"Germany’s introduction of a minimum wage in 2015 drove workers from small businesses to larger, more productive companies, helping to boost overall productivity at the expense of smaller organisations, new research has shown.Sou tentado a afirmar que independentemente do contexto, qualquer aumento do salário mínimo beneficia sempre as empresas grandes.
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About a quarter of the increase could be explained by workers moving to larger companies that paid higher average wages, with more full-time jobs, a more skilled workforce and a lower level of staff turnover, according to the research, which was based on administrative data and published on Tuesday.
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But it also suggested that the minimum wage caused some small companies to go out of business — potentially leading to reduced competition and less choice for consumers.
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“[The minimum wage] led to increases in average productivity,” said Christian Dustmann, the paper’s lead author, although he noted that this finding was from a period when the country’s economy had been thriving.
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However, the study could also reinforce objections to the minimum wage often made in the US, where opponents of the policy say it drives small companies out of business.
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Mr Dustmann warned that not everyone benefits from the introduction of a minimum wage: higher overall productivity could leave some companies, workers and consumers worse off. Some small companies were put out of business, the research suggested — potentially leading to reduced competition, and less choice for consumers."
"Evidence in other countries of the impact of minimum wages on productivity is mixed. In the UK, the Low Pay Commission found that although employers often intend to offset a higher wage bill by raising productivity, most fail to do so in practice, with some simply asking staff to work harder."Trechos retirados de "Germany’s minimum wage boosted productivity but hit small companies"
"Aquela lição de 2007 (Beinhocker) não me larga o pensamento. Qual a melhor estratégia? Não há melhor estratégia. Todas as estratégias são situacionais, todas as estratégias quando bem desenhadas e implementadas têm "15 minutos de fama" e depois, inevitavelmente ficam fora do prazo de validade."No mês passado escrevi o postal ""Start moving in some general direction"" acerca da queda e recuperação da indústria suíça de relógios. Ontem li "Smartwatches call time on the Swiss industry":
"The watch industry has always displayed a strong streak of economic irrationality. After all, you can buy a Casio digital watch for £5 that will tell the time more reliably than a mechanical Patek Philippe Grand Complications costing 40,000 times as much.O final do artigo sugere uma reflexão aplicável a outros sectores, nomeadamente aos sapatos:
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According to research firm Strategy Analytics, the Apple Watch, launched less than five years ago, now outsells the entire Swiss industry, which has been manufacturing wristwatches for 152 years. Last year, Apple increased sales by 36 per cent to almost 31m watches while the Swiss industry shipped about 21m in total, a 13 per cent decline.
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The one solace for Swiss watchmakers is that they still generate more revenue: $21bn to Apple’s $11bn. But on current trends Apple will overtake the Swiss on that measure, too, by 2023."
"René Weber, a luxury analyst at Bank Vontobel in Zurich, highlights the sharp contrast in performance between the low and high-end watch segments. Since 2000, Swiss watches costing less than $1,000 have seen their unit sales halve, while watches costing more than $5,000 have seen volumes triple.Fico a pensar nas empresas que perante um ataque de concorrentes low-cost tentam dar a volta procurando reduzir elas próprias os seus preços ... no way.
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Mr Weber says sales of the most prestigious watches made by Rolex, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet have been little affected by the smartwatch revolution. Indeed, there are waiting lists for some of their top-end products because of capacity constraints in manufacturing complex mechanical watches."
"Walmart’s expensive attempt to woo wealthy shoppers is ending in failure.Uma empresa especializada no custo mais baixo a querer servir clientes abastados... come on.
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Jetblack, Walmart’s personal shopping startup, is closing its doors, per WSJ. The service, which charged members $600 a year for a personal shopper whom they could text to get anything delivered — except fresh food — was costing the company thousands of dollars because it just never gained much popularity."
"A joint process during which value is reciprocally created for each actor (individuals, organizations, or networks). These actors engage in the process by interacting and exchanging their resources with one another. The interactions occur on an engagement interface where each actor share its own resources, integrates the resources provided by others, and potentially develops new resources through a learning process.[Moi ici: Por exemplo, um workshop de costura numa loja de lãs. A animadora fornece know-how, os participantes testam os novos conhecimentos sob a supervisão da animadora, os participantes adquirem a capacidade de desenvolver novas peças, de utilizar novos materiais e de evitar erros no seu trabalho, melhorando o seu desempenho no seu universo pessoal/profissional]Com base na minha experiência profissional, no tempo em que havia dinossauros na Terra, (sim, foi há muito tempo) um problema que a empresa onde eu trabalhava sentiu nesta abordagem tinha a ver com os free-riders. Potenciais clientes que solicitavam apoio, mas depois compravam noutro sítio. Algo que a Xiameter me ensinou a evitar.
This definition conceptualizes value cocreation as a process in which actors exchange resources and jointly create value. The resource exchange requires them to perform two roles: provider and beneficiary. Providers offer their resources to others; beneficiaries integrate these external resources and create value through their consumption. During the value cocreation process, each actor performs both roles in turn, so value is reciprocally created. To enable and facilitate resource exchanges, actors interact. These interactions are located centrally on an engagement interface, [Moi ici: A loja de lãs fornece uma plataforma para interacção. Também ela tem a ganhar com a interacção com a animadora e os participantes. Não só pela promoção e compra dos produtos da loja, como pela promoção nas redes sociais do papel da loja perante outros potenciais clientes e interessados, que de outra forma não descobririam a loja ou não perceberiam o seu contributo para esta tribo] which can be offline (e.g. phone call) or online (e.g. website). Through this process of creating value by sharing and integrating resources, actors potentially develop new skills and engage in learning loops that enrich their engagement in future cocreation activities. Previous literature emphasizes the key roles of actors’ motivations as drivers of the value cocreation process and the consequences that the value cocreation process can generate for each actor (contributors, passive consumers, and companies). It also highlights moderators at three levels, namely, motivations, the process, and consequences."
"Cuenta el director general de Makro en España, Peter Gries, que, hace años, un directivo de Makro prácticamente amenazó con despidos si alguna vez llegaba a ver un camión de la empresa haciendo un reparto ante una tienda o bar. Con esa estrategia, hoy por hoy ese directivo tendría que despedir a buena parte de los 3.700 empleados con que cuenta la compañía en España. Porque Makro ya no quiere ser un cash & carry, ese hipermercado al que acuden los propietarios de bares y restaurantes a comprar grandes cantidades de frescos o envases de tamaño extragrande, o donde se abastecen pequeños comerciantes de barrio, o donde tradicionalmente hacían la compra mensual las familias numerosas. Ahora se imponen los camiones de reparto. Gries, que dirige desde hace tres años y medio la filial española de Makro, propiedad del grupo alemán Metro, explica que hace unos años, desde Francia, el grupo advirtió que el negocio tradicional de cash & carry, el supermercado mayorista, ya no daba más de sí. "Había que decidir qué queríamos ser de mayores y se acordó que había que focalizarse en el hostelero', resume este directivo.Um dos "truques" mais simples, mas mais poderosos, para avaliar se estamos perante uma verdadeira estratégia ou não é usar a negação do que se afirma ser uma estratégia (recordar isto e isto).
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El viraje, que en España comenzó alrededor de 2008, era como el de un transatlántico. Entonces Makro era 100% cash & carry, los clientes sí o sí tenían que aprovisionarse en alguno de sus 37 centros en España; la mitad de la facturación venía en aquel momento de los restauradores, y la otra mitad, de comerciantes y autónomos. Hoy en día, los hosteleros son el origen de casi tres cuartas partes de la facturación de Makro"
“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 Prisioner’s Dilemma ecology was a winner. Lindgren’s model showed that once in a while, a particular strategy would rise up, dominate the game for a while, have its day in the sun, and then inevitably be brought down by some innovative competitor. Sometimes, several strategies shared the limelight, battling for “market share” control of the game board, and then an outsider would come in and bring them all down. During other periods, two strategies working as a symbiotic pair would rise up together – but then if one got into trouble, both collapsed.”...““We discovered that there is no one best strategy; rather, the evolutionary process creates an ecosystem of strategies – an ecosystem that changes over time in Schumpeterian gales of creative destruction.”..."... evolution is a process of continuous innovation. The recursive nature of the algorithm never stops. This is essential, given the constantly changing nature of the landscape. There may be periods of more or less active search as evolution balances exploration and exploitation, but the search is never complete. The system has no equilibrium - in evolutionary systems, stasis is a recipe for extinction."Trechos retirados de "Makro se va de bares y restaurantes" publicado no dia 16.02 no El País.
"the seven steps any business must take to build a robust marketing system.
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1. It Starts with Strategy...
you’ve got to start with strategy, and strategy starts with knowing your ideal customer.
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If you don’t understand who your ideal customer is—their core problems and the value you bring to every engagement—how can you possibly find a message that resonates and identify the tactics that will work?
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The short answer is that you can’t. Every great marketing strategy is rooted in pinpointing your ideal customer and honing in on the ways they want to interact with a business. Only once you’ve established your ideal client can you begin to connect what you offer with how you solve your customer’s problems.
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3. Content Has Risen to the Strategic Level.
Don’t conflate the word “content” with “blog post.” Content is way bigger than that.
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Content allows us to take the promise that we made to solve a problem and expand that so we can dominate search, social media, and all other places online where prospects are looking for answers about our brand.
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We like to use content hubs to create one-stop-shops for the kind of informative, meaningful content that addresses a customers’ needs anywhere along the journey. Hub pages are designed to bring together all relevant information on a certain topic on one page. Think of them as the table of contents for a great online book in your area of expertise.
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Whether someone’s just discovering your business, are coming back for one last look before they make a first purchase, or are sharing information about you with a friend looking for a referral, content hubs have something for everyone.
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Content hubs are not only great resources on your website, they help improve your ranking in SEO and ensure that it’s easier for new audiences to discover your business."
"El sector de la cosmética se lo disputan dos públicos: millenials y selenials. Las primeras, de treinta y tantos, beben de la tecnología y son adictas al maquillaje. Las segundas, mujeres a partir de 50 y que pertecen a la llamada «generación silver», tienen el poder adquisitivo y son las que invierten en productos de valor añadido. Gastan unos 200 euros anuales de media y son las que tiran del sector, «un pilar fundamental para la industria», ya que representan la mitad del gasto, según la directora de Consumer&Market de L’Óreal, Estefanía Yágüez.Quantas empresas precisam de descobrir este nicho?
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Así lo desvela la consultora Kantar Worldpanel, que ha hecho un estudio sobre el mercado de belleza entre los senior para L’Óreal España. Según sus cifras, las llamadas selenials (mezcla de senior y millenial) acaparan el 47% del gasto en belleza. De los 4.758 millones invertidos en cosmética cada año en España, 2.190 corresponden a este segmento de edad.
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Este fenómeno selenial está «impulsado por una mayor disponibilidad económica, por un aumento del interés por cuidarse y su mayor capacidad de adaptación a las nuevas tecnologías». Es el segmento de población donde más ha crecido el uso de internet. «Se trata de un tipo de consumidora inconformista, con confianza en sí misma, que desea cuidarse y se acepta tal y como es», señala Yágüez.
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En España hay 13 millones de compradores de productos de belleza de más de 55 años, de los cuales 7 millones son mujeres. De cada 10 euros gastados por seniors en cosmética, siete los desembolsan mujeres. Esto las convierte «en el mayor nicho de negocio para el sector».
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Las selenials adquieren cosméticos una media de 22 veces al año, superando los 200 euros anuales. Lo que más compran, según los datos de Kantar, son cremas faciales (el 33%), seguido de perfumes y fragancias (32%) y maquillaje (12%)."
"The coronavirus outbreak has exposed the United States’ dangerous dependence on China for pharmaceutical and medical supplies, including an estimated 97 percent of all antibiotics and 80 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients needed to produce drugs in the United States."E ao ler "¿‘Made in’ China? El coronavirus amenaza el ‘sourcing’ de los gigantes de la moda":
"El coronavirus impacta de lleno en el corazón del sourcing de moda. La epidemia ha cerrado fábricas y ha limitado los envíos desde la mayor fábrica de ropa del mundo, China, donde se aprovisionan, en mayor o menor medida, todos los gigantes del sector. La crisis sanitaria amenaza la campaña primavera-verano y pone en riesgo los precios para otoño-invierno, la segunda (y mayor) temporada del año.
Las empresas que concentran su aprovisionamiento en China serán las más afectadas. En cambio, aquellas que tiene un sourcing flexible están comenzando ya a adaptar sus pedidos. Portugal, en menor medida, Turquía y Marruecos son los países a los que la mayoría de compañías están mirando. Sin embargo, los tres países juntos no pueden absorber la capacidad de producción de China.[Moi ici: O banhista gordo]"Sinto-me tentado a pensar que este é um momento definidor de um novo ciclo de relacionamento com as fábricas chinesas.
"At Rosendale Dairy, each of the 9,000 cows has a microchip implanted in an ear that workers can scan with smartphones for up-to-the-minute information on how the animal is doing —everything from their nutrition to their health history to their productivity. Feed is calibrated to deliver a precise diet and machines handle the milking. In the fields, drones gather data that helps bump up yields for the row crops grown to feed the animals.9 mil vacas...
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Technology has played an important role in agriculture for years but it’s become a life and death matter at dairy farms these days, as low milk prices have ratcheted up pressure on farmers to seek every possible efficiency to avoid joining the thousands of operations that have failed."
"Em 2011, num postal, publiquei estes números:Como é que num negócio em que o que conta é o preço (logo o custo), uma exploração com 30 vacas, ou 50 vacas, pode competir com uma de 500 ou de 900 vacas? (900 é só o número médio)
"Terceiro: Quantas vacas existem em média numa exploração leiteira
Na Roménia? 1,5
Em Portugal? 18 (em 2010); 10 (em 1995)
Em Espanha? 42 (em 1995)
Em França? 60 (em 1995)
Na Alemanha? 55 (em 1995)
Na Dinamarca? 69 (em 1995)
No estado do Wisconsin? 98 (em 2010)"
Apesar de tudo, foi com algum espanto que na quinta-feira à noite, via @nticomuna cheguei a este número "Over half of US dairy herds now milk over 900 cows"
"It has been a tough decade for brick-and-mortar retailers, and matters seem only to be getting worse.Trechos retirados de "Never Mind the Internet. Here’s What’s Killing Malls."
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Despite a strong consumer economy, physical retailers closed more than 9,000 stores in 2019 — more than the total in 2018, which surpassed the record of 2017.
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Some people call what has happened to the shopping landscape “the retail apocalypse.” It is easy to chalk it up to the rise of e-commerce, which has thrived while physical stores struggle.
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But this can be overstated.
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Collectively, three major economic forces have had an even bigger impact on brick-and-mortar retail than the Internet has.
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In no particular order, here they are:
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- Big Box Stores: In the United States and elsewhere, we have changed where we shop — away from smaller stores like those in malls and toward stand-alone “Big Box” stores. ...
- Income Inequality: Rising income inequality has left less of the nation’s money in the hands of the middle class, and the traditional retail stores that cater to them have suffered. ...
- Services Instead of Things: With every passing decade, Americans have spent proportionately less of income on things and more on services. Stores, malls, and even the mightiest online merchants remain the great sellers of things."
"Overall, the answers to our survey suggest that sneakers and other sports related footwear will grow in market share, over the next three years, and leather footwear will continue losing it."
"In the first semester of 2019, international footwear trade showed divergent patterns around the world. Imports to the largest European markets (Germany, France, Italy, UK, Belgium) decreased from 2% to 6%, and 3% for the European Union as whole. But imports to the largest market in the world, the USA, increased by 4%, as did imports to Canada and Japan."Sabendo do peso do mercado europeu para receber as exportações portuguesas ... dá que pensar.
"Pricing power has little to do with pricing; it mostly concerns innovation and differentiation.
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More compelling is the lack of significance found in the relationship between competitive intensity and pricing power.
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The research results indicate that the appropriate response to competitive pressures might not be more price competition or potentially fatal price wars but more innovation to improve the level of true differentiation.
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This study also demonstrates a positive and significant link between pricing power and firm performance as defined in terms of EBIT, sales growth, and EBIT growth–—also a first.
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This research further confirms that pricing power increases profit power. A similar study conducted in 2011 showed that superior pricing power leads to superior financial results when comparing the stock value of the top performers in pricing power with the S&P 500 index over a 10-year period.
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But pricing power does not come on its own; it must be intentionally captured. A firm might have the necessary market position to capture pricing power through innovation, differentiation, and customer management, but its leaders might not understand where their pricing power resides and how to capture it fully."
"Portugal fechou o ano de 2019 com uma dívida pública de 249,74 mil milhões de euros, montante que representa um agravamento real de 600 milhões de euros relativamente ao valor contabilizado no final de 2018, informou o Banco de Portugal em nota de informação estatística divulgada segunda-feira em Lisboa."
"The Chinese province where the virus originated, with a population greater than South Korea, is under quarantine, while streets are empty and factories sit idle. How this plays out is uncertain, but what is certain is that the virus has the potential to change China in fundamental ways — and even if it does not, it should change the way we think about China."China’s coronavirus outbreak has scrambled the global trade in commodities, hitting the country’s massive appetite and challenging global supply lines set up to feed it. Markets for essentials like natural gas, copper and pork have all swooned amid worry over a broad weakening of demand. Prices for some natural resources are plumbing multiyear lows. Chinese companies are canceling orders for crude oil and other commodities, and the country’s once-heaving ports are quieter. Analysts say the disruption could be long lasting, as stockpiles of commodities grow and ships lay idle." (Fonte "Virus ShakesUp Global Supply Lines" publicado no Wall Street Journal de ontem)
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The only thing that is certain is that we cannot assume China’s future will resemble its recent past." (Fonte: "The most lasting impact of coronavirus" publicado no Washington Post de ontem)
"Depois da Kuka, da KraussMaffei, da Putzmeister, de parte da Osram e tantas outras, continua o take-over tecnológico silencioso…
"Our actions are most likely to revert to what is habitual when we are in a state of fear or anxiety. Collective actions are no different. Even as conditions in the world change dramatically, most businesses, governments, schools, and other large organizations, driven by fear, continue to take the same kinds of institutional actions that they always have. This does not mean that no learning occurs. But it is a limited type of learning: learning how best to react to circumstances we see ourselves as having had no hand in creating. Reactive learning is governed by "downloading" habitual ways of thinking, of continuing to see the world within the familiar categories we're comfortable with. We discount interpretations and options for action that are different from those we know and trust.
All learning integrates thinking and doing. In reactive learning, thinking is governed by established mental models and doing is governed by established habits of action.
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We act to defend our interests. In reactive learning, our actions are actually reenacted habits, and we invariably end up reinforcing pre-established mental models. Regardless of the outcome, we end up being "right." At best, we get better at what we have always done. We remain secure in the cocoon of our own worldview, isolated from the larger world.
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All learning integrates thinking and doing. All learning is about how we interact in the world and the types of capacities that develop from our interactions. What differs is the depth of the awareness and the consequent source of action.
Deeper levels of learning create increasing awareness of the larger whole—both as it is and as it is evolving—and actions that increasingly become part of creating alternative futures.Trechos retirados de "Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society" de Betty Sue Flowers, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski e Peter M. Senge.
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If awareness never reaches beyond superficial events and current circumstances, actions will be reactions. If, on the other hand, we penetrate more deeply to see the larger wholes that generate "what is" and our own connection to this wholeness, the source and effectiveness of our actions can change dramatically."
