Curiosidade do dia

"News reports continue to obsess over the idea that China and other countries might run out of people if they don't increase their birth rates. The implication is that countries won't have enough people to do the necessary work to support a larger population of retirees. (It's worth noting that many of these same people worry about robots taking all the jobs. If it's not obvious that these concerns are 180 degrees opposite then think about it until it is.)
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On net, the more rapid population growth could certainly have a negative impact on living standards in 2050, especially if we consider distribution (a greater supply of labor could mean lower wages). However, even before factoring in the negatives, the potential benefits of a larger ratio of workers to retirees are swamped by the impact of economic growth."

Trechos retirados de "Demographics and Productivity"

No entretanto (parte II)

Parte I.

"“I do think you’ll see some dead unicorns this year”
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“There are a considerable number of unicorns that will become extinct.”
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The most likely scenario is the thing that has been driving growth (and valuations) for these companies ultimately comes home  to roost. And that is negative gross margins.
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And so most of the companies out there who are growing like weeds using a negative gross margin strategy are going to find that the capital markets will ultimately lose patience with this strategy and force them to get to positive gross margins, which will in turn cut into growth and what we will be left with is a ton of flatlined zero gross margin businesses carrying billion dollar plus valuations."

Trechos retirados de "Negative Gross Margins"

Shit Happens! (parte II)

Parte I.

"Hutchinson formalized naturalistic images of the niche of biotic populations and defined the fundamental niche of a population as the hypervolume of environmental space formed by the set of points for which the population's growth rate (fitness) is nonnegative. In other words, the fundamental niche consists of the set of all environmental conditions in which the population can grow or at least sustain its numbers. By extension, the fundamental niche of an organizational form consists of the social, economic, and political conditions that can sustain the functioning of organizations that embody the form.
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If two organizational populations rely on completely different kinds of resources and depend on different kinds of social and political institutions, then their fundamental niches do not intersect. Otherwise, they do intersect, and so it makes sense to measure their similarity in terms of the degree of intersection or overlap.3 Intersection in fundamental niches might be thought of as potential competition. In general, the potential for two populations to compete is proportional to the intersection of their fundamental niches. It follows that two populations compete if and only if their fundamental niches intersect.

When two or more populations with intersecting fundamental niches occupy the same system, the expansion of one population changes the conditions of the others' existence. In the case of competition, the presence of the competing population reduces the hypervolume of environmental space in which another population can sustain itself. Hutchinson coined the term realized niche to refer to the restricted environmental space in which a population's growth rate is nonnegative in the presence of competitors. The realized niche is a subset of the fundamental niche and in most realistic cases it is substantially smaller than the fundamental niche.

Except in the highly unusual case of a population isolated from all competitors, all that can be observed in any empirical setting is the realized niche. Suppose that a pair of populations compete for a resource and that one of them can exclude the other from the full range of overlap of their fundamental niches. In this case, the realized niche of the stronger competitor coincides with the fundamental niche, but the realized niche of the weaker competitor is smaller than its fundamental niche. Interestingly, the two realized niches do not intersect in such cases. It follows from the general principles that the absence of an observed niche intersection does not imply the absence of competition in other portions of fundamental niches."

Continua com os price takers, Sraffa e salário mínimo.
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Trechos retirados de "Dynamics of Organizational Populations - Density, Legitimation, and Competition" de Michael Hannan e Glenn Carroll.

Acerca da criação de valor

"Value is created by the buyer not the seller.
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If buyers rely on their own experiences, then how can any salesperson create value?
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What top sales performers do, almost instinctively, is they connect to the value drivers (some of which may have been un-articulated) of their ideal customers.
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By believing in value creation by salespeople may lead those hungry salespeople down the wrong path especially for small businesses where their sales team is also their marketing team.  Possibly the best lesson from this marketing and consequently sales research is to just listen to what is being said instead of presuming you as the salesperson already know what your sales prospect needs or wants."

Conhece os value drivers dos seus clientes-alvo?
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E sabe quem são os seus clientes-alvo?
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Qual é a sua proposta de valor para eles?
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Trechos retirados de "Value Creation – The Truth Leaks Out"

"Remember, nobody ever wants to pay for compliance"

Nuno!

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Tantos concorrentes ainda sem terem visto a luz:

"If you are selling a tax return, forget about the tax return. What does the customer actually need from us today to make their business better? They may need a compliance document required by the government, but we all know it offers them no real value. What they want to pay for is something that's going to help them long term. That's why it's a lot easier to sell and provide tax planning over tax compliance because a customer can see the value.
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Remember, nobody ever wants to pay for compliance."

Esta é a verdade:

"If firms don't change their pricing model, accountants will either have 25,000 customers or they won't make any money. The choice is yours.
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That said, the bulk of the profession isn't there yet. Value pricing a business is disruptive to most CPA firms' core management and cultural philosophies. It disrupts how we manage our employees and our sense of control. That creates vulnerability, which is terrifying to those who believe in "old school" time and billing. It completely changes how we interact with our teams and our customers. It requires a new level of trust and authenticity -- which is terrifying to a traditional CPA firm because firm management loses a sense of control."

BTW, o mundo da qualidade ainda está mais atrasado...

Trechos retirados de "Value Pricing: Is Your Firm Ready?"

Curiosidade do dia

Somos, desde os tempos em que fundámos a Quercus*, inimigos figadais da praga dos eucaliptos.

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Saudamos, por isso, este anúncio "PS e Verdes acordam travar expansão do eucalipto".

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No entanto, causa alguma perplexidade este desejo:

"No parágrafo dedicado ao tema, a posição do PS/PEV visa "aumentar a produção e a produtividade das fileiras florestais", mas "através do aumento das áreas de montado de sobro e de azinho e de pinheiro bravo".
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A meta é, também, "travar" a "expansão da área de eucalipto, designadamente através da revogação da lei que liberaliza a plantação de eucaliptos, criando um novo regime jurídico"."

Como é possível aumentar a produtividade florestal ao mesmo tempo que se trava o eucalipto?

*Há muitos anos que não me revejo no papel das Quercus deste mundo.

"Estávamos cheios de encomendas e... a empresa fechou

A propósito da argumentação usada neste artigo "Sindicato da Hotelaria denuncia fecho de hotéis a norte sem "nenhuma razão"":

"O Sindicato da Hotelaria do Norte denunciou hoje um agravamento da situação social no setor, com diversos despedimentos coletivos e encerramentos na região, considerando não haver "nenhuma razão" para tal porque a atividade "vive uma boa situação económica".
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 "requereu insolvência e mandou para o desemprego seis trabalhadores, quando o hotel mantinha uma boa ocupação".
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Para o sindicato, não há, contudo, "nenhuma razão" para esta situação, "já que o setor vive uma boa situação económica: 2013 foi o melhor ano turístico de sempre para Portugal, 2014 foi ainda melhor e todos os indicadores apontam que 2015 será melhor que 2014"."

Recordar:

• CONCENTRAR uma organização no que é essencial (Julho de 2010) 
• Qual a margem de cada cliente? (Junho de 2011)
• "It Isn’t Illegal to Be Stupid" (parte III) (Maio de 2015)

Recordar que existe mais variabilidade de rentabilidade dentro de um sector económico do que entre sectores económicos (aqui, aqui e aqui por exemplo). Por exemplo, neste documento do Banco de Portugal de Outubro de 2014, "Análise do sector do turismo", pode encontrar-se esta figura:

Em 2013 30% das PME do sector do turismo com EBITDA negativo...

Mongo nas galinhas?

Em linha com a evolução das cervejas, talvez aqui, "Panera Bread Joins Rush To Cage-Free Eggs, But Freedom Costs The Chicken Farmer", esteja matéria-prima para o surgimento de mais produtores especialistas e de serviços de certificação da qualidade de vida dos animais.

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Um gráfico a descrever Mongo (parte II)

Parte I.

Impressionante esta memória de 1979:

"To create high fences around their businesses, brewers couple brand identification with economies of scale in production, distribution, and marketing"(1)

Esta era a perspectiva de quem estava no Normalistão.
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O que se passa em Mongo?

"Craft brewers accounted for 11 percent of U.S. beer production volume in 2014, up from 5 percent in 2010,
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Craft brewers also grew annual sales to $19.6 billion last year, a 22 percent increase between 2013 and 2014."(2)

 Um mundo completamente diferente.
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(1) - Trecho retirado de "How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy" de Michael Porter
(2) - Trechos retirados de "Why Craft Brewers Are Winning the Beer Wars"

Acerca da importância do foco (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

"THE STRATEGIC PURPOSE OF SACRIFICEHmm, Sacrifice. Isn’t this just clear prioritization by any other name? The difference between Sacrifice and prioritization is that the latter allows secondary and tertiary targets. Sacrifice means not doing these secondary and tertiary things at all.
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Sacrifice’s value, therefore, is not simply one of concentration of marketing forces externally; it also has an internal value similar to hardpruning a plant: all the energy, all the dynamism in the company becomes devoted to the primary goal.
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1. Sacrifice concentrates the internal and external expressions ofidentity by eliminating activities that might dilute it.
2. Sacrifice allows the creation of strong points of difference by changing the organization’s mind-set from pursuing weak universal appeal to a more intense, narrower appeal (and thereby avoiding becoming the ‘‘mush in the middle’’).
3. Sacrifice generates critical mass for the communication of that identity and those differences by stripping away other secondary marketing activity. This is central to maximizing the Challenger’s consumer presence, given its more limited marketing resources.
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While the Brand Leader perceives its currency to be mass appeal and can afford the dilution of preference that creates because it is compensated for by the convenience of its ubiquity and distribution, Challengers need more extreme actions and gestures - they need to create a greater proportion of ‘‘committed’’ and ‘‘enthusiastic’’ users through real differentiation.
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Challenger currency is therefore not means but extremes: top-box preference scores or nothing.
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For any brand, positioning is Sacrifice; for a Challenger, it is the path to growth. What it chooses not to do defines who and what it really is."

Trechos retirados de "Eating the Big Fish" de Adam Morgan.

Sensação do dia

Curiosidade do dia

• "TAP. Onde o PS vai buscar dinheiro para viabilizar a empresa"
• "Transportadora aérea da Estónia declara falência"

Shit Happens!

Ainda a propósito da subida, e existência, de um salário mínimo, li num comentário ao texto "A subida do salário mínimo" a seguinte expressão:

"essa noção de “limpeza” faz lembrar a eugenia, não faz sentido nenhum, mais vale chamar-lhe: barreira à entrada a trabalhadores e micro-empresários , proteccionismo das grandes empresas"

Aquela palavra, eugenia, tem andado na minha cabeça desde então. Esta manhã, numa zona industrial, enquanto fazia tempo caminhando - e via mais um cão de caça abandonado - recuperei uma frase de Valikangas:

"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."

Já repararam que com o cataclismo que dizimou os dinossauros foram os mamíferos que triunfaram? Não estavam os dinossauros mais bem preparados para o mundo que existia?
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Sim mas...
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Shit Happens!
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E quando algo de imprevisto acontece... de nada serve ser campeão da exploitation quando o que se quer é capacidade de exploration.
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Já repararam que o modelo seguido pelas empresas mais ineficientes do sector do calçado, quando o que estava na moda era vender minutos, foi o modelo que emergiu e triunfou quando a produção nacional chocou contra a globalização na produção e contra os centros comerciais na distribuição?
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É impressão minha ou há uma dose de arrogância divina nesta capacidade de decidir, como Grande Planeador, quem tem direito a viver e quem tem de ser condenado?

Um gráfico a descrever Mongo

Já há algum tempo que tinha para folhear e procurar algo de interessante em "The Dynamics of Strategy - Mastering Strategic Landscapes of the Firm" de Duncan Robertson e Adrián Caldart.
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Passei à frente do primeiro capítulo, li alguns trechos do segundo e, de repente sou abalroado por uma figura no terceiro:

Do lado direito, a evolução prevista com o modelo do século XX: escala, volume, eficiência, consolidação.
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Do lado esquerdo, a reacção de Mongo... a explosão de pequenas unidades que não apostam na competição pelo preço mas pela diferenciação, autenticidade e relação com tribos orgulhosas e teimosas.
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Recordar a P&G e a Alcoa em "Mongo não é um mundo gigantes-friendly (parte II)" e o recente caso da HP em "Growing old, but not together".
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Recordar "Porque não somos plankton ..."
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E recordei Porter e a cerveja... onde foi? Tenho de investigar.
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Continua.

Acerca da importância do foco (parte II)

Parte I.
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Entretanto em "Eating the Big Fish" de Adam Morgan encontro todo um capítulo dedicado à importância da renúncia para as PME, segundo uma vertente diferente:

"In the world of clutter and information saturation that consumers are faced with, the greatest danger facing a brand is not rejection, but indifference.
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the solution to indifference for a Challenger lies in both a strong identity and, through this, a strong relationship with its consumer base. Inevitably, this means that success for the Challenger brand comes from considering very carefully what it is going to Sacrifice in order to create this relationship and identity. Indeed, the ability to sacrifice and concentrate one’s focus, voice, and actions more narrowly is one of the few advantages a Challenger has. Having to fight a war on two fronts weakens the ability to do either really well and Brand Leaders have to fight on many fronts at once.
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Challengers recognize, ... that in order to break through, their only currency with the consumer is going to be strong preference. If they achieve simply weak preference or parity preference, all the other attributes the market leader has on its side will swing the vote in its favor: ubiquity, social acceptability, salience, convenience. And to create that strong preference, we as Challengers accept that we will need to do things that reach out and bind certain groups of people very strongly to us. And we will also accept that, in order to create those stronger relationships, these same actions or behaviors may (and probably will) leave other groups cold.
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The Sacrifices a Challenger makes do not lie in incidentals to the business, such as minor line extensions, a research budget, or the assistant public relations manager. They are instead fundamentals: distribution, messages, audiences, even issues like promotional pricing, or our deliberate lack of it (T-box, unlike the rest of the ready-to-wear category, never offers seasonal discounts). The overriding objective is to have significant impact of the right kind on your core audience, to achieve critical mass for your voice.
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Although ubiquity in distribution is good for establishment brands like Coca-Cola and AT&T, it is dangerous for Challenger brands looking to create a stronger affinity with a more focused target, be they self-styled fashion rebels, surfing wannabes, or weekend mountain bikers.
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there is no escape: Strong brands are necessarily simple and single-minded in their communication, even if it means sacrificing what might seem to be important secondary messages.
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As a Challenger, we have to use our more limited resources (people, time, passion, energy, money) against the few things that will really make a difference, and this means being very clear on both who we are and what we are going to Sacrifice to promote that identity. Focus on the products, experiences, and marketing that will genuinely break through."

Assim, concentração não só por causa do encaixe do mosaico estratégico (recordar Terry Hill) mas também para reforçar a mensagem de marketing, mas também para criar uma identidade forte.
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Continua.

Workshop Balanced Scorecard Porto - (Parte III)

Parte I.e parte II.

2. A essência da estratégia

O BSC é uma boa ferramenta para formular e divulgar uma estratégia.

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Como pensar estratégia numa PME?

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Considerar os princípios da effectuation, tendo em conta a crónica escassez de recursos. Qual o ADN da empresa? Que estratégias emergentes são possíveis?

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Estratégia é escolher. Sim, mas dizer escolher apenas é perigoso. Quem escolhe muitas vezes não tem consciência de que escolher significa dizer sim a umas coisas e renunciar a muitas outras coisas. Por isso, estratégia é renunciar. Recordar o teste do algodão.

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Para formular uma estratégia, não começar pela análise SWOT. Pontos fortes e fracos são classificações subjectivas feitas tendo em conta posicionamentos estratégicos não conscientes ou não verbalizados. Dessa forma coloca-se a questão: o que apareceu primeiro, o ovo ou a galinha.

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Tendo em conta o recenseamento do que somos, da nossa experiência e dos resultados que geramos na vida dos clientes e na contabilidade da PME, que factores internos podem ser considerados fortes e que factores externos podem ser considerados oportunidades? Que estratégias possíveis emergem dessa conjugação?

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Estratégia é foco, estratégia é concentração. Estratégias bem sucedidas geram admiradores mas também geram inimigos!

Curiosidade do dia

Estratégia é a arte do sacríficio.
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Estratégia é renunciar a umas coisas e optar por outras.
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São escolhas que se fazem por quem tem autoridade e legitimidade para o fazer.
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Agora, mais do que nunca, convém recordar "Procurem pelos sacrificados":

"da próxima vez que um político, da oposição ou da situação, apresentar uma estratégia, procurem pelos sacrificados, ainda que estejam escondidos."

Por que nunca se fala dos sacrificados?

"incorporate pricing strategy early"

"Companies that incorporate pricing strategy early on are more likely to maximize the revenue potential and value of their products.
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Companies typically invest in pricing and value management strategies late in the product development lifecycle, in the period just before the product launch.
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Many companies believe product development means adding a new feature to an existing product. Incremental development has its place when pricing products, but companies often default to cost-based pricing. Manufacturing cost and incremental customer value generated by the improvement cannot necessarily define the optimal price."

Trechos retirados de "Pricing Is NOT An Afterthought"

Satisfação dos clientes? Para reflexão!

"I’ve always felt uncomfortable about concepts such as ‘satisfaction,’ ‘loyalty’ and ‘experience’ because these are emotions and emotions are largely irrational.
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UK Which Magazine is a consumer champion, and regularly creates a league table of the brands that customers love and hate the most. Cheap flights airline Ryanair is typically the most hated,
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Ryanair—the airline everyone loves to hate—has had phenomenal passenger growth over the years. In 2015, it is estimated it will carry 90 million passengers. People are far more loyal to Ryanair than they are to the brands they claim they are most loyal to.
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We need to measure and predict what people actually do rather than what they say they do. Humans are often emotional, irrational, egotistical and vain. They can have an image of themselves that is far from the reality of how they actually live.
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What if the reality is that customers are having a very poor experience as they interact with your brand, but they have deluded themselves into thinking they’re very satisfied? Wouldn’t it be worth knowing that just in case the delusion wears off?"

Trechos retirados de "Customer satisfaction is not a good indicator of customer behavior"

Um exemplo de Ingenuidade Inteligente

Um exemplo de uma empresa que conheci e que aprendi a respeitar:

"a AMF Safety Shoes, empresa de Guimarães especializada em calçado de proteção e segurança, que fabrica sob a marca Toworkfor"

Reparem neste pormenor:

"A AMF começou por se dedicar ao calçado de moda. Em 2005, percebeu as potencialidades do calçado técnico e de segurança e dedicou-se em exclusivo a essa área de negócio. Desde então, a faturação passou de um para 10 milhões de euros e o número de trabalhadores cresceu de 22 para 125."

Conhecem os modelos da AMF?

Quem diria que são calçado de segurança?

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É um exemplo da tal Ingenuidade Inteligente e da aplicação dos princípios da effectuation (começar com o que se tem à mão, e se a vida nos dá limões... façamos limonada).

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Ingenuidade Inteligente porque gente vinda de fora do ramo, sem estar algemada a ideias da categoria, teve a ousadia de fazer sapatos de segurança diferentes.

Trechos retirados de "Toworkfor. Calçado português ganha tração com sola Michelin"

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BTW, sempre gostei da versão anterior da marca, 2Work4 em vez de Toworkfor.