Unscaled

"Throughout the twentieth century, technology and economics drove a dominant logic: bigger was almost always better. Around the world the goal was to build bigger corporations, bigger hospitals, bigger governments, bigger schools and banks and farms and electric grids and media conglomerates.[Moi ici: Recordar os hospitais-cidade, as escolas-cidade e as máquinas-monumento] It was smart to scale up—to take advantage of classic economies of scale. At the twenty-first century, technology and economies are driving the opposite—an unscaling of business and society. This is far more profound than just startups disrupting established firms. The dynamic is in the process of unraveling all the previous century's scale into hyperfocused markets. Artificial intelligence (Al) and a wave of Al-propelled technologies are allowing innovators to effectively compete against economies of scale with what I call the economies of unscale. This huge shift is remaking massive, deeply rooted industries such as energy, transportation, and healthcare, opening up fantastic possibilities for entrepreneurs, imaginative companies, and resourceful individuals..
If you feel that work, life, and politics are in disarray, this transformation is why. We are experiencing change unlike any since around 1900, when, as I will detail later, a wave of new technologies, including the car, electricity, and telecommunication, transformed work and life. Right now we are living through a similar ground-shaking, tech wave, as AI, genomics, robotics, and 3D printing charge into our lives. Artificial intelligence is the primary driver, changing almost everything, much like electricity did more than one hundred years ago. We are witnessing the birth of the AI century. A an economy driven by AI and digital technology, small, focused, and nimble companies can leverage technology platforms to effectively compete against big, mass-market entities. The small can do this became they can rent scale that companies used to need to build. The small can rent computing in the cloud, rent access to consumers on social media, rent production from contract manufacturers all over the world—and they can use artificial intelligence to automate many tasks that used to require expensive investment in equipment and people.
.
Because AI is software that learns, it can learn about individual customers, allowing companies built on rentable tech platforms to easily and profitably make products that address very narrow, passionate markets—even markets of one. The old mass markets are giving way to micromarkets. This is the essence of unscaling: technology is devaluing mass production and mass marketing and empowering customized microproduction and finely targeted marketing. The old strategy of beating competitors by owning scale has in many cases become a liability and burden. Procter & Gamble, with all its magnificent resources, finds itself vulnerable to a newcomer like the Dollar Shave Club, which can rent much of its capabilities, get to market quickly, target a narrow market segment, and change course easily if necessary."

Been there, wrote that, bought the T-shirt!

Trecho retirado de "Unscaled: How A.I. and a New Generation of Upstarts are Creating the Economy of the Future"

Cuidado com o que propõe às PME

Recordar o que escrevo há anos e anos sobre a diferença entre as PME da micro-economia e as empresas grandes:

•  Cuidado com o título
• Um conselho, um desafio

Entretanto, em "Product Innovation Processes in Small Firms: Combining Entrepreneurial Effectuation and Managerial Causation" encontro:

"Prior research poses a puzzle about small firms’ innovation processes. On the one hand, an extensive body of research on new product development (NPD) has identified benefits of a formalized process, with well-planned activities and decision points: a formal product innovation process is considered part of NPD best practice. On the other hand, case study evidence suggests that small firms seldom use such formalized process structures.
...
most product innovation management research has focused solely on large firms, or has failed to distinguish between large and small firms
...
this study shows that the effectual approach suits small firm characteristics, even though it differs from mainstream best practices that are based largely on research in larger firms. This suggests that product innovation research should explicitly differentiate on firm size, rather than prescribing large firm best practices to small firms.
...
Small firms are not miniature versions of large firms, and their characteristics constitute particular strengths and limitations for product innovation. A key strength of small firms is flexibility: they usually lack bureaucracy, are often managed by an owner/director who is able to take key decisions quickly, enjoy efficient and informal internal communication patterns, and develop strong relationships with customers. These characteristics enable rapid responses to technical and market changes, often resulting in differentiated products for niche markets.
.
On the downside, small firms have limited resources for product innovation projects. Lack of financial resources to cover the costs of innovation was identified as a key barrier in several studies. These constraints exacerbate the risks of innovation for small firms, which cannot sustain many failures. Besides limited financial and other material resources, small firms may lack the skills portfolios of their large company counterparts, especially the organizational and marketing capabilities to exploit new products. Further, a small firm’s position in its industry may constrain prospects to create and exploit innovations because of lack of name recognition, brand credibility, and track record; restricted influence on industry standards; limited network relations with other business and governmental organizations; and inability to defend trademarks or other proprietary resources.
.
Furthermore, small firms typically pursue few innovation projects at any one time—maybe just one, or even none at times. Consequently, their experience in product innovation is often limited. With no need to manage a portfolio of innovation projects at the same time and thus no pressure to select among projects to allocate resources, small firms have neither opportunity nor incentive to routinize innovation or formalize NPD stage-gates or selection procedures, as big firms do.
...
For example, early market screening and market research, identified as key activities in structured large firm NPD processes, are consistently lacking or poorly executed in small firms.
.
These empirical findings undermine the assumption that NPD in small firms should mimic larger firm NPD and adopt large firms’ best practices."

Ah! Ainda e sempre a Sildávia.

Junho de 2008.

Democratização da produção (parte II)

Parte I.

"Imagine a manufacturing world of distributed small-batch manufacturing. This is, of course, only one possible outcome, but we suggest it to provide a more concrete picture of how a new technology paradigm could transform manufacturing. At first glance this may appear as a back-to-the future utopia of artisanal producers that is impossibly distant from today’s large-scale, centralized, and globally organized production. But in fact, in a number of economic sectors, we are already seeing a major process of fragmentation at work that involves many of the same mechanisms and technologies that we can conceive as having the potential of transforming manufacturing.
...
What would it take to drive into manufacturing these new economy-wide trends we observe that are reducing scale, shortening the path between the producers of the goods and services and their consumers, and customizing output? In a world of fragmented production, when a company needs a part, it does not build a factory. Rather, it taps into a national network portal and places a computer-aided design (CAD) description of the part it desires, and the numbers it needs, on the portal. To protect its intellectual property, it may perhaps modify the part somewhat. Meanwhile, software systems from small manufacturers around the country prowl the portal looking for parts to bid on. Each manufacturer has a rating, not unlike the system used by eBay, and provides a capacity and response time. Small manufacturers can produce only small numbers of parts, so many small companies might be necessary to meet the customer’s total needs. Software in the portal, perhaps with manual selection from the customer company, selects the ensemble of companies that will manufacture the run. Perhaps representatives from the customer companies also talk to the prospective small manufacturers to ensure that there is a fit.
...
Capacity would be flexible. Small businesses would compete by innovating and anticipating better. Like the Internet, this would be a resilient and adaptive system."

Trechos retirados de "Making in America From innovation to Market" de Suzanne Berger.

Ainda o Evangelho do Valor!

Recordar "Pregarás o Evangelho do Valor" e "Pregarás o Evangelho do Valor - sempre". Depois:

"When QPM decided to raise pricing by 8 percent across the board, they didn't just increase profit by 8 percent, but rather by over 20 percent. How is this possible? Just like Amazon, the lion's share of the price increase dropped to QPM's operating profit margin.
...
If your sales team relies on discounts fifty percent of the time in order to close a sale, and the average discount is 5 percent, then ending this practice is the financial equivalent of a 2.5 percent price increase. If your business operates at a 30 percent operating profit margin, this 2.5 percent price increase means an immediate lift to your bottom line profit of 8.3 percent."

Trechos retirados de "Amazon Just Did Something Brilliant to Increase Its Profits (And Why You Should Copy It)"

Acerca da moral

Em 2010 escrevi em, "Cooperação, moral, religião e a tentação...", sobre o que entendia estar na base da moral nas sociedades humanas. Em 2012 voltei ao tema em "A moral de um pensador".

Foi disto que me lembrei ao ler "Rude Drivers Who Merge at the Last Second Are Doing You a Favor, According to Science". Se um rude driver pode fazê-lo, dois rude drivers podem fazê-lo, três rude drivers podem fazê-lo. Se um rude driver pode fazê-lo, então todos podem fazê-lo.

Aquando da I Guerra do Golfo aprendi que para desbaratar um exército, ou parar um supermercado, basta afectar 30% para a coisa ficar ingovernável.

Há demasiados amadores a jogar bilhar. Como aprendi com Taleb:

"in academia there is no difference between academia and the real world, in the real world, there is"

Por isso, acredito que existe diferença entre ovos de umas galinhas e de outras.

Selecção e subsídios

Com Maliranta em 2007 aprendi aquela frase com que se inicia a coluna das citações:

"It is widely believed that restructuring has boosted productivity by displacing low-skilled workers and creating jobs for the high skilled."
Mas, e como isto é profundo:
"In essence, creative destruction means that low productivity plants are displaced by high productivity plants." Por favor voltar a trás e reler esta última afirmação.
E o grande finale:
"As creative destruction is shown to be an important element of economic growth, there is definitely a case for public policy to support this process, or at least avoid disturbing it without good reason. Competition in product markets is important. Subsidies, on the other hand, may insulate low productivity plants and firms from healthy market selection, and curb incentives for improving their productivity performance. Business failures, plant shutdowns and layoffs are the unavoidable byproducts of economic development."

Com Taleb em 2018 voltei ao tema:

"Systems don’t learn because people learn individually –that’s the myth of modernity. Systems learn at the collective level by the mechanism of selection: by eliminating those elements that reduce the fitness of the whole, provided these have skin in the game." 

E agora volto a encontrar mais tijolos para a estrutura em "Why Leaders Get Stuck at Average":

"We don’t automatically improve as time passes.  The longer we do something the more likely we are to do it like we’ve always done it.
...
Leading doesn’t make you a better leader. Just like playing golf doesn’t make you a better golfer.
.
The only way to improve performance – in any field – is purposeful practice. (Researchers and authors often use the expression ‘deliberate practice’.)"

E em "A basic theory of inheritance: How bad practice prevails":

"All organizations have “best practices”: habits that they have picked up in the past or mimicked from others. Managers often believe that these must be the best ways of doing things, because otherwise market forces would have eliminated them. The theory in the paper explains why this belief may be wrong. Some enduring practices may be harmful without managers realizing it because it is not necessarily the most optimal practices that survive (just like harmful viruses persist in nature)."

You make the magic!

Recordar "you need to enter their personal story" e "Mambo jambo de consultor ou faz algum sentido?".

A ver a penúltima etapa do Giro de Itália vejo um anúncio da marca de bicicletas Canyon, reparem nesta mensagem:

"We make the bike
...
You make the magic!!!"

Os doutorados emigrados

A propósito de "PME nunca vão criar emprego para doutorados", "Reitores: Lugar dos doutorados é nas empresas, não nas universidades" (BTW, estes dois textos fizeram-me lembrar aquele caso desta semana nos Estados Unidos em que os pais puseram o filho de 30 anos em tribunal para o expulsar de casa) e "Portugal continua a ter doutorados a menos e em situação precária", deixem-me contar-lhes uma estória verdadeira.

Investigador em laboratório universitário resolve testar o mercado e ir a entrevista de emprego em empresa privada. A empresa oferece-lhe 1800 euros por mês brutos. Acham que é um mau salário para alguém com menos de 28 anos e sem experiência fora da universidade?

O investigador pergunta quanto é que isso lhe permitirá ganhar líquido. Fazem umas contas de merceeiro na hora e dizem-lhe que isso equivale a cerca de 1200 euros líquidos por mês.

O investigador sorri e declina a proposta. Actualmente tem uma bolsa de investigação, julgo que de 1280 euros. Bolsa pelos vistos não é considerado salário, é considerado apoio ou subsídio. Por isso, tudo o que recebe é limpo de impostos.

Escusado será dizer que este investigador daqui a uns anos será mais um daqueles que andará pelas ruas a protestar porque não tem Segurança Social e tem precariedade laboral.

Qual é o salário médio do país? Quantas PME poderiam investir 1800 euros num investigador? Assim, para os doutorado, trabalhar para o Estado, ficar ad eternum com uma sequência de bolsas de investigação é quase o mesmo que emigrar para outro país onde se ganha mais, ou se pagam menos impostos.

O que medir?

"Replacing an accounting mindset with a decision-oriented mindset is a great starting point for defining relevant measures. [Moi ici: Recordar "Medimos, para que a informação obtida nos ajude a tomar decisões, ou a tomar melhores decisões."]"

Trecho retirado de "Are we measuring what matters?"

Para reflexão

Mão amiga mandou-me este texto, "Galinhas felizes e tabaco americano", num e-mail com um comentário venenoso a acompanhar.

E recordei esta figura:

E deste texto:

"Algum humano se recusa a comer mirtilhos?
.
Algum humano duvida que comer mirtilhos faz bem à saúde?
.
OK, agora, experimentem fazer um cocktail de sumo de mirtilho, comprando os químicos identificados lá em cima na fotografia e, depois, misturando-os nas proporções semelhantes às do fruto...
.
Quantos humanos se recusariam a beber esse "sumo"?"

Quando estudava na FEUP tinha um livro fotocopiado para a disciplina de IEQ (Introdução à Engenharia Química) com uma receita para a composição de sumo de laranja da Flórida. Nessa receita encontrava-se álcool metílico, uma substância cancerígena e que provoca a cegueira.

E volto ao texto:

"Um conselho prévio, procurem na internet os efeitos daqueles compostos aromáticos listados, por exemplo...
"The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together"
O pensamento analítico julga que basta analisar os componentes isolados e, depois, juntá-los para perceber o que é o sistema... só que um sistema é mais do que a soma dos seus componentes."

Esta semana tive a felicidade de comer ervilhas que tive de descascar... venham-me dizer que é o mesmo sabor que comer ervilhas congeladas.

Cooperativa - a unidade económica do futuro?

Ontem, enquanto viajava de carro, já não sei qual a motivação, recordei os temas da série "O que passa-se?" e o que tenho escrito aqui ao longo dos anos acerca da cooperativa como uma unidade de trabalho com muito potencial em Mongo.

Depois, à noite encontrei "Des cafés associatifs pour réanimer les cœurs des villages". Acredito que veremos cada vez mais organizações deste tipo.

A evolução das marcas

"Now that change has become the new normal, brands have to evolve from the power of symbolism and the power of narration to the power of reciprocity. As brands morph from symbols and stories to systems, they need to find new ways to be relevant, useful, and entertaining. They need to create hospitable ecosystems and build upon ideas that welcome and nurture consumer relationships now and in the future."

Trecho retirado de "The Ways Customers Use Products Have Changed — but Brands Haven’t Kept Up"

Democratização da produção (parte I)

"Through the first century of mass production, companies emphasized maximizing throughput by making a relatively small assortment of standard products. Since the late 1980s, however, mass markets have fragmented, and firms increasingly turn out a greater variety of products that respond to specific customer demands in different market segments. This responsiveness to demand has led manufacturing plants to reverse a tradi- tional linear organization oriented to pushing out product and scheduling output on the basis of sales forecasts and, instead, to organize assembly in response to real-time orders—“pull.” This requires sophisticated integration of production planning and scheduling of plant operations and supply chain management.
.
But even with these changes of the past decades, manufacturing today still closely resembles its mass production ancestors. We now stand on the edge of radical changes in this system, as a set of new technologies emerging in laboratories and research centers across the United States promises to completely transform the traditional linear manufacturing organization. First, our ability to synthesize new materials has now advanced to a point where human design of these materials will become as critical a step as fabrication and assembly.
...
Second, the boundary between fabrication and assembly has blurred with the introduction of ultraefficient processes, automation, and even continuous manufacturing in batch sizes of “one.” Third, the product is often not just a physical artifact or widget but an integrated solution that involves bundling of physical products with services and software. Finally, there is a trend toward the systematic return of recycled materials to fabrication or even material synthesis."

Trechos retirados de "Making in America From innovation to Market" de Suzanne Berger

Acerca do contexto

Olhar para este mapa:

É difícil perceber o racional por trás do título... adiante.

 Lembra-se do fragilismo?

"Que países considera serem os mais arriscados?
.
Com base nas métricas que monitorizamos, neste momento estamos particularmente preocupados com economias com elevada dependência de financiamento externo. Esta é uma das razões para o severamente mau desempenho da Turquia, particularmente no lado da moeda." (fonte)

Relacionar com "Défice comercial duplica no primeiro trimestre de 2018" e com as mudanças no perfil das exportações e no perfil do emprego.

A invasão das sapatilhas

Hoje em dia é muito comum ouvir empresários do calçado queixarem-se da invasão das sapatilhas e de como elas estão a dar cabo do seu negócio.

Há dias ouvia alguém do retalho dizer que, para rapazes, só conseguia vender sapatilhas, a menos que estivesse por perto a altura das comunhões ou o Natal.

Pois parece que a coisa vai continuar por mais algum tempo e até reforçar-se, "Sneaker sales are growing as sales of high heels tumble":

"As American fashion has slowly become more casual, so has footwear. That trend has become especially apparent in women's sneaker sales, which have surged 37 percent throughout the U.S. in 2017. Meanwhile, sales of high heels have declined 11 percent during the same time period, according to the NPD Group's Retail Tracking Service.
...
"It's becoming kind of a basic consumer need to have comfort and the desire to be comfort because everybody's so busy and running around all the time," Beth Goldstein, NPD's executive director and industry analyst for fashion footwear and accessories, told CNBC.
.
"Brands that are focusing on comfort are doing better, because that something that women of all ages want," she said. The sneaker trend will likely continue in the double digits for the next few years, Goldstein added, as it becomes more of a lifestyle choice."

Não me admiro!

Quando existiam dinossauros no planeta Terra eu associava a marca Marks & Spencer a tudo menos low-cost. Trabalhava num fornecedor português da marca e associava-a a exigência na qualidade.

Hoje, os fornecedores portugueses da marca queixam-se da exigência paranóica no preço (custo).

Tendo em conta esta evolução:

E a importância do alinhamento entre estratégia, posicionamento da marca e operações, não me admiro com esta evolução "Marks & Spencer confirms expanded store closure programme".

Estratégia a sério implica sacrifício, implica trade-off, não é compatível com ser rico e ter saúde em simultâneo:

"there are no real surprises in Mr Rowe’s new strategy, which includes focusing on the quality and fit of clothing, “sharper” ranges, lower prices but less promotional activity." (fonte)

Estratégias possíveis

Um artigo longo, mas muito interessante, "Your Change Needs a Strategy".

5 tipos de estratégias possíveis em função da situação da organização:

• ‘Planned itinerary’
• ‘River crossing’ ("in certain contexts, we are unable to gain clarity on the means of change. In this case the appropriate change strategy is one we call ‘river crossing’. The end state is clear, but we need an exploratory approach to the path, taking one step at a time while keeping an eye on our destination.")
• ‘Hill climbing’
• 'Scouting and wandering’("There a strategy for change, odd as it may seem, which is organized around neither a clear end state nor clear means. This change is not driven by any immediate moves which seem obviously good, nor by any target state, but by curiosity, of a kind that will be useful in the long run.")
• ‘Escape the swamp’ ("Like ‘search and wandering’, this is not driven by a particular means, and the only clear aspect of the target state is that it must incorporate substantial and urgent change. We can call this ‘escape the swamp’. It applies in pressured situations such as the early stages of a turnaround, where there is limited time or resources to identify specific ends or means, but we are nevertheless driven to change.")

Interessante as possibilidades: ‘River crossing’, 'Scouting and wandering’ e ‘Escape the swamp’.

"imposto revolucionário"

Este texto "Now on Offer at the Supermarket: Freshly Squeezed Suppliers" fez-me pensar num e-mail   que me re-encaminharam recentemente.

Trabalhar para clientes grandes é estar sujeito a "imposto revolucionário".

"O que passa-se?" (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

Começa a ser interessante este aumento na frequência de artigos sobre a produção em Mongo e como se afastam do mainstream. Mais um, "Only Digital Manufacturing Can Create The Smart, Customized, On-Demand Products Consumers Want":

"Ask someone to describe manufacturing today, and they’ll probably describe giant machines operating in tandem along an assembly line putting together a product in vast quantities.
.
But as someone who works in manufacturing today, I can tell you that mass production – which has dominated how we’ve made things since the Industrial Revolution – is no longer the predominant manufacturing model.
.
Consumers today want products that are smarter, more customized and available on demand. The only way companies can satisfy this need is by creating a new business model that applies digital manufacturing strategies. Digital manufacturing – which combines software with physical manufacturing – can help manufacturers iterate faster, customize more, reduce lead times and respond more quickly to market changes."

Qual a direção de Mongo?

"Shorter Product Life Cycles: We may not always need the latest and greatest technologies, but we want them.
...
Greater Customization: Creating customized products is neither efficient nor cost effective with current mass production strategies.
...
Consumers want products that are smarter, more customized and available on demand. But consumer product, manufacturing companies and supply chain partners simply can’t meet this demand using the same business model we’ve used for decades. Instead, we need to understand and apply digital manufacturing strategies and embrace new tools that streamline operations."