Subir preços (parte I)

Sabem como aprecio as imperfeições no mercado, como procuro induzir as PME a apostarem na concorrência imperfeita. Se a concorrência é perfeita não há diferenciação, se não há diferenciação a competição é pelo preço. Se a competição é pelo preço uma PME vai ter de praticar preços mais baixos, vai ter de se contentar com rentabilidades mais baixas e, vai correr o risco de erosão mais ou menos violenta da sua base de clientes, porque sempre aparece outro concorrente capaz de baixar o preço mais e mais.

"Competitiveness is closely linked to knowledge of the external environment and of the mechanisms that lead to some imperfections in the market. In efficient markets, which are characterized by perfect competition, the homogeneous distribution of resources and information would not allow any real competitive advantage. On the contrary, the edge of a firm over its rivals emerges when the market is imperfect. To achieve a competitive advantage, a firm must have firm knowledge of its own skills and resources, the environment and the industry in which it operates, and the internal and external sources of competitive advantage. To maintain a competitive edge, a firm must implement mechanisms of isolation (barriers), ensure that resources are not imitable, and develop dynamic capabilities.
Although the probability that a firm will succeed is related to business strategy, there is no magical “right strategy.”[Moi ici: E as estratégias são sempre transientes. O mundo muda e aquilo que funcionava antes deixa de funcionar depois] Different strategies are developed in response to different goals, firms, and competitive contexts."

O que é que a sua empresa faz para, deliberadamente, criar imperfeições no mercado a seu favor? Não estará na altura de nos contactar? Talvez possamos ajudá-la a fazer batota, a criar diferenciação que alavanca uma imperfeição que pode funcionar como vantagem competitiva.

Não é por acaso que assinamos como: Promotores da concorrência imperfeita e dos monopólios informais.

Trecho retirado de "Business Strategies and Competitiveness in Times of Crisis - A Survey on Italian SMEs" de Laura Gavinelli.

Curiosidade do dia

Neste dia em que tanta e tanta gente louva a memória de um ditador sanguinário vale a pena reler:

"The Intellectual Yet Idiot is a production of modernity hence has been accelerating since the mid twentieth century, to reach its local supremum today, along with the broad category of people without skin-in-the-game who have been invading many walks of life. Why? Simply, in most countries, the government’s role is between five and ten times what it was a century ago (expressed in percentage of GDP). The IYI seems ubiquitous in our lives but is still a small minority and is rarely seen outside specialized outlets, think tanks, the media, and universities — most people have proper jobs and there are not many openings for the IYI.
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The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests, particularly if they are “red necks” or English non-crisp-vowel class who voted for Brexit. When plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the IYI uses the term “uneducated”. What we generally call participation in the political process, he calls by two distinct designations: “democracy” when it fits the IYI, and “populism” when the plebeians dare voting in a way that contradicts his preferences.
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The IYI has been wrong, historically, on Stalinism, Maoism, GMOs, Iraq, Libya, Syria, lobotomies, urban planning, low carbohydrate diets, gym machines, behaviorism, transfats, freudianism, portfolio theory, linear regression, Gaussianism, Salafism, dynamic stochastic equilibrium modeling, housing projects, selfish gene, election forecasting models, Bernie Madoff (pre-blowup) and p-values. But he is convinced that his current position is right."

Trechos retirados de "The Intellectual Yet Idiot"

E a sua empresa, também é curiosa?

"And this is my problem with the cognitive sciences and the advice world generally. It’s built on the premise that we are chess masters who make decisions, for good or ill. But when it comes to the really major things we mostly follow our noses. What seems interesting, beautiful, curious and addicting?
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Have you ever known anybody to turn away from anything they found compulsively engaging?
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We don’t decide about life; we’re captured by life. In the major spheres, decision-making, when it happens at all, is downstream from curiosity and engagement. If we really want to understand and shape behavior, maybe we should look less at decision-making and more at curiosity. Why are you interested in the things you are interested in? Why are some people zealously seized, manically attentive and compulsively engaged?"

E penso nos fragilistas e nas suas decisões.

Trecho retirado de "Does Decision-Making Matter?"

"despedir é sempre resultado de uma maldade ou de preguiça da gestão" (parte VI)

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

"The headlines are replete with stories of organizations that have pursued higher volume at the expense of quality. (Think, for instance, of the rough patch Toyota hit in 2007.) Such behavior “confuses fat with muscle, and busy-ness with economic accomplishment,” Peter Drucker wrote.
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Drucker understood the importance of market standing; if an enterprise commands too tiny a share of a given industry, he warned, it “will eventually become marginal.” Yet he also recognized that there are situations in which being small is what’s most effective.
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“Neither ‘big is better’ nor ‘small is beautiful’ makes much sense,” Drucker explained. “Neither elephant nor mouse nor butterfly is, in itself, ‘better’ or ‘more beautiful.’ Size follows function.”
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Done right, shrinking can be immensely beneficial. Like a fruit tree that needs to be pruned, some organizations must get smaller in order to grow the right way."

 Ás vezes, encolher é uma condição primeira para mais tarde retomar um trajectória de crescimento mais saudável, mais segura, mais promissora.

Trecho retirado de "Shrinking your way to success"

Papéis de uma estratégia

O papel da estratégia bem resumido:

"Strategy serves as a link between an organization, with its goals and values, resources and skills, structure and organizational systems, and the external environment, with its competitors, customers, and suppliers. At the same time, it is a model or a guideline that gives coherence to the decisions made by the enterprise or the individual.
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Often, the situation in which the decision-maker makes decisions is characterized by limited rationality and knowledge of the problem and of the existing options.
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Three main roles can be identified for strategy: it helps to simplify the decision-making process, to set goals, and to coordinate the actions to be undertaken to reach these goals."

Simplifica o processo de tomada de decisão porque enquadra as decisões a tomar permitindo uma resposta intuitiva a uma dinâmica externa.
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Ajuda a estabelecer objectivos que façam sentido para orientar o caminho para o futuro desejado e para reconhecer que se chegou, ou não, a esse futuro desejado.
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E coordena as acções a tomar, permitindo coordenar pessoas e recursos através de iniciativas alinhadas que transformam a realidade, que ajudam a formar o mosaico de trade-offs que dificultam a sua cópia.

Trecho retirado de "Business Strategies and Competitiveness in Times of Crisis - A Survey on Italian SMEs" de Laura Gavinelli.

O regresso da indústria à Europa (parte II)

Recordando "O regresso da indústria à Europa"

"É oficial: as pequenas e médias empresas (PME) portuguesas registaram em 2015 o segundo ano consecutivo de resultados positivos na criação de valor e de emprego e parecem ter colocado um ponto final na crise que atingiu o seu auge em 2012. No ano passado, de acordo com o relatório europeu sobre o estado das PME, o valor acrescentado aumentou 5,2% e o número de novos postos de trabalho cresceu 2,4%.
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Uma análise detalhada da origem do crescimento do valor acrescentado das PME nacionais mostra essas diferenças. Os sectores que mais contribuíram para o desempenho positivo foram a manufactura e o comércio a retalho (57% do total).
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A manufactura teve também um peso superior a 30% na criação de emprego líquido em Portugal no ano passado. O que merece uma referência especial no relatório da Comissão Europeia porque Portugal foi o único país fora do bloco de Leste a registar esse desempenho."

Recordar esta Curiosidade do dia e considerar estes números do IEFP:

Comparando o número de desempregados registados em Outubro de 2013 com os registados em Outubro de 2016 temos:

• O desemprego na "Indústria, energia e água e construção" caiu mais de 43%
• O desemprego nos "Serviços" caiu pouco mais de 26%

Trechos retirados de "PME portuguesas começam a dar sinais de que o pior já passou"

Curiosidade do dia

"Sucessivamente o que temos visto é que a Europa não tem sido uma protecção para os riscos da globalização e, sobretudo no caso da Zona Euro, esta reduziu, em vez de alargar, o campo das soluções".

Elisa Ferreira faz-me recordar "Acerca da destruição criativa":

"The ironic point of Schumpeter’s iconic phrase is this: societies that try to reap the gain of creative destruction without the pain find themselves enduring the pain but not the gain."" 

Gente que sonha com o dia em que toda a economia possa ser tratada como a produção leiteira: metida numa redoma e apaparicada com subsídios ... até à morte.
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Senhora, siga em frente, saia da torre de marfim e visite a realidade, as vítimas da globalização em Portugal já deram a volta e já estão num outro nível do jogo e a beneficiar do mundo pós-pico da globalização.

Trecho retirado de "Elisa Ferreira: Nem a Europa nem o euro nos protegeram dos riscos da globalização"

As doenças da inovação (parte IV)

Parte I, parte II e parte III.

As inovações zombie:

"Undead. This category of product should never be released, because it comes back to haunt you, like a ghost or zombie. “They come in two varieties: Either they're the wrong answer to the right question; or an answer to a question no one cares about. Either way, you should never have developed these products. Undead failures teach us that some well-intentioned, marvelously engineered new products should never be brought to life,”
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How to avoid the undead: Undead products happen when proponents wildly overstate customer appeal and don’t segment the customer base effectively. “Had these firms asked customers whether and what they’d be willing to pay for their inventions before drafting the engineering plans, and had they identified the market size by segment and who would be willing to pay the most and the least for it, they would have reformulated their products to meet an acceptable price. Or, finding there is no acceptable price, or that the market size is too small, they would have scrapped the product altogether before they incurred too much financial damage,”"

Para reflexão

“We spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do. We don’t spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop.”

“The first thing to do to attain tomorrow is to slough off yesterday.”

"96% of unhappy #customers don’t complain, however 91% of those will simply leave and never come back."

Roubado no Twitter

Encaixem lá mais isto

Depois de "Encaixem lá mais estes elementos" encontrei:

• ViniPortugal prevê fechar o ano com exportações perto dos 737 milhões de euros

"Apesar da queda acentuada no mercado angolano, Jorge Monteiro estima que o valor das exportações deste ano seja idêntico ao de 2015 devido ao crescimento em mercados alternativos e ao aumento do preço médio.
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"Em quase todos os mercados estratégicos estamos a crescer e isso é o que nos tem permitido encontrar mercados alternativos ao de Angola. Isto significa que o setor dos vinhos tem uma resiliência e uma dinâmica bastante elevada, pois não é fácil perder 70 milhões de euros em dois anos num mercado e ir buscá-los a outros", evidenciou."

• Exportações do setor avícola cresceram dez vezes na última década

"as exportações avícolas cresceram dez vezes em valor entre 2005 e 2015"

Ainda acham que é por causa do euro?

Estratégia - as bases que todos os dias se esquecem

Pelos vistos a TAP (aqui e aqui) não é a única, recomendo a leitura de "Quit Chasing Every Customer!":

"United Airlines announced last week a new cheap fare that does not allow ticket holders to carry on any luggage. Their reasoning is they want to attract customers who are now attracted to the ultra low fare airlines like Spirit.
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Let me call United’s decision what I believe it is… STUPID!
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United is trying to attract a segment of the flying public they feel they aren’t attracting now.   On the surface it sounds logical, but what they’ve done now is take their basic product and segment it enough to attract everyone.
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The idea is stupid, because for the increased revenue they might get, they are willing to put all of their other revenue at risk.  We maximize our opportunities when we do what we do best and that means not trying to do it all.
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We maximize product when we know who our customer is and stick to taking care of them in the best possible manner.
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How this concept is lost on somebody like United Airlines blows me away. Yes they can do whatever they want, but I’ll say they are risking their core business.  They are thinking they can add a couple of pennies to the bottom line, but fail to realize they risk the dollars they already have."

Curiosidade do dia

"Modern day economists argue that the reason why economies were poor in the past was that absolutist monarchs undermined property rights (reneging on debt and forcibly extracting wealth from minority groups), and that the state too heavily regulated the economy, including granting monopoly privileges to guilds and international trading companies, all of which limited the incentives and ability of people to buy and sell goods freely. The result was that people lacked the incentive to produce, invest and invent — economic growth was thereby hampered."

Trecho retirado de "What Can Ancient Rome Teach Us About Economics?"

JTBD, tão bom (parte II)

6:16 - If there's no struggle there's no progress
6:50 - The struggle is the thing that opens your mind
7:26 - o sumo de 10 entrevistas a quem mudou, porque tinha uma "luta" interior, é mais precioso que mil inquéritos

As doenças da inovação (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

Mais uma doença:

"Hidden Gem. Hidden gems are products that a company should have developed, but didn’t because it goes against the grain of what it normally offers.
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How to harness hidden gems: The big miss with hidden gems lies in failing to recognize the value and often disruptive power they represent. “
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Your company may have hidden gems lying around if you are going through any of these inflection points:

• Changes in business model

• Disruption in your industry

• Differentiation of an existing commodity business A change from selling a product to a service

• A shift from offline to online business

• A move from analog to digital

• A switch from hardware to software"

 Aquele "A switch from hardware to software" faz lembrar o "É meter código nisso" que usamos aqui no blogue com referência.

Acerca da produtividade

Ando a escrever sobre isto há anos:

"But ‘productivity’ is off-kilter: the original and subliminal meaning is the rate of output per unit of input, and which implicitly stresses increasing output. As I recently commented at a dinner party, the term ‘productivity’ has a bit of barbed wire in its deeper associations.
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We aren’t really designing tools or practices to increase output, per se, despite using the term ‘productivity’ so liberally. We are really seeking to improve outcomes, which is something different altogether. And that distinction is critical, because it opens the door to incorporating innovation, creativity, and the emergent value of people cooperating toward mutual ends."

Por exemplo "Acerca da produtividade, mais uma vez (parte I)" e "Actualizem o documento por favor."

Trecho inicial retirado de "Progressivity, not Productivity"

Encaixem lá mais estes elementos

Depois de "O regresso da indústria à Europa" encaixem lá mais estes elementos:

• O que é que Portugal tem? Mais sabor e cor
• Horticultores da Póvoa de Varzim registam “um dos melhores anos de sempre”

Recordar o Mar del Plástico e a joalharia.

Imaginem que começamos uma promoção, como a do calçado, criamos marcas portuguesas e começamos a lidar com a distribuição... imaginem só o potencial de subida na escala de valor.

Imaginem se tivéssemos um governo antifragilista o quão longe poderíamos ir... a culpa não é do euro, é das políticas internas que nos derrotam.

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Como ele, Jaime Silva, se ri:

Sempre fui um defensor de Jaime Silva mesmo quando o partido que apoiava o seu governo o criticava.

Curiosidade do dia

"Há quem ainda não tenha percebido. Quem nos vê sempre sob pressão fiscal, a crescer por via das exportações, imagina que estamos na mesma. Mas não estamos. António Costa tem razão: isto mudou. Durante o ajustamento, Passos governou para todos e para ninguém em especial. A austeridade foi transversal, perdoando apenas, na sua incidência directa, os rendimentos mais baixos. Quase toda a gente tinha razão de queixa do governo, que pareceu frequentemente sozinho. António Costa evitou essa situação. Redistribuiu o esforço de austeridade, de modo a poupar as classes de que podia esperar votos, como os funcionários públicos e os pensionistas ricos. Costa e a sua maioria de esquerda “segmentaram” a sociedade portuguesa, como dizem os comerciais: dividiram os portugueses em grupos, e governam a favor de alguns, por sinal aqueles que dispõem de mais garantias e rendimentos. É esta a sua verdadeira “habilidade”: ter identificado os clientes certos para quem governar."

Trecho retirado de "Porque é que Costa é hábil, e Passos não?"

Tendências nas estratégias produtivas na Europa

"How have the competitive priorities of European manufacturers changed over the last 20 years? We investigate this question by conducting a longitudinal analysis of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey database, holding datasets from 1992, 1996, 2000, 2005, 2009 and 2013. We highlight five trends in the data. First, quality [Moi ici: Qualidade aqui não é ausência de defeitos é: mais atributos] and dependability remain the highest competitive priorities. Second, cost appears to be the most fluctuating competitive priority, and companies seem more concerned with costs during times of economic decline. Third, in general, service seems to be on a decline, but an increase in delivery speed offsets this tendency. Fourth, flexibility and innovation is gaining relative importance. Fifth, sustainability is among the least important competitive priorities and discontinues its growth trend in relative importance.

Trechos retirados de "Trends in Manufacturing Strategies: A Longitudinal Investigation of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey" de Torbjørn H. Netland e Jan Frick publicado em "International Manufacturing Strategy in a Time of Great Flux"

Planear a monitorização e avaliação

"Planning, monitoring and evaluation are at the heart of a learning-based approach to management. Achieving collaborative, business/environmental or personal goals requires effective planning and follow-through. The plan is effectively a “route-map” from the present to the future. To plan a suitable route you must know where you are (situation analysis) [Moi ici: Desempenho hoje] and where you want to go [Moi ici: Desempenho futuro desejado, as metas] (establish goals and identify outcomes). Only then can appropriate action plans be developed to help achieve the desired future.

Planning and monitoring as a roadmap
However, because the future is uncertain, our action plans must be adaptive and allow continually for “learning by doing”.
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there are two sets of monitoring plans needed. Results monitoring focusses on whether you are getting where you want to go, [Moi ici: Indicadores de resultados, indicadores de consequências no balanced scorecard. Perspectivas financeiras e de clientes] while process monitoring focusses on how efficiently you are geting there.[Moi ici: Indicadores da perspectiva interna e da de recursos e infraestruturas e plano de actividades das iniciativas estratégicas] Indicators in this regard may be either qualitative or quantitative, and a combination of the two is often best. An evaluation is like a good story, it needs some (qualitative) anecdotal evidence to put the lesson in context, and some (quantitative) facts and figures that reinforce the message.

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Motivation for change = understanding + ability + imperative ()
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Worldwide there is a trend towards an increased use of indicators to monitor development and track progress. Indicators quantify and simplify phenomena, and help us understand and make sense of complex realities. To be most meaningful, a monitoring and evaluation program should provide insights into cause-and-effect relationships between environmental or socio-economic stressors and the anticipated ecosystem responses and subsequent social and economic outcomes."

Trechos retirados de "Planning monitoring & evaluation – closing the loop"

As doenças da inovação (parte II)

Parte I.

Outra doença da inovação tem uma prima que anda muito em voga em Portugal na economia:

"Minivations. Sometimes, companies will create the right product for the right market. The only catch: The company or entrepreneur didn’t have the courage to charge the right price, and as a result, the product is under-monetized. If you evaluate the product’s sales versus its potential, and it gets a C+, that’s a minivation.
“Everyone knows that they could have done better, but they just claim it as a success because it still worked.
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How to catch minivations: Look for minivations early. It’s key to watch your team’s attitude before and after the product launches. “Some early warning signs may be that your team seems comfortable checking the box and lowballing on targets.
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If the majority of deals are going through the pipeline without any pushback on price, you may have underpriced it. Track the number of price escalations, as well as the length of the sales cycle against historical norms. It will give you more hard evidence that something new is occurring, which you can then address.”"

Quando um produto se vende muito bem, com pouco esforço, é porque muito dinheiro ficou em cima da mesa. Os clientes reconhecem o valor e reconhecem a pechincha.

O valor líquido capturado pelo fornecedor é muito menor do que o que seria possível.