- a tendência é a caminhada inexorável da concorrência para a extrema direita onde está a comoditização e reina o eficientismo
- a libertação de recursos proporcionada pela eficiência permite a emergência de novas práticas na fase de novo "wonder" que geram novas fontes de valor
quinta-feira, dezembro 17, 2020
Evolução, eficiência, inovação
quarta-feira, dezembro 16, 2020
As associações e o status quo
Um texto interessante retirado do livro SMASH: Using Market Shaping to Design New Strategies for Innovation, Value Creation, and Growth de Kaj Storbacka e Suvi Nenonen.
"An industry association promotes an ordered market that is hospitable and less risky for participants. It does so not only by standardizing market elements but by creating a confident common language. Furthermore, governments prefer to deal with associations rather than with more nakedly self-interested individual firms.
However, like events and awards, industry associations generally favor the status quo. Worse, a reactionary association might actively oppose market-wide changes if detrimental to some members. And, unlike events and awards, industry associations derive authority by being exclusive. So, if your market-shaping strategy is clearly at odds with the current association’s agenda, our advice is to prepare for conflict."
Quantas vezes, ao longo dos anos, escrevi aqui sobre os conservadores lideres das associações empresariais, mais preocupados em salvar o passado do que em abraçar o futuro... dizem que tenho mau feitio.
terça-feira, dezembro 15, 2020
Vamos viver uma época de partos difíceis
"We found that populations under strong selection ... subsequently evolved ... most rapidly ... Compared to populations under weak or no selection, they reached higher green fluorescence during each generation of phase II and evolved a green emission peak more rapidly. Strong selection promoted both the elimination of deleterious mutations and the accumulation of foldability-improving mutations. As a result, proteins under strong selection evolved higher efficiency of protein folding (foldability) and, to an even greater extent, higher robustness to mutations than proteins under weak or no selection."
Vivemos, viveremos, pois tempos de evolução acelerada...
Talvez por isso nos últimos dias tenho encontrado vários artigos sobre a transformação das empresas. Por exemplo, "Why Business Transformation Efforts Often Fail".
No Twitter ainda uso como avatar a mesma imagem desde 2004:
A imagem é sobre a urgência em agir:- O sentido de urgência (Agosto de 2008)
- Sentido de urgência (Abril de 2016)
"Not Establishing a Great Enough Sense of Urgency“Bad business results are both a blessing and a curse in the first phase. On the positive side, losing money does catch people’s attention. But it also gives less maneuvering room. With good business results, the opposite is true: convincing people of the need for change is much harder, but you have more resources to help make changes.”...Strong leadership is required to rally a company into action. “A paralyzed senior management often comes from having too many managers and not enough leaders,” said Kotter. “Management’s mandate is to minimize risk and to keep the current system operating. Change, by definition, requires creating a new system, which in turn always demands leadership. Phase one in a renewal process typically goes nowhere until enough real leaders are promoted or hired into senior-level jobs.”"
Outros sublinhados:
"Lacking a Vision
“In every successful transformation effort that I have seen, the guiding coalition develops a picture of the future that is relatively easy to communicate and appeals to customers, stockholders, and employees,” noted Kotter.
...
[Moi ici: Lembrei-me logo da TAP ao ler o trecho que se segue] Undercommunicating the Vision by a Factor of Ten
“Transformation is impossible unless hundreds or thousands of people are willing to help, often to the point of making short-term sacrifices, wrote Kotter. “Employees will not make sacrifices, even if they are unhappy with the status quo unless they believe that useful change is possible. Without credible communication, and a lot of it, the hearts and minds of the troops are never captured.”
Transformative changes are generally based on new, innovative ideas that few may understand in their early stages. It’s thus important to explain what’s unique and different about the new innovation to key constituencies, including clients, partners, analysts, reporters, and, most important, the company’s own employees. Effective communications are thus essential."
Pensem nisso...
— EU_Eurostat (@EU_Eurostat) December 14, 2020
In 2018, highest median gross hourly earnings were recorded in 🇩🇰 Denmark (€27.2) and lowest in 🇧🇬 Bulgaria (€2.4).
How about your country ❓
How about gross hourly earnings expressed in Purchasing Power Standards (PPS*) ❓#StatisticsExplained
➡️ https://t.co/gwO9HZiweu pic.twitter.com/gnT3dJvBdf
Já só falta a Bulgária ultrapassar-nos... pensem nisso.
Socialismo é uma política robusta, qualquer que seja o país ou o estado de desenvolvimento, gera pobreza! Recordo esta previsão.
segunda-feira, dezembro 14, 2020
"can to some extent be indirectly influenced, supplied, or brought into existence"
"For a market to work and develop, more actors than sellers and buyers are needed: sub-contractors, providers of complementary products or services, intermediaries, information providers, market research agencies, media, various interest groups, and regulators, to name just some. Actors play certain roles. To execute these roles, each actor requires certain know-how and to be configured or connected in certain ways. [Moi ici: Ou incentivados a participar no ecossistem. Não através de chantagem ou de suborno, mas indo ao encontro do que procuram e valorizam] Market ecosystems also require various forms of infrastructure, ranging from simple and often self-evident things like roads and electricity to more sophisticated things such as reliable data-communication links and fuel distribution systems.
...
Because your optimal market might benefit from more, or fewer, or different actors, playing different roles, in different configurations and equipped with different resources. And your optimal market might require more, or less, or different, or differently supplied, material and immaterial infrastructure. Indeed, if your market is still mostly the twinkle of a brilliant innovation in your eye and you have yet to create the market itself, you certainly won’t have enough actors or infrastructure yet! You’ll have to populate that space.
Happily, all these different elements the actors, their roles and know-how, and the infrastructure can to some extent be indirectly influenced, supplied, or brought into existence. Companies with an ambition to create new market systems or shape existing ones need to do exactly that. And we’ll be distinguishing here more between making new markets and shaping existing ones."
Trechos retirados do capítulo II do livro SMASH: Using Market Shaping to Design New Strategies for Innovation, Value Creation, and Growth de Kaj Storbacka e Suvi Nenonen.
domingo, dezembro 13, 2020
Para reflexão
Não é propriamente uma empresa de vão de escada:
"But Ideo has shared with Fast Company that, due to the economic downturn of COVID-19, the company will be laying off 8% of its global workforce. Its current headcount is 725 people."
Vamos ficar todos bem ...
sábado, dezembro 12, 2020
A degradação...
Mais um sintoma da degradação do contexto competitivo da economia portuguesa, "De Estarreja para Hambach: Ineos já tem fábrica para produzir o Grenadier".
Um país em que o ministro da Economia ousa fazer esta comparação:
"“Deixar desaparecer a TAP era como deixar desaparecer a Autoeuropa ou pior. A TAP faturou o ano passado 3.400 milhões de euros e fez compras a 1.700 empresas portugueses, sem ser combustível. A TAP é uma das maiores exportadoras nacionais e (…) contribui muito para a economia nacional e para o emprego qualificado em toda a cadeia de valor”, referiu Pedro Siza Vieira, num debate sobre política setorial, na Assembleia da República."
Como se confunde facturação com lucro?
Como se compara uma empresa que gera lucro ano após ano com uma empresa que não ganha dinheiro há mais de 10 anos e precisa de dinheiro sacado aos contribuintes líquidos para sobreviver?
Imaginem um "patrão" de Maserati
sexta-feira, dezembro 11, 2020
"Outcomes aren’t inevitable"
"The best history, Foster told me, is written when we understand the past in the light of a future that never happened. But it’s much harder to write that way, because the narrative is so complex and contingent.
What was difficult but thrilling about Foster’s history was that it seemed to be saying: at any moment, it could have been, could be, different. Outcomes weren’t inevitable; history wasn’t about manifest destinies but unexpected and unforeseen futures. What happened next took place because of choices people made, people without the information we have today and with information perhaps now lost. History wasn’t the runaway train on which we all sat like helpless, terrified children. This different view of history quivered with possibilities—some good, some bad, some seized, others overlooked—but all alive and human.
Think about what happens when you apply that mind-set to the future: at any moment, it could be different. Outcomes aren’t inevitable. What happens next is a choice.
...
Knowing that history doesn’t repeat itself is what makes it useful. We may glean what appear to be themes—humiliation provokes tyranny, for example—that make us pay attention to new information we might otherwise ignore or marginalize.
...
History doesn’t repeat itself because we keep changing and it keeps changing us. It can’t offer recipes but it can provide raw material with which to construct fresh combinations, drawn from where we have been, where we are today, and where we wish to be tomorrow. That it offers neither inevitability nor guarantees isn’t its weakness but its greatest power."
Trechos retirados de "Uncharted" de Margaret Heffernan.
quinta-feira, dezembro 10, 2020
"Limit the amount of money you have around"
Um artigo sobre o problema de ter demasiado dinheiro, de não ter constrangimentos, "What We Can Learn From The Failure Of Quibi":
"I’ve launched countless businesses in my career and one thing I’ve learned is that you need to keep capital scarce in the early days. Limiting the amount of money you have around forces people to face up to problems and solve them. You can’t ignore warning signs when you’re close to broke.
Quibi, on the other hand, failed because it did ignore signals."
Outro excelente ponto é:
"Conventional marketing strategy dictates that you identify the largest addressable market for your product. That, after all, is where you can reach the most people, scale your business and earn the most money. So it made sense for Quibi to target Millennials in search of “quick bites” to watch while on line at Starbucks.
Yet when you’re launching something new and different, you don’t want the largest addressable market which, almost by definition, already has a lot of companies serving it. Instead, you want to identify a hair-on-fire use case—a problem that somebody needs solved so badly that they almost literally have their hair on fire. That’s where you’ll find customers to put up with the inevitable bugs and glitches that always come up."
quarta-feira, dezembro 09, 2020
Repensar a situação
terça-feira, dezembro 08, 2020
"a boring bureaucratic arrangement to keep the status quo"
"Have you noticed the definition of a management system?
I know that a lot of people don't care about this definition thing, but if you work with management systems, I invite you to read the definition of the ISO 9000 standard.
Management system - System to establish a policy, an orientation, a set of priorities. Then, translate these priorities into objectives, into concrete challenges. Then work, transform the organization to meet those objectives.
While writing the management system’s policy one must include in the text a commitment to continuous improvement. Thus, a management system must aspire to continuously improve its performance.
Today's organization generates today's performance. Today's performance is a perfectly normal product of the current organization. The commitment to improvement means aspiring to a desired future performance better than the current one. Aspiring for future performance better than the present means transforming the current organization into the organization of the desired future, the only one capable of generating the desired future results in a perfectly normal and sustainable way.
In this way, maintaining a management system means continuously investing in transforming the current organization into the organization of the desired future. However, in many audits conducted in 2020 I found the same non-conformity:
Organizations should seek to continuously improve the suitability, adequacy, and effectiveness of the management system to improve its performance. The organization did not demonstrate the establishment of improvement objectives for its management system. All the objectives foreseen for 2020, associated with the system indicators, refer to the same objectives of 2019.
From my initiation to systemic thinking, I remember this image:
segunda-feira, dezembro 07, 2020
"Come on! Esta gente não analisa os números?"
O título tirei-o deste postal de Outubro último, "Tamanho, produtividade e a receita irlandesa".
Se há coisa que não gosto é de gente que não analisa os números. Gente que fala de cor e constrói explicações assentes em areia.
Em Junho último em "that model died this year" escrevi:
"México = Marrocos, Turquia, Roménia e Bulgária."
Em Agosto passado em "A caminho da Sildávia, portanto" escrevi:
"No final da conversa João Duque brinda-nos com uma ilustração da ligeireza com que o mundo académico segue a micro-economia. Segundo João Duque o sucesso do calçado nos últimos anos foi baseado no desenvolvimento de marcas... de marcas? Come on! Quantas marcas ganham dinheiro? Quantas marcas ao fim de 5 anos ainda estão vivas? Desenvolver marca é uma forma de sacar dinheiro de projectos europeus, mesmo que bem intencionada, mas que morre quando acaba o financiamento. O que foi desenvolvido e bem foi a marca "Made in Portugal" para que marcas estrangeiras viessem para Portugal aproveitar a sua "uniqueness" da proximidade produção-consumo (rapidez, flexibilidade, qualidade). BTW, mas é outra conversa, esta uniqueness já se foi graças à Turquia, Roménia, Marrocos, Argélia, Tunísia, Bulgária, ..."
Pelos vistos também estava a incorrer num erro, porque não tinha olhado para os números com olhos de ver. Assim, aproveitei o empréstimo que a colega Rita me fez do World Footwear 2020 Yearbook, publicado pela APICCAPS, e olhei para os números.
Primeiro, na tabela que se segue não vamos encontrar a Argélia porque as exportações são residuais, não chegaram a um milhão de pares em 2019.
Afinal a Roménia e Marrocos passaram a década em queda na exportação de calçado. A Tunísia está, ao fim de 10 anos, a voltar ao nível das exportações de 2010. Foram 5 anos a cair com a Primavera Árabe, e 5 anos a recuperar. A Bulgária tem-se mantido estagnada em torno dos valores de 2010.O que ressalta é a evolução turca e albanesa. Em 2010 a Turquia exportava cerca de 75 milhões de pares de sapatos, em 2019 exportou 275 milhões de pares a um preço médio de 3.29 USD. A Albânia em 10 anos duplicou as suas exportações. Presumo, pelo preço médio de cada par, que há ali mão de know-how italiano.
Assim, temos dois países próximos do centro da Europa com custos de produção muito baixos.
Lá em cima fala-se de uniqueness, no postal anterior falava-se, metaforicamente, em superpoderes. O factor proximidade ... foi-se. Como li há dias no livro SMASH: Using Market Shaping to Design New Strategies for Innovation, Value Creation, and Growth de Kaj Storbacka e Suvi Nenonen.
"finding a sustainable competitive advantage may not be that important. What is important, however, is that companies have a contingency plan to deal with the upcoming prospects for an expansion of available resources or possible constraints created by other actors in the market."
Tudo é transiente, tudo é temporário.
Superpoderes
Qual é o superpoder da sua empresa?
"You wouldn’t hire FedEx to safely transport a fragile large item across the country. Their superpower is speed, not avoiding jostling. On the other hand, an art transport company might take a bit longer to get the vase to your new home, but their white-glove treatment (with actual white gloves) would make them an obvious alternative to FedEx.
“You can choose anyone and we’re anyone” is not a useful way to earn customers, patrons, or supporters. Because if you’re anyone, it’s worth mentioning that a search engine is happy to point people to plenty of other people who are as anyone as you are.
In order to deliver speed at a low price, FedEx had to commit. They made a significant number of choices all focused on that one metric. If you try to ship a very large (but very light) box via FedEx, you’ll discover that instead of costing $30, it costs $450. That’s because it breaks their system, and their system is their superpower.
When we think of an artist we admire, we’re naming someone who stands for something. And to stand for something is to commit."
Trecho retirado de "The practice: shipping creative work" de Seth Godin.
domingo, dezembro 06, 2020
"pitching a win-win-win “story”
Três ideias fundamentais retiradas do primeiro capítulo do livro SMASH: Using Market Shaping to Design New Strategies for Innovation, Value Creation, and Growth de Kaj Storbacka e Suvi Nenonen.
Os mercados são mais do que para trocar valor, também servem para co-criar valor:
"The Function of a Market System Is Exchange, for the Purpose of Value Creation
Specifically, markets are CASs of exchange, for the creation of value. And we do need to be very specific about that. Common definitions which include exchange but omit use-value and the value creation aspect sound curiously zero-sum, as though the same resource is simply being shuffled around the system in a grand version of the children’s birthday game pass-the-parcel.
...
Just as markets divide into supply and demand, so does value divide into exchange value to the supplier and use value to the customer/user. In a firm-focused, production-centric view such as the traditional business strategy approach, value too easily comes to mean what is really only exchange value - the value to the producer or seller - or, worse still, the price.
…
A user will willingly pay a higher price if she can get more use value out of the product. So use value should be integral to the firm’s market view, and any way to increase use value offers potential gains in exchange value right back. This is where co-creation comes in. The firm’s product is only one component in the customer’s use value."
Os mercados não são um dado, são uma variável:
"Markets Are Socially Constructed, so You Can Reconstruct Them, too
Markets are social systems.
…
The key point for us is that, being socially constructed, markets can be consciously reconstructed. Because humans can be persuaded, incentivized or, where laws or sheer market power are involved, coerced by other humans, the firm has a means of influencing the human agents and their creations. This is how you can turn social reconstruction to your advantage. Fundamentally, viewing markets as shapeable systems suggests that opportunities are not precursors of strategy; rather they are outcomes of deliberate efforts to shape markets. ... We should not make strategy for a company - we should make strategy for the system. [Moi ici: Isto é tão bom!!! Urdir um ecossistema. Daqui: "
Uma empresa que trabalha com o BSC começa por determinar quem são os clientes-alvo! Uma empresa que trabalha com o BSC e comigo, para além dos clientes-alvo tem também de determinar qual é o ecossistema da procura."] Furthermore, strategy ought not to be viewed as winning a zero-sum game; nor ought the focus to be on competing. On the contrary, it should clarify how the company can engage in collaborative activities with market actors (suppliers, customers, and partners) in order to improve the creation of the use value. Companies that can promise improved value creation for several actors simultaneously are the ones most likely to be successful in shaping their respective markets.The job of the market leader is not to increase own market share at the expense of others, but rather about creating a positive sum game where many market actors grow the market together.[Moi ici: Maximizar o valor para todos os que estão no ecossistema]
…
The pay-off to all the theory above is that it enables you to become a market shaper.
...
“What is this market shaping that you are so worked up about?”
…
Changing the definition of markets from mere exchange mechanisms to a system fostering value creation is not just semantics or purely academic debate. Think about the implications. We’re claiming that, like any other human-made systems, market systems can be changed by companies, governments, and even singular individuals"
Os mercados podem ser trabalhados e manuseados:
"Building on the theoretical insight that, unlike poets, markets are not only born but also made, this strategy takes a new product or service and aims to consciously attract or build the elements of a fully functioning market around it.
…
What are the main ingredients for shaping markets? This is a question that it takes the rest of the book to answer fully. There is no single formula and no linear progression of steps. It’s about a continuous cycle. And there’s a degree of art to it as well as science. Broadly though, market shaping begins with re-focusing your business definition, which also acts as your frame on the market, so that you can see the rich reality of your market system and training it on the slice of the universe of possible markets which you want to start with. You then need to envisage a new shape for that market system that would benefit your firm more, by capturing a share of extra use value you’ll help create (in other words, co-create) for customers. Whichever other players it requires to effect the change, you’ll need to appeal to them by offering a share in the value creation as well. This involves pitching a win-win-win “story” or narrative about your proposed new shape. [Moi ici: Há anos que prego isto. Por exemplo: "Ganhar-ganhar-ganhar porque passa por orquestrar uma relação que traga vantagens não só à clássica interacção diádica, cliente-fornecedor, mas também a outras combinações"] And you’ll need to time the whole intervention to strike when the market is “hot” and malleable.
…
Which firms could practice market shaping? … You don’t need market power in the traditional sense of monopolies and oligopolies. In fact, being big can hinder creative thinking of the kind a new strategy requires if the great idea gets tangled up in the red tape of internal processes. However, you need a good idea _ a vision about how to shape your market into a better re-incarnation of that market - because market shaping works only if you are truly able to improve the market. And remember, “improving” means improvement to others as well, not just to you."
sábado, dezembro 05, 2020
Value from imperfection - Decommoditize
Há tempos criei um site para começar a alimentar o que dentro de anos poderá ser um mercado mais relevante para a minha actividade profissional. Chamei a esse site "Value From Imperfection".
Muitos perguntam-me o porquê deste nome.
Há minutos encontrei no Twitter uma boa introdução à explicação do nome:
Commodify is the shift from social to economic value (i.e. the first commercial instance of something)
— Simon Wardley (@swardley) December 5, 2020
Commoditise is the shift from imperfect to perfect competition (i.e. creation of a commodity or a utility market)
The two are very different. Don't mix them.
Reparem naquele "Commoditise is the shift from imperfect to perfect competition".
Quem são os meus clientes-alvo? PMEs industriais que procuram servir clientes com bens e serviços transaccionáveis. Estamos a falar de empresas que não podem competir pelo preço mais baixo, empresas que têm de arranjar outra vantagem competitiva que não o preço. Empresas que têm de subir na escala de valor, empresas que têm de fugir da comoditização: um mercado comoditizado é um mercado em que o que conta é o preço mais baixo.
O que aprendi há anos e está ali ao lado na coluna das citações é:
"When something is commoditized, an adjacent market becomes valuable"
Quando um mercado fica comoditizado entra a competência perfeita, reina a eficiência pura e dura, o sucesso é para quem é maior e consegue economias de escala. Recordo o maluco académico americano que até queria acabar com as marcas para promover a concorrência perfeita. Segundo ele, Camberlin, o valor de marcas como a Apple acontece por causa de ""ignorance" or the "imperfect knowledge" that results from "the reprehensible creation by businessmen of purely fictitious differences between products which are by nature fundamentally uniform"."
Qualquer PME deve fugir da concorrência perfeita como o diabo da Cruz, daí a minha assinatura de anos: promotor da concorrência imperfeita e dos monopólios informais.
As PMEs devem estar sempre à procura das imperfeições no mercado, é delas que se pode retirar mais valor. Até porque é inevitável. A imperfeição de hoje mais tarde ou mais cedo deixa de ser mistério e transforma-se em algoritmo e reina a comoditização:
sexta-feira, dezembro 04, 2020
Despedir clientes
"Ogilvy met with the CEO of an unnamed client. “I said I’ve come to resign your business. He asked why. I said because your Executive Vice President is a shit… He’s treating your people atrociously and he’s treating my people atrociously. Now what he does to your people—that’s your business. But I’m not going to allow this man to go on demoralizing the people of Ogilvy & Mather.” He also resigned the Rolls Royce account. “The last 600 cars you sent to the United States don’t work. And I will no longer be a party to recommending that people buy them.”
...
Ogilvy was irritated by package goods manufacturers who spent more money on sales promotions than on advertising. “They are spending twice as much on price-cutting as on building brands… they are training consumers to buy on price instead of brand.” He concluded that “the men who employ them are more interested in next quarter’s earnings than in building their brands.” This relates to his repulsion for “the jackasses on Wall Street.”
Trechos retirados de "The Unpublished David Ogilvy"
Mercado como um sistema complexo em permanente adaptação
"Markets are a classic case of a complex adaptive system (CAS). Mathematicians developed CASs as a distinct category between systems that are ordered but very complicated, like the flight deck of a modern airliner, and outright chaotic systems, like weather, which is subject to the famous “butterfly effect.
...
Because CASs don’t obey ordinary laws of cause and effect, we have to throw out the simplistic view of markets as supply-and-demand curves. Also heading for the trash can is the old, linear view of strategy as a detailed master plan drawn up in phase one and executed in phase two.
...
The firm is one of the agents or actors, inside the market system. Although CASs don’t follow ordinary cause and effect in a way that even an expert consultant can predict, they are amenable to a degree of influence by their parts, and those include the firm.
...
CAS tells us that markets will continually evolve and that we’ll have to deal with it! ... They do not pre-exist as eternal givens. Neither do they pop magically into and out of existence, nor are they fixed while they’re around."
Trechos retirados de SMASH: Using Market Shaping to Design New Strategies for Innovation, Value Creation, and Growth de Kaj Storbacka e Suvi Nenonen.
quinta-feira, dezembro 03, 2020
Ecossistemas e definições de mercado
“The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device but developers, applications, e-commerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications, and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyze or join an ecosystem.”
A mensagem inicial dos autores é sobre as visões erradas sobre o que é o mercado e sobre as implicações dessas visões. Por exemplo, a ideia de que o mercado é um dado (o mercado pode ser uma variável).
Outro erro, que costumo sublinhar quando uso a expressão "live and let live":
"Competing for market share when everyone defines their market by product is zero-sum. By definition, a theory that tells you to compete for market share reduces your strategy to a zero-sum game. That limitation is built into not only the words “share” and “compete” but also the poor market view itself."
"The obsession with exchange value misses the opportunities of growing use-value. The exchange value focus overlooks the goldmine of business opportunities that resides precisely in use-value over on the demand side of the market which the industry view omits and the product view misunderstands."
quarta-feira, dezembro 02, 2020
Só esta liberdade e criatividade
"What the patterns of an artist’s progress show are the human capacity to find meaning and to make lasting work not by planning it but by remaining open to the possibilities they see inside and around themselves. This argues against forcing predetermined expectations and goals onto our experience of life and for an alert way of being, open to noticing and responding to the future as it emerges.
...
prescribed rules can’t give individuals, companies, or countries the alertness they need to evolve and adapt.
...
In an age of uncertainty and change, being able to sense what to do in advance of reliable prediction can make businesses or nonprofits smarter, more inventive, and more relevant. The intuition for change and the capacity to pursue it energetically is what markets applauded in Steve Jobs, a man who wasn’t an artist but thought like one.
...
When it comes to the future, it matters more to invigorate the search than to try to determine the outcome.
...
Allowing people at work to think like artists takes more than colorful walls, toys, murals, and open spaces. To have insights that are relevant to life requires having a life, one rich in experiences and the time to internalize them."
Este é o tipo de mensagem que encontro no livro de Margaret Heffernan, “Uncharted”, e que tanto aprecio. Perante a incerteza, deixar o engenho humano dar a volta através da "arte". As mentes eficientistas agarram-se às leis do século XX, (a tríade do tempo da troika) ou ao pré-histórico socialismo, mas a União Europeia também não é melhor ao propor abordagens homogéneas independentemente do estado de desenvolvimento de cada país e da sua cultura.
Só esta liberdade e criatividade pode dar a volta a previsões pessimistas.