Curiosidade do dia

Isto, "PIB per capita de Portugal é o quarto mais baixo da zona euro", fez-me logo murmurar a palavra: Sildávia.

Basic Value Pricing Model

"• Level 1: Commodities you typically buy and resell. These commodity items are easy to find elsewhere, and brand carries almost no value. Your gross margin (GM)—selling price, minus the cost of goods sold, divided by selling price—percentage for this level of products will end up below your company’s average GM percentage. It is best to think in terms of gross margin percentage rather than markup percentage because gross margin translates much more directly to the income statement. Ensure pricing is competitive with the street price (not necessarily the lowest, but competitive). Pricing these products too high might make buyers question all of your pricing.
...
• Level 2: You make, buy, or private-label these products. Your offerings have little or no exclusive customer benefits; little or no competitive advantage; no intellectual property (IP) protection, such as trademarks or patents; and can be sourced elsewhere if the customer is willing to put in the time to research. Target the upper range of competitive pricing for these products or services.
...
• Level 3: You make or private-label these products, or you buy them from a source that is hard to find. These products have some perceived benefits and competitive advantages, and they should have a price point slightly higher than competitors’.
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• Level 4: You are clearly the vendor of choice for these products, either through recommendation or by a directed-buy mandate. The products have strong, unique benefits and competitive advantages. They might have patent protection or be manufactured with an exclusive capability that few companies possess. These products might be available only from you. The value is high, so price these products with a higher GM percentage."

Trechos retirados de "Is your pricing strategy hurting your business?"

Resolver problemas (parte I)

Acerca das exportações YTD - mês 10 (2018)

Um convite para comparar o desempenho em 2017 vs 2016 e o desempenho em 2018 vs 2017 das exportações relativamente ao cabaz de sectores de actividade que seguimos desde há vários anos:

Impressionante a evolução em curso, a fragilização subterrânea da economia. No entanto, os jornais do regime embalam os leitores na canção "Exportações e importações aceleram em Outubro".

“It’s not for you”

“It’s not for you”
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We’re not supposed to say that. We’re certainly not supposed to want to say that.
But we must.
“It’s not for you” shows the ability to respect someone enough that you’re not going to waste their time, pander to them, or insist that they change their beliefs. It shows respect for those you seek to serve, to say to them, “I made this for you. Not for the other folks, but for you.”
Two sides of the same coin.
...
It’s the freedom to ignore the critics who don’t get the joke, the privilege of polishing your story for those that most need to hear it. . . . This is where you will find work that you can be proud of.[Moi ici: Ter inimigos é bom sinal]
Because it doesn’t matter what people you’re not seeking to serve think. What matters is whether you’ve changed the people who trust you, the people who have connected with you, the people you seek to serve.
...
“It’s not for you.”
It’s entirely possible that your work isn’t as good as it needs to be. But it’s also possible that you failed to be clear about who it was for in the first place.”

Trecho de “This Is Marketing” de Seth Godin.

Dois tweets e a co-criação de valor (parte II)

Parte I.

"we claim that institutions are the coordinating link that have impact on value cocreation efforts and are the reference base for customers’ value assessment. When conceptualizing the systemic nature of resource integration, we include the regulative, normative, and cognitive institutions and institutional logics.
...
the discussion surrounding resource integration emphasizes the means through which actors like customers, suppliers, and other interested stakeholders use their knowledge and skills to cocreate value
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Coordination is essential, as resource integration requires process(es) and forms of collaboration at many levels of business. Furthermore, resource integration is always performed in the context of a service system driven by the actors’ knowledge and skills as well as their intentions and motivation. Within these service systems and the larger social system, knowledge, skills, intensions, and motivation are influenced by institutions on the one hand and the actions taken by actors influence existing institutions on the other. Consequently, we view institutions as enabling or constraining the ‘‘humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction’’. Institutions play a major role in shaping an actors’ behavior when managing resource integration and the cocreation of value in service systems.
...
Value is here understood as being cocreated by customers and other actors, and service systems are configurations of actors, resources, and technology designed to enable value cocreation. As service systems are shaped by social values and forces in social systems, we emphasize that institutional settings and thus institutional logics affect service systems and the involved actors’ behavior. This means that no single, unrelated institution is active but that there is a set of typically nested institutions of different kinds affecting each other in various but coherent ways with respect to their effectiveness.
...
From this understanding it becomes clear that value cocreation and service-for-service exchange do not happen in an institution-free world. They incorporate a reciprocal reaction, where institutions influence actors’ behavior and vice versa, actors influence institutions through their behaviors. It is through this creation and recreation of service systems that institutions become pre- requisites for value cocreation, as an institutional context plays a key role when actors are using or operating on resources in service systems. For that reason, institutional logics are crucial in shaping service systems as they introduce broader belief and regulation systems that shape the cognition and behavior of actors."

Como não relacionar, "institutional logics are crucial in shaping service systems as they introduce broader belief and regulation systems that shape the cognition and behavior of actors", com Mongo e a política?
 
Trechos retirados de "Institutional logics matter when coordinating resource integration" de Bo Edvardsson; Michael Kleinaltenkamp; Ba ̊rd Tronvoll; Patricia McHugh; e Charlotta Windahl, publicado por Marketing Theory 2014, Vol. 14(3) 291–309.

Strategy is about eliminating

"Strategy is about choosing.  It’s about eliminating.  It’s about making bets on what you believe (through research, experience and/or intuition) will most effectively, efficiently and successfully help you achieve your goals.
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Strategy requires letting go of less-important, lower-potential ideas.  And that is difficult.  Leaving those lower priorities on the list makes you feel better, it feels like a hedge, but it really just spreads your attention and energy far too thin.  It compromises your ability to focus on and achieve success on the priorities at the very top of your list."

Recordar:

• "Learn to say NO"
• A essência da estratégia
• "too much bread?" (parte II)

Trecho retirado de "Strategy is choosing, not stack-ranking"

Dois tweets e a co-criação de valor (parte I)

Sábado passado encontrei dois tweets que relacionei logo com o que ando a ler:

This is a CENTRAL result: you don't get peace forcing pple to hold hands & sing Kumbaya by the campfire.

You get peace via fractal LOCALISM.

The usual idiotic AUB-style pseudoleft in Lebanon call "sectarian"(pejorative) anyone who believes in such Swiss-style localism. https://t.co/sel9Hbtl5E

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) December 8, 2018

This is an image of GPS tracking of multiple wolves in six different packs around Voyageurs National Park, Minnesota, which shows how much the wolf packs avoid each other's range [source: https://t.co/BYFdDNCIOi] pic.twitter.com/MRKpw2KA9b

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) December 7, 2018

 

"Unlike arms-length transactions, relational exchange stems from previous agreements. Relational exchange generally lasts longer and reflects an ongoing process in which anticipated conflicts of interest are counterbalanced by trust and efforts at unity. Essentially, actors sacrifice short-term gains because they trust that the relationship will pay off in the long run.
…
Importantly, the glue that binds these chains of reciprocity is composed largely of social constructs such as trust and loyalty.
...
All institutions are therefore “cognitive,” insofar as their effect depends on actors’ beliefs and expectations. … we use the phrase “shared understanding” to reference the beliefs and expectations common to a set of actors but note that others have variously used terms such as socio-cognitive structures, broadly diffused schema, or shared representations in reference to the same phenomenon. Nonetheless, the power of an institution is apparent only when many actors share the same (or similar) set of understandings. That is, an institution can only be referred to as such if it shapes the behavior of many individuals in a similar manner, and this only happens if those individuals have a broadly shared understanding of how to behave."

Trechos retirados de "Redefining the market: A treatise on exchange and shared understanding" de Lusch e Watts, publicado por Marketing Theory.

Ligas, competitividade e produtividade

Considerem uma equipa que joga na primeira liga de futebol, a equipa A.

Considerem uma equipa que joga na segunda liga de futebol, a equipa B.

A equipa A pode ser algo competitiva e ocupar um lugar a meio da tabela classificativa.

A equipa B pode ser muito competitiva e ocupar o primeiro lugar da tabela classificativa.

A equipa A será muito mais produtiva que a equipa B em termos de capital movimentado. No entanto, a equipa B poderá viver para sempre na segunda liga e recomendar-se.

Há muito que menosprezo os rankings globais, porque acredito que foram criados para avaliar um mundo que já não existe. Um mundo em que todos competiam na mesma liga e queriam chegar ao único pico:

Em Mongo, com uma paisagem assim:

Não faz sentido usar números médios para descrever uma realidade tão heterogénea.






Imagem retirada daqui.

Criar experiências

Fala-se muito sobre a necessidade das lojas físicas criarem experiências.

Poucas vezes li um texto tão prático como "What a Toys “R” Us Comeback Could Look Like":

"retailers today face two choices: offer consumers time well saved or time well spent. Toys “R” Us failed at the former strategy in its first incarnation. In coming out of bankruptcy, the company must pursue a time-well-spent strategy, offering places where both parents and their kids enjoy great experiences.
...
For the reborn company to have a chance, it must turn 180 degrees and embrace a parent- and kid-centric strategy. It must become a stager of toy-playing experiences — enticing consumers into its new places by offering experiences that both parents and kids value. (What child wants to go to a warehouse? What child doesn’t want to play?) It should strive to maximize the time consumers spend in its places, because the longer they are there, the more they will buy. This is the essence of a time-well-spent strategy.
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Imagine venues designed not around stocking toy packages with never-ending red-tag sales but around toys themselves with never-ending play experiences — one with spots where children can play with LEGO sets and participate in gaming tournaments. Imagine a testing lab where vendors pay to have children play with their latest and greatest toys. Imagine a studio where kids can design and create toys. Imagine becoming THE place for children’s birthday parties. (Surely Toys “R” Us could stage a far better experience than, say, Chuck E. Cheese’s, an experience that actually involves parents rather than shunting them off to the side.) In such venues, the warehouse would be in the back, out of consumers’ sight.
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The absolute best way of knowing you’re providing time well spent is to charge admission for gaining entry to at least parts of the store"

E a sua loja, como vai passar a cobrar admissão?

"não podem falar do futuro"

"É impossível que os dirigentes políticos europeus não saibam que o mundo mudou. O problema é que os responsáveis políticos europeus sabem que os eleitorados europeus não querem aceitar as implicações dessa transformação. Não se mobilizam para participar numa mudança do mundo que os expulsa do conforto das políticas distributivas e os atira para um novo campo de possibilidades em que ganham os que têm capacidade competitiva em mercado aberto, mas perdem os que dependem das políticas distributivas e precisam da protecção do Estado nacional em mercados alfandegados fechados. Os dirigentes políticos europeus estão a exercer o poder num contexto de duplo constrangimento: sabem que o mundo mudou e que é isso que determina o futuro, mas também sabem que uma parte maioritária do eleitorado não quer essa mudança do mundo e que prefere continuar nas condições do passado. É este duplo constrangimento que produz o vazio em que o poder se exerce.
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Para conquistarem o poder, os dirigentes políticos europeus não podem falar do futuro. Mas o passado, a que os eleitores europeus querem que os candidatos ao poder lhes indiquem como podem regressar, já não existe."

"um eleitor que se sente dependente vai sempre eleger políticos que protegem os dependentes"

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) November 30, 2018

Trecho retirado de "O poder no vazio"

Nem de propósito!

Nem de propósito!

Um texto, "«Estamos a desautomatizar a nossa indústria»", que pode fechar como um exemplo adequado para a série "Gabiche?":

"Nos últimos tempos, a produtora de vestuário, que emprega 700 pessoas, tem aprimorado a arte de vender menos mas com maior valor acrescentado, num sector onde o trabalho manual é cada vez mais valorizado.[Moi ici: Subir na escala de valor muitas vezes requer isto, encolher! Recordam o que escrevo aqui sobre a automatização e Mongo? Um exemplo, outro exemplo e ainda outro exemplo. Conseguem parar para pensar nas paletes de comentadores que acha que o futuro é a automatização sem equacionarem as implicações de Mongo?]
...
Não vimos da Première Vision com encomendas, mas sim com contactos, que depois são trabalhados na empresa: a dimensão do cliente, o mercado do cliente… Há um trabalho de bastidores após a Première Vision em que estudamos o potencial do cliente e, a partir daí, a nossa máquina comercial vai visitá-lo e ver qual é a dinâmica entre a Calvelex e esse potencial cliente. [Moi ici: O cliente tem a última palavra, mas o fornecedor tem a primeira. Recordar isto, e mais isto e isto]
...
Em 2016 produzia cerca de um milhão de peças ao ano. Este valor está estabilizado?
.
Estamos a aumentar o valor da peça e a reduzir a quantidade – devemos ficar nas 800 mil peças este ano. Esse é o nosso objetivo, porque para podermos vender produtos de valor acrescentado, temos que reduzir as quantidades. Este ano, vamos fabricar menos peças e faturar mais 5%. [Moi ici: Encolher e especializar-se e Juntar peças porque "It's not less"]
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Também se fala muito da indústria 4.0. Como está a Calvelex a lidar com esta temática?
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Nós, pelo contrário, estamos a desautomatizar a nossa indústria. Estamos a fazer peças de pessoas para pessoas. Há clientes preparados para pagar um produto mais caro e que seja manual. Há clientes que pedem para colocarmos a etiqueta de marca à mão, há clientes que querem que os botões sejam pregados à mão… Quer dizer que as pessoas querem produtos manuais."

Tragédia dos Baldios

A relva = saxões = contribuintes líquidos.

Bombeiros, juizes, enfermeiros, professores, guardas-prisionais, funcionários judiciais, ... sacar enquanto é tempo, porque 2020 vai parar a orgia.

"Begin there, with obsessive focus"

“There’s a dangerous prank that relies on thief-detector dye. This dye, sold as a powder, is quite bright and a tiny bit goes a long way. Once the powder touches the moisture on your skin, it blooms into a bright purple and won’t easily wash off.
Drop a teaspoon of it into a swimming pool, and all the water in the pool will become permanently bright purple. But if you drop it in the ocean, no one will notice.
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When you seek to share your best work—your best story, your shot at change—it helps if it’s likely to spread. It helps if it’s permanent. But even if it’s extraordinary, it’s not going to make a difference if you drop it in the ocean.
That doesn’t mean you give up hope.
.
It means you walk away from the ocean and look for a large swimming pool.That’s enough to make a difference. Begin there, with obsessive focus. Once it works, find another swimming pool. Even better, let your best customers spread the idea.”

Excerto de: Seth Godin. “This Is Marketing”.

Gabiche? (parte V)

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

Quando olhamos para um ecossistema observamos diferentes espécies.

Qual a espécie mais bem sucedida?

Faz-me recuar a Beinhocker e ao seu fabuloso livro "The Origin of Wealth":

"Soon, something else began to happen in the pulsing soup of strategies— innovations began to appear. Mutations that added genes caused agent memory sizes to grow, thus enabling the agents to look further back in history and devise strategies that were more complex. Many of the mutants were nonsensical strategies that died off quickly. But, in general, more memory is a big advantage, and new strategies that were successful began to emerge and reproduce.
…
So who was the winner? What was the best strategy in the end? What Lindgren found was that this is a nonsensical question. In an evolutionary system such as Lindgren's model, there is no single winner, no optimal, no best strategy. Rather, anyone who is alive at a particular point in time, is in effect a winner, because everyone else is dead. To be alive at all, an agent must have a strategy with something going for it, some way of making a living, defending against competitors, and dealing with the vagaries of its environment.
…
Likewise, we cannot say any single strategy in the Prisoner's Dilemma ecology was a winner."

Agora olhemos para as empresas como espécies, e para a paisagem competitiva como um espaço altamente enrugado:

O mainstream ainda vê a paisagem competitiva como ela era no paradigma do século XX. Ou seja, todas as empresas do mesmo sector de actividade competem entre si pelos mesmos clientes, com a mesma proposta de valor e em busca da máxima eficiência.

No entanto, em Mongo, para onde caminhamos, a paisagem competitiva é mais deste tipo:

Quanto mais alto se sobe na paisagem, maior a produtividade, maior o retorno.

As empresas que ocupam as posições A, B e C são competitivas, lideram o espaço que decidiram, ou que lhes calhou, ocupar. No entanto, a empresa C é muito mais produtiva que a empresa A e a empresa B. E apesar de mais produtiva, a empresa C não faz sombra às empresas A e B.

"Knowledge@Wharton: You give the example of what occurred long ago between Steinway and Yamaha. Can you tell us about that?
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Yu: That is an interesting story precisely because executive managers sometimes push back on my argument and say, “I don’t care about copycats. As long as I can provide the best product in the world, I will be all right.” So, I explored Steinway & Sons. They make the best concert piano, no doubt. Yet if we’re looking at the historical financial return of the company, it is a disaster. The company was listed, went private again, was listed again and was forced to go private again. They went from a peak of 6,000 pianos sold per year down to 2,000. Today, they are reduced to one single factory. They still make the best piano. Their workers are passionate, and yet they were disrupted by Japan’s Yamaha.
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A note to this story is there is no change of technology. It’s not like digital photography destroying Kodak. A piano is still a piano — it’s a hammer striking a string. But if the knowledge is stagnating; no matter how good you are, the latecomer can come in and leverage the scale of the economy, automation and lower cost structure, disassembling your product and reverse engineering. Over time, they would surpass the industry pioneer. I thought it was a cautionary tale: Try to avoid getting trapped in a golden cage."

Trecho retirado de "How Businesses Can Stay a Step Ahead of Copycats"

Gabiche? (parte IV)

Parte I, parte II e parte III.

"Forcing a focus
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The relentless pursuit of mass will make you boring, because mass means average, it means the center of the curve, it requires you to offend no one and satisfy everyone. It will lead to compromises and generalizations. Begin instead with the smallest viable market. What’s the minimum number of people you would need to influence to make it worth the effort?
...
Choose the people who want what you’re offering. Choose the people most open to hearing your message. Choose the people who will tell the right other people . . .
...
Choose the people you serve, choose your future.
The smallest viable market is the focus that, ironically and delightfully, leads to your growth.”

Como não recordar a série do tecto de vidro, e em especial a parte III.

Quando não se escolhem os clientes-alvo, quando não se assume que se vai ser odiado por uma parte do mercado, fica-se condenado ao que leva ao massacre de gigantes em Mongo: a suckiness.

Quem aposta na suckiness, porque acredita na competitividade que advém da produtividade elevada, da eficiência, joga que consegue ganhar à Amazon.

Excerto de: Seth Godin. “This Is Marketing”.

"competitive advantage is no longer the sum of all efficiencies"

"In Michael Porter’s landmark book, Competitive Advantage, the Harvard professor argued that the key to long-term success was to dominate the value chain by maximizing bargaining power among suppliers, customers, new market entrants and substitute goods. The goal was to create a sustainable competitive advantage your rivals couldn’t hope to match.
...
Clearly, much has changed since Porter wrote his book nearly 40 years ago. Today, we live in a networked world and competitive advantage is no longer the sum of all efficiencies, but the sum of all connections. Strategy, therefore, must be focused on widening and deepening links to resources outside the firm.
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So you can see why trust has taken on greater importance."

Recordar daqui:

"[Moi ici: Interessante! Tenho uma opinião completamente diferente!!! O futuro não é "posse e controlo" o futuro será colaboração e co-criação. O futuro não é maximizar o lucro por um elemento numa relação diádica mas fazer com que todos os intervenientes no ecossistema ganhem a sua parte. Nenhum gigante terá vantagem contra uma multidão de Davids... a menos que, como de costume, tenha o poder dos Estados do seu lado]"

Trechos retirados de "How Trust Can Be A Competitive Advantage"

Curiosidade do dia

Às segundas, terças e quartas estão contra a desertificação do interior.
Às quintas, sextas e sábados estão pela concentração em Lesboa.

Agora é Augusto Mateus a retomar as teses de João Cravinho que defendia um Portugal concentrado no litoral em meia dúzia de cidades, “Estamos a dar cabo da convergência de Portugal com a UE porque estamos a dar cabo de Lisboa”.

Ontem, no Twitter, chamaram-me a atenção para este artigo:

The economic problem tearing countries apart
•
Martin Sandbu @ft on within nation divergences lining up with populist backlashes
(See chart in my reply) https://t.co/hOwlY6xpXz

— Richard Baldwin (@BaldwinRE) December 3, 2018

Gabiche (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

Na parte I escrevi um comentário ao texto sobre a produtividade, que vou aqui repetir melhorando o português:

"Quando competimos de igual para igual, então sim, a produtividade é um indicador de competitividade.
Quando não se compete de igual para igual uma empresa pouco produtiva pode ser competitiva. Por exemplo, porque uma empresa pouco produtiva produz algo diferente da concorrência, (concorrência que é muito mais produtiva na escala e muito mais eficiente), e faz um produto à medida, consegue seduzir clientes, porque não é produtiva, ou porque tem preços baixos ou produz pouco, é pouco rentável"

Ou seja, uma empresa pouco produtiva, se operar num nicho, consegue sobreviver e, à sua maneira ter sucesso, embora não possa pagar grandes salários.

Agora podemos ler em "Portugal é o país da UE que mais usa emprego pouco qualificado para exportar":

"Contudo, é na caracterização desses trabalhadores que a realidade se torna cinzenta. 58% desses trabalhadores dependentes das exportações têm baixas qualificações. Este peso do emprego pouco qualificado nas empresas que exportam para fora da UE é o mais elevado entre os 28 Estados-membros.
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Ou seja, as exportações extra-UE têm um peso significativo em Portugal, mas são feitas maioritariamente à custa de trabalho pouco qualificado que frequentemente tem pouco valor acrescentado e salários baixos."

Ter uma elevada produtividade, para quem compete pelo preço, é condição necessária para ser competitivo (não escrevo suficiente porque quando se compete pelo preço há sempre alguém que mais tarde ou mais cedo vai aparecer a fazer mais barato).

Ser competitivo, ganhar clientes, não implica necessariamente ter uma elevada produtividade.

Há uma forma de obrigar empresas competitivas, mas pouco produtivas, a elevar a produtividade... ou a demografia obriga a subir salários, e os salários mais elevados matam as que não se adaptarem, ou os engenheiros sociais obrigam os salários a subir e matam as que não se adaptarem.

Gabiche? (parte II)

Na Parte I escrevi:

"Recordo um relatório dos anos 80 sobre o choque japonês nas fundições inglesas, "Apesar das boas intenções":

"Acredito que muitos subsídios são gastos assim. Apesar das boas intenções, o dinheiro vai para empresas que até podem renovar máquinas, mas que não vão renovar estratégias e abordagens, teimando nas receitas tornadas obsoletas e prejudicando as empresas que satisfazem o mercado mas não dominam os biombos e corredores do "poder". "

As empresas que sobreviveram quase não recorreram ou nem tiveram direito a apoios. As empresas apoiadas morreram todos. Os apoios só atrasam o inevitável. Não chega renovar máquinas quando não se actualizam estratégias, modelos de negócio e clientes-alvo."

Ontem ao final da tarde, durante uma caminhada li:

"Money is a special kind of resource. It is useful only when it is converted to something else. More money lets us hire more people, buy more equipment, build more features, etc..
But if you’re don’t yet know what you are doing, you’ll probably just get lost faster. Every new innovation starts with an external constraint — market demand. Until you can demonstrate enough market demand for your idea, any energy spent on acquiring internal constraints (like money, people, equipment, or product) should be challenged.
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Even when you do know what you are doing, upgrading on all fronts at once risks falling into a local or pre-optimization trap. For these reasons, it is best to think of money as an accelerant. Money only lets you do more of whatever you are already doing. Figuring out the right thing to do first is more important."

Bingo!!!

Trecho final retirado de "Expose Your Constraints Before Chasing Additional Resources"