Curiosidade do dia

"The release also showed the marketing value of no marketing. Typically, to spur sales for high-priority albums, record companies follow Hollywood’s time-tested strategy of pointing consumers — repeatedly, and through every media platform available — to a specific release date in the future, and piggybacking on the promotional might of big consumer brands."

Quando se tem uma ligação directa com os clientes-alvo:

"But at midnight on Thursday, when Beyoncé released her latest album, she did none of those things. Instead, she merely wrote, “Surprise!” to her more than eight million Instagram followers, and the full album — all 14 songs and 17 videos of it — appeared for sale on iTunes.
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The stealth rollout of the album, “Beyoncé,” upended the music industry’s conventional wisdom, and was a smashing success. It sold 365,000 copies in the United States on its first day, according to people with direct knowledge who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss its sales. Depending on how it performed through the weekend, “Beyoncé” will likely have one of the year’s biggest opening sales weeks." 

Mais um sector a precisar de se repensar?

Trecho retirado de "Beyoncé Rejects Tradition for Social Media’s Power"

Value hides

"If you were to study the shareholder returns for the top 1,000 U.S. companies over the past five years, you would discover something very interesting. Look at Figure I.1. 

This is derived from the annual Wall Street Journal “Shareholder Scoreboard.” It reports on shareholder returns for 1,000 of the leading companies listed on U.S. exchanges. In Figure I.1 we show for a range of sectors both the average return for the sector (the shaded bar) and the return for the best and worst company in the sector (the two ends of the I-beam). There is some variation across sectors, but not nearly as much as the variation in company performance within each sector. In fact, in almost every sector, the top-performing company is not 5 or 10 percent better than the worst performer; it’s more like 200, 300, or even 1,000 percent better! So if you accept my premise that value is “hiding” somewhere out there on the competitive landscape—waiting to be discovered and appropriated by the skilled manager—then you either have to make the case that some companies are simply much luckier than others (up to 1,000 percent luckier), or you have to agree with me that those top performers are far better than their competitors at sniffing out value.
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Let me make that same point again in slightly different words. As I do so, keep in mind that I’m not comparing companies in a hot sector with companies in a cool one. I’m comparing apples to apples, mining companies to mining companies, and computer companies to computer companies. Within each industry, there’s an enormous range of performance over a five-year period. Some companies turn in stellar performances. Others go bankrupt."

Trecho retirado de "Where Value Hides" de Stuart Jackson.

Onde competir?

"Wait a minute: The company that’s half as big makes twice as much? How can that be? You’ve already heard the answer: The smaller, more profitable company avoids going head-to-head with the likes of mighty Emerson and GE. It steers most of its investments into segments where (among other things) the giants don’t play. It segments its industry strategically, and puts more eggs into fewer, carefully chosen baskets. As a result, it has a much higher market share in its chosen segments. So yes, market share is good, but only when you get there strategically."

Trecho retirado de "Where Value Hides" de Stuart Jackson.

Conseguirá obter uma sinergia co-evolutiva muito mais poderosa

Um desafio interessante em "Should You Be Thinking More About The Customer… Or Less?".
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Relativamente à frase:

"The truth is that nobody starts a business thinking about the customer.  People start businesses thinking about their dreams."

Quando começo um projecto BSC e avanço para o desenho do mapa da estratégia, a primeira perspectiva a construir é a dos clientes, ou melhor, a das partes interessadas. Contudo, antes de identificar os clientes-alvo, o ecossistema da procura e os pivôs, a rereflexão começa realmente pelo ADN da empresa.
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O que é que temos? O que sabemos fazer bem? Onde e como podemos fazer a diferença? Qual pode ser a batota que podemos fazer para desenvolver uma vantagem competitiva?
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Não comungo da opinião do autor. Sim, a empresa deve ter esse espírito de missão; contudo, se tiver escolhido bem os seus clientes-alvo, conseguirá obter uma sinergia co-evolutiva muito mais poderosa.
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Por outro lado, o autor tem razão quando chama a atenção de que podemos desenhar ecossistemas da procura (scripting markets) onde o cliente efectivamente não é o pivô.

"Don't define your market based on a product"

Via @pauloperes cheguei a esta apresentação de Kaj Storbacka, "Driving Growth by Transforming from Product Sales to Integrated Solutions".
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Uma primeira reflexão:

"It's a really bad starting point to define yourself around product and, specifically to define your market around products
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Today, most companies tend to define themselves around products or, they say, their in a specific industry
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What's the problem with that?
If you define yourself around a product you're pushing yourself against a commodity corner and probably, at the end of the day, the only competitive dimension will be price.
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And if you define yourself around the product, most of the time a key metric will be market share. And there's a lot of evidence that show that product market share in not a very good metric.

Where does growth comes for?"
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"Where to compete" é responsável por dois terços do crescimento enquanto que "How to compete" responde pelo terço restante. Assim é fundamental a definição do mercado.
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Cada vez mais, as empresas avançam por aqui:

Um mundo de oportunidades a abrir-se em tantos e tantos sectores

Primeira citação:

"As exportações que representam 85% das vendas e são dominadas pelo mercado europeu têm beneficiado da subida dos custos de produção na Ásia e do consequente aumento das encomendas feitas em Portugal pelos produtores de café que fornecem chávenas aos seus clientes." 

Segunda citação:

"À boleia da “deschinização” francesa, a Artwear aposta na conceção e produção em Portugal. As canecas e chávenas são produzidas pela Spal e os lápis pela Viarco, por exemplo.
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Segundo os gestores da Artwear, sem fundamentalismos, um dos desígnios da empresa é a sua portugalidade. Um facto que é, aliás, apreciado pelos franceses: “É ordem do Estado francês só contratar a compra de produtos na União Europeia. Eles estão a fazer a ‘deschinização’, não compram nada à China. Nós desenvolvemos um logótipo 100% produzido em Portugal e os franceses pediram-nos para aumentar o tamanho desse logótipo nas embalagens dos produtos”, explicaram Luís Pilar e Duarte Lukas."

Terceira citação:

"China lleva su producción textil a Estados Unidos. Después de tres décadas trasladando la fabricación de artículos textiles de Occidente a Oriente, la deslocalización industrial cambia el sentido. El tejedor chino Keer Group construirá una planta para la producción de hilo de algodón en la localidad de Lancaster County, en Carolina del Sur (Estados Unidos), que dará empleo a 500 trabajadores." 

Curiosidade do dia

"China lleva su producción textil a Estados Unidos. Después de tres décadas trasladando la fabricación de artículos textiles de Occidente a Oriente, la deslocalización industrial cambia el sentido. El tejedor chino Keer Group construirá una planta para la producción de hilo de algodón en la localidad de Lancaster County, en Carolina del Sur (Estados Unidos), que dará empleo a 500 trabajadores."

Trecho retirado de "El tejedor chino Keer Group deslocaliza a Estados Unidos y abre una planta con 500 empleados"

A propósito de ir às causas-raiz

"Chris taught me the difference between single and double-loop learning. Single-loop learning focuses exclusively on actions and outcomes. When we find an outcome we do not like, we tend to revisit and redesign our actions to achieve a better outcome. For instance, when we figure out that stock options do not create the incentives we wish they did, we try deferred stock units instead.
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Double-loop learning does not simply go back to action; it goes further to the theories and thinking that informed that action. It challenges and redesigns the thinking. ... In single-loop mode, we iterate and spin on action, honing and refining without addressing the big questions that can dramatically alter outcomes."

O single-loop learning não põe em causa o sistema, não questiona a sua existência. Promove o tratamento superficial, epidémico, sintomático.
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Trecho retirado de "The pioneering thinking of Chris Argyris"

Acerca da avaliação de pessoas

"it must be a strengths-based system. Current systems are explicitly remedial, built on the belief that to help people get better you must measure them against a series of competency bars, point out where they fall short, and then challenge them to jump higher.
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it must be a system focused on the future. Our current systems are fixated on feedback about the past.
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On another level, though, better performance management dispenses with all this because future-focused coaching is demonstrably a better use of time than past-focused feedback. To accelerate my performance tomorrow, don’t try to grade my personality with feedback from all sides—it will always be hard to give, hard to receive, and net a disproportionately small performance return. Instead, coach me on the few specific work-related activities that I could usefully add to my strengths repertoire tomorrow. Or tell me what skills I should go acquire next week. Or advise me which specific contacts I should seek out next month. None of these will necessarily be easy for me to do, but at least they will be something that I can do. They are in the future. In the new performance system, this is where most of our time and creativity will be focused."

Ao ler isto, lembrei-me logo da carta que Zender pede aos seus alunos no início do semestre. Recordar "to place themselves in the future, looking back, and to report on"

Trecho retirado de "What if Performance Management Focused on Strengths?"

Mongo a entranhar-se

"First 3D Printing Experience Store in Israel"

"Customization & Creation At Your Fingertips.
Unlike 3D printing labs or novelty gift stores, customers at 3D Factory have the opportunity to customize the products – or create their own new products from scratch. A dedicated workstation gives customers the opportunity to use a range of 3D modeling software to create and play around with their own designs. Similarly, customers have the option to send in their files and simply get them printed at the store.
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Interactive Workshops For All Levels.
By hosting workshop events and lectures, 3D Factory plans to foster a fun and interactive learning environment for the complete newcomer to the experienced designer or architect. Industrial designers, science professors, and local studio artists have already approached 3D Factory, looking to connect and collaborate on special events.
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Chance to Take a Desktop 3D Printer Home Right Away.
One of the most appealing aspects of 3D Factory is that customers can purchase a desktop 3D printer and filament material and bring it home right away, as opposed to purchasing online and waiting for delivery.
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Paving the Way for the Future of 3D Printing"

Mongo a entranhar-se...

Sintomático...

Sintomático do estado a que este país chegou, que um primeiro-ministro diga isto:

""Não acreditem nos Governos que vos dizem onde devem investir""

E esta verdade seja considerado um pensamento fora da caixa merecedor de título de jornal "Passos aos empresários: "Não acreditem nos Governos que vos dizem onde devem investir""

Quantas oportunidades estarão por aproveitar?

O que me impressionou mais na leitura de "Fazedor do Ano: Artwear nos maiores museus da Europa" é o parágrafo final:

"E no meio disto tudo há, claro, os artistas, parceiros de negócio, sem os quais tudo seriam brindes e merchandising, mas não de arte. Júlio Pomar, Vieira da Silva, Paula Rego, Amadeu de Sousa Cardoso ou Joana Vasconcelos, por causa de quem tudo começou - os franceses viram o que Luís e Duarte fizeram para a exposição da artista plástica em Versailles e gostaram -, são alguns dos acordos garantidos pela Artwear."

Lemos o artigo, e assistimos a um desfilar de projectos para os museus da Europa e, tudo começou pelo contacto de um cliente.
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Quantas oportunidades estarão por aproveitar?
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Num projecto balanced scorecard a terminar uma das iniciativas passa por libertar tempo, para que os comerciais façam aquilo que é a sua missão, trabalho comercial. Se têm de ocupar parte desse tempo em tarefas que podiam ser feitas por outros, ninguém fará o que só eles podem fazer. Escrevo este trecho a propósito de:

"“Eu e o Duarte, que como costumo dizer, somos desde diretores-gerais a paquetes."

Quando se faz o trabalho de paquete não há tempo para desenvolver trabalho comercial.
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BTW, e isto?

"À boleia da “deschinização” francesa, a Artwear aposta na conceção e produção em Portugal. As canecas e chávenas são produzidas pela Spal e os lápis pela Viarco, por exemplo.
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Segundo os gestores da Artwear, sem fundamentalismos, um dos desígnios da empresa é a sua portugalidade. Um facto que é, aliás, apreciado pelos franceses: “É ordem do Estado francês só contratar a compra de produtos na União Europeia. Eles estão a fazer a ‘deschinização’, não compram nada à China. Nós desenvolvemos um logótipo 100% produzido em Portugal e os franceses pediram-nos para aumentar o tamanho desse logótipo nas embalagens dos produtos”, explicaram Luís Pilar e Duarte Lukas."

Têm de mudar?

Depois da artesã, dos pianos, dos cinemas, das livrarias, agora os jornais. Em "New York Times Raises Subscription Prices Continues to mine brightest spot, circulation".
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Mudam os clientes, muda o contexto... as empresas têm de mudar.
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Têm de mudar de produto? Sim ou não?
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Têm de mudar de prateleira e clientes-alvo? Sim ou não?
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Têm de mudar de job-to-be-done? Sim ou não?
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Têm de mudar de modelo de negócio? Sim ou não?

Curiosidade do dia

"Portugal apresenta oitavo maior crescimento das exportações da UE até Setembro"

"Entre Janeiro e Setembro deste ano, as vendas de mercadorias portuguesas para o exterior aumentaram 4% em termos homólogos, o que situa Portugal como o 8º país entre os 28 da União Europeia onde as exportações mais cresceram neste período."

"Why Segmentation Matters" (parte I)

Foi já há alguns anos que, via Nirmalya Kumar, conheci o caso da Dow e da sua marca low-cost Xiameter.
Agora em "Why Segmentation Matters" de Linda Trevenen encontro mais alguns tópicos sobre o tema:

"In their segmentation of the market, they [Dow] learned that not all customers had the same set of needs. Some required more service than others, some valued innovation more than others, while others were trying to improve the profitability of their own businesses. They also learned that one segment no longer needed the added value of service, innovation, or a broad product assortment of the silicone products they purchased; instead they just wanted the best price.
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Dow had been treating all these customers the same, yet each of four identified segmentss required a different bundle of benefits. It became painfully evident to their managers that they were providing expensive services to some customers who did not even need them. Therein lies the most critical reason why segmentation matters in business - profits can be lost by treating all customers the same in terms of their pricing.
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customer heterogeneity supports the existence of demand-based segments from which firms can generate greater profit by shaping different offerings and prices for segments than by providing the same offering and price to the whole market.
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Instead of offering their products and services at the same prices to all customers, they created different offerings for the needs of the different segments."

E a sua empresa, que segmentação faz?

Continua.

independentes e Mongo

E voltamos ao problema da artesã, dos pianos e dos cinemas.
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O que aconteceu às livrarias?
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Por que é que as pessoas iam ás livrarias?
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Para comprar livros!
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O que é que aconteceu a essas pessoas?
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Passaram a comprar online ou nas grandes cadeias.
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Qual a reacção mais comum dos livreiros tornados obsoletos?
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Uma é "Livreiros independentes avançam com providência cautelar contra FNAC e Bertrand", outra é o tradicional choradinho por apoios, subsídios e programas financiados para financiar a "ligação à máquina".
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A reacção tão francesa portuguesa é esta "Vive la Bookstore!"
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O que acontece em Mongo, no Estranhistão? A paixão, a concentração, têm o seu lugar, "Independent bookstores turn a new page on brick-and-mortar retailing":

"Independent bookstores are not dead. In fact, in some of the country’s most urbane and educated communities, they are making a comeback.
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a new category of hybrid reader (the latest mystery, digital; the latest John Irving, print) and savvy retailers such as the Englands, positioning their stores squarely in the buy-local movement and as a respite from screens.
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The American Booksellers Association, which represents independent bookstores, says its membership — it hit a low of 1,600 in 2008 — has grown 6.4 percent in 2013, to 2,022. Sales were up 8 percent in 2012, and those gains have held this year.
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The indie resurgence became publishing’s central narrative this year.
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Twenty-five years ago, independents were supposed to vanish when Waldenbooks showed up in malls. They were supposed to vanish when Borders and Barnes & Noble came along with endless selection and comfy chairs. They were supposed to vanish when Costco started selling the latest Doris Kearns Goodwin . They were supposed to vanish when Amazon perfected low prices and fast shipments — not just for books but even for rowboats, meaning nobody would ever have to leave the house again to shop."

O serviço prestado por estas livrarias independentes já não é o tradicional:

"“This isn’t just a bookstore. It’s more than that.”"

Que outros serviços uma livraria independente pode oferecer?

Pensamento fossilizado II

O @pauloperes chamou-me a atenção para este artigo que Steve Denning escreveu há cerca de um ano "Efficiency At Any Cost: Economics Made Wrong"
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No artigo, Denning comenta um texto de Barry Schwartz, “Economics Made Easy”, que não passa de uma ode à eficiência, típico da tríade.

"Worshipping efficiency at any cost is not only heartless: it’s wrong.
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What the article is reciting is the mantra that pervaded 20th Century economics and management. It goes way back to Frederick Winslow Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management (1911) which assumed that the efficiency, i.e. cutting costs and saving money, is the be-all and end-all of an organization.
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What the NYT article misses is that improved efficiency by cutting costs is only one of three ways in which a society’s standard of living can improve. There are two other important routes:

• Adding more value to the customer

• Delivering value sooner

The NYT article thus misses Peter Drucker’s foundational insight of 1973: “The only valid purpose of a firm is to create a customer.” A firm does this by offering value to customers, by providing more of it, providing it at lower value and delivering it sooner. Cost-cutting is only one of three dimensions.
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The idea that improving efficiency by lowering costs is the sole goal of a firm became pervasive in the 20th Century, in part because big firms were hierarchical bureaucracies and cutting costs is all that bureaucracies are good for.
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Bureaucracies are not good at continuous innovation and consistently delivering more value to customers. Nor are bureaucracies good at delivering value sooner"

 Este ano, em Fevereiro, já tinha comentado o artigo de Schwartz em "Pensamento fossilizado". É este pensamento fossilizado que domina o mainstream do pensamento económico nas universidades, nas empresas, nos media e nas políticas públicas.

"So bigger is better, right? Not necessarily"

"WHEN IT COMES to operating a successful business—as the common wisdom goes—bigger is better.
Bigger means you have more purchasing power. Bigger means that your fixed costs are spread over a larger base, which—as a rule— helps your profitability. Bigger means that it’s scarier to compete against you, and maybe fewer competitors will venture into your market space. In many cases, bigger means that you’ve successfully acquired or otherwise vanquished many of your competitors, which gives you the opportunity to raise your prices with relative impunity, which means you can spend more on research and development (R&D) and on marketing your product, which means that you’ve created a virtuous circle.
Much of the thinking coming out of universities and consulting firms in the past half century follows these general lines. For the most part, the scholars and consultants have argued that big companies have big advantages vis-à-vis their smaller competitors. Or, conversely, they argue that the little fish must eventually be forced out of the pond.
So bigger is better, right?
Not necessarily. In this chapter, I argue that in many cases bigger is worse. I’m not just talking about conglomerates that compete in multiple industries. I show that even within a specific industry, bigger is not always better. More specifically, I argue that the right definition of “market share” is far more helpful than the wrong definition of market share—even if your resulting market share is smaller as a result."

Um excelente começo para a minha leitura de "Where Value Hides: A New Way to Uncover Profitable Growth For Your Business"

Constância de propósito

"“The most important guideline for a president is to never embark on a new strategic direction as a result of one specific opportunity, no matter how unique and promising the opportunity may seem. Opportunities come and go. Allowing opportunities to impact strategy ensures that the outcome will be a zigzagging strategy. And rest assured that sooner or later the company will zigzag itself into a brick wall.” Henry leaned forward to gently pat Caroline’s hand. “This is the most important lesson I can teach you. You must learn to control your instincts. Don’t be distracted by golden opportunities; too often they turn out to be gilded traps.”"

Também uma razão para o uso que faço das palas como metáfora para a adopção de uma estratégia.

Trechos retirados de "Isn’t It Obvious?" de Eliyahu M. Goldratt

Empresas que não são, vão sendo

Li na diagonal a entrevista "Graça Moura. "Há o risco de a imigração ultrapassar a vida e a mentalidade dos europeus"" e lembrei-me logo do Argo e do seu problema de identidade.
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O Argo partiu levando Jasão e os Argonautas em busca do Tosão de Ouro, conta a lenda que durante a longa viagem, o navio foi alvo de tantas reparações que no final, ao regressar ao porto de partida, já não trazia nenhuma peça original consigo... será que era o mesmo navio?
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Nós não somos, nós vamos sendo. Querer fazer um "freeze" e achar que o que temos hoje é o que temos de impor aos futuros é tão arrogante... e volto à mitologia, Europa era uma princesa fenícia que ficou branca porque usava maquilhagem roubada a Hera... um dia essa maquilhagem vai desaparecer.
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Só peguei nesta entrevista porque se casa com esta citação que encontrei em Garr Reynolds:

"Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow." 

As empresas que abandonam o século XX e o seu vómito industrial e abraçam a arte, o caminho menos percorrido, nunca fazem o "freeze" da sua produção, estão sempre a mudar, a evoluir, a transformarem-se, não são, vão sendo.

"Around the world, mass school systems still do not understand the role of art in developing a child's mind. Yes, they sometimes pay lip service to the importance of art education, and then art is the first thing to go when money is tight."

Um ponto importante da arte na escola é perceber que não há uma solução feita, pronta a cozinhar... a arte tem de nascer de dentro de nós, a arte diferencia-nos e enriquece a comunidade ao quebrar a uniformização das respostas.