e mais tecnologia"
On the other hand, when you are the first time client at a contractor, a bank or even a resort, everyone on the staff ought to be focused on getting something started, not over with."
"And then at the policy level, I got really interested in, well, Nancy Pelosi. She was on television advocating something or other, and I was sort of waiting for her to give at least a hint of what her thinking was of why this would be good for the country. What she said was her constituents wanted it. That was kind of the last straw. I began to think that, my God, the whole country seems to be fixated on getting benefits, from state governments, local governments, the federal government. It's not as if we're spending a huge percentage of GDP on it, it's not that. I think it's just that it seems so enervating. We want young people to grow up and come back and give us the world. We don't want them to think now life is going to be how much more in retirement benefits you can get from the city."Trecho retirado de "When Work Is Challenging, Economies Thrive"
"Promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas excessivas"Contudo, como a expressão "rendas excessivas" está tão gasta em Portugal, por causa do combate político, não a cheguei a usar.
"La moda española desfila a velocidad de vértigo, pero esto no les pasa a las industrias del textil y de la confección, que fabrican las prendas con las que España conquista los mercados mundiales. Mientras las marcas escribían una historia de éxito, centenares de talleres de ropa cerraban sus puertas. España, que tenía en los noventa más de 300.000 trabajadores en el sector, ahora cuenta con poco más de 135.000, un desplome que se debe, ya se sabe, a la deslocalización de la industria a los países asiáticos, sobre todo a China. Sin embargo, cuando se pensaba que la tendencia era inexorable, hay señales de que está cambiando. Dos décadas después del boom de la deslocalización, cada vez más voces hablan de la posibilidad de que España recupere parte de esa producción. Algo que ya está ocurriendo. (Moi ici: Recordar a frase "Aquilo a que se chama globalização foi o último acto, o estertor do século XX. E o pico da globalização já passou")
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La clave es China, que ya no es tan atractiva como plataforma de producción para exportar. La fuerte subida de los salarios, junto con la apreciación del yuan, y una vez sumados los costes de transporte o arancelarios, ha borrado los diferenciales de hace años. Según el BCG, los salarios en la industria china han subido el 19% anual entre 2005 y 2010, mientras que en Estados Unidos caían un 2,2%. Esto ha llevado, según Asensio, a que “en solo una década, los salarios en el textil en China hayan pasado de 150 a más de 400 dólares”. También las condiciones laborales son más exigentes: hay más huelgas, la disposición de los chinos a trabajar muchas horas es menor y la legislación laboral se ha endurecido. (Moi ici: Recordar estes salários de £490 por mês aqui)
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(Moi ici: Segue-se mais uma lista de tópicos que ao longo dos anos tentamos chamar a atenção, julgo que com pouco sucesso, porque o discurso competitivo em muitos sectores continua focado no custo) "Pero los costes no lo explican todo. Muchas empresas no tienen volumen suficiente para encargar series largas (lo obligado en China), otras carecen de crédito para subcontratar en el extranjero, y otras aún se quejan de problemas de calidad. “Hemos decidido traer la producción aquí”, explicaron en Vega Cárcer, “porque los acabados son mejores y todo resulta más fácil de controlar”. Se ha impuesto, además, el pronto-moda, que exige proximidad: las marcas reponen las existencias con más frecuencia y “no pueden estar meses esperando los envíos desde China”, indica Asensio. No hay que obviar las cuestiones de imagen. El traslado de producción a terceros países recibe críticas crecientes, sobre todo tras la tragedia del edificio de Bangladesh."
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Pese a las dificultades del proyecto de inshoring, la opinión general es que volveremos a tener una industria de la confección digna de ese nombre en España."
"A descida do desemprego em Portugal registada nos últimos meses, para a qual o governo não consegue encontrar qualquer justificação, tem sido alvo de algum debate, com a sazonalidade a ser uma das razões mais invocadas."O desemprego medido pelo IEFP cai há mais de 6 meses consecutivos e a razão é a sazonalidade? BTW, o jornalista cita os dados do Eurostat. Usando esses dados, até podemos dizer que o desemprego cai há mais de 7 meses consecutivos.
"O facto de muitos turistas apostarem em Maio/ Junho para fazer férias, o que fica evidente pelo aumento das vendas do sector turístico português em Maio último, terá alimentado grande parte da queda do desemprego."Então, não se escreveu que a queda do desemprego em Abril, Maio e Junho, se devia sobretudo às contratações na agricultura para as colheitas de Agosto e Setembro?
"Every entrepreneur eventually faces an overriding challenge in developing a successful product: deciding when to pivot and when to persevere. ... There is no way to remove the human element - vision, intuition, judgment - from the practice of entrepreneurship, nor would that be desirable. ... Companies that cannot bring themselves to pivot to a new direction on the basis of feedback from the marketplace can get stuck in the land of the living dead, neither growing enough nor dying, consuming resources and commitment from employees and other stakeholders but not moving ahead."A pensar nas startups.
"The decision to pivot (Moi ici: De mudar de vida, de mudar de abordagem, de mudar de clientes, de mudar de oferta) is so difficult that many companies fail to make it."Trechos retirados de "The Lean Startup"
"For 127 years, Herdade de Manantiz has been producing olive oil, mostly for the domestic market. But having suffered through recession like thousands of other traditional businesses, it has started overhauling its operations and searching for customers outside Portugal.Trechos retirados de "After a Recession in Portugal, the Tiny Green Fruits of Success"
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In May, the company completed its first overseas sale — to a Brazilian retailer that bought 504 bottles of oil. It is pursuing buyers in Sweden and Japan for its oil made from galega olives, which are unique to Portugal.
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“It’s difficult to change direction for very small companies like ours, but there comes a point when there is really no other choice,” said António Morais de Almeida, who is part of the fifth generation of the family that owns and operates Manantiz.
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“Portugal had been one of the losers in the globalization process because most of our industries were competing directly with the emerging markets,” he said. (Moi ici: Muito bem, não culpar o euro)
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He said that the economic crisis had forced companies to start producing higher-quality products that can be marketed at a higher price. (Moi ici: LOL!!! E os que defendiam que só desvalorizando a moeda ou reduzindo salários se conseguia exportar!!!) Manantiz is a good example of that. Its initial shipment of olive oil to Brazil sold at 60 reais, or nearly $26, a bottle, four times what is sells for in Portugal."
"'The secret of true service innovation is that you must shift the focus away from the service solution and back to the customer. Rather than asking, "How are we doing?" a company must ask, "How is the customer doing?" To achieve this shift in focus, companies must begin to think very differently about how customers define value based on the needs they are trying to satisfy. A proper understanding of these needs enables value to be understood in advance of any particular innovation being created. True service innovation demands that a company expands its horizon beyond existing services and service capabilities and give its attention to the jobs that customers are trying to get done and the outcomes that they use to measure success in completing those jobs."Algo bem na linha do que MacDivitt e Wilkinson escrevem em "Value-Based Pricing":
"Arguably the biggest challenge faking companies at the beginning of their journey was to identify the competitive advantage (or advantages) that were to form their vehicle for VBP. This is a rather scary and quite subtle consequence of a cost-based approach. Intense focus on specification and functionality of products, coupled with a search for a competitive advantage, leads almost inevitably to technological development of some aspect of the specification the seller considers to be important.
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Companies have a good microscope but are using it to look at the wrong thing. If and when a differentiation is found, it is almost certain to be product-based. As time goes on, this becomes harder and harder to do regardless of how much money is spent. Focusing exclusively on product innovation, and spending all their effort and development funds on this, prevents companies from looking in the right direction - namely, understanding what value the customer is looking for.
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The issue is not the product—it is the total offer that matters. Delivery, technical support, laboratory tests, assays, and so on are all seen through the lens of helping to sell the (more or less commoditized) product and not as value-adding elements in their own right. This is where the problem lies. Sellers often consider themselves to be scientists first and salespeople (a long way) second. While sellers can understand the arguments about the total offer, their training and education take them back inexorably to discussions of product technology. Since they are selling on the basis of product specification, they can do nothing else but cave in when a buyer demands a discount on the basis that the product in question is a commodity. This is demoralizing for this kind of salesperson because she can see no way out."
"Um exemplo de como baixar os salários não pode ser uma solução geral"A procura desta cadeia baixou! E esse abaixamento da procura nada tem a ver com os preços, tem tudo a ver com a oferta.
"Sharing has some stark implications for business. Overall demand for first-time purchases may shrink for products that consumers can use communally. The million people carmakers sold to last year can now rent to their neighbors, becoming a de facto million new competitors. Sharing platforms also allow for almost infinite product variation. Hotels, for example, now face hundreds of unique competitors at every price point, offering everything from couches to penthouse suites. The cumulative effect may be to shrink markets and narrow margins."Menos empregos, menos impostos, analistas ludibriados pelas estatísticas, pois continuarão a ler os números da mesma maneira apesar da realidade ter mudado, menos pegada ambiental.
"The real opportunity for product companies will be to evolve an array of services to increase the value that consumers (and those they share with) gain from using their products, for example, building in the ability to disengage a car’s security system via smart phone to allow private car-sharing. This can expand the scope of interaction with consumers, moving from a narrow buy/sell transaction to a long-term relationship over the entire user experience. In the process, companies can gain more data and insight about the usage of their products.E faz todo o sentido.
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Astute companies will have an opportunity to evolve from product/service vendor to trusted advisors who show consumers how to maximize the value of the products and services they are using. Trusted advisors will benefit from powerful economies of scope: the more they know about users, the more helpful they can become."
"As empresas portuguesas de calçado continuam a contribuir positivamente para o incremento do comércio com o exterior. No primeiro semestre deste ano, as exportações de calçado ultrapassaram os 813 milhões de euros, o que traduz um crescimento de 4% face ao mesmo período de 2012. E apesar da retracção na Europa - o principal mercado dos sapatos portugueses -, a indústria conseguiu aumentar as vendas nos principais destinos europeus."Trecho retirado de "Empresas de calçado exportam mais 4% e anulam quebra em Portugal"
"The conventional wisdom, based on Bertrand's result, is to believe that price competition is a much more drastic form of competition than quantity competition. Even if there are few firms on the market, Bertrand's result shows that some form of imperfect competition can lead to marginal cost pricing and thus to social optimality.Trecho retirado de "The end of the Bertrand Paradox?" de Marie-Laure Cabon-Dhersin, Nicolas Drouhin.
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Maybe it's time to have a closer look at sectors where price competition seems to be the rule, and to finally forget the conventional wisdom created by the very special case of Bertrand price competition."
