"O poder aritmético que se forma por adição e subtracção de votos parlamentares é um poder sem política, é uma sucessão de oportunismos, sem estratégia, sem crescimento económico e sem justiça social, tendo de recorrer à hipoteca do futuro através do endividamento para encobrir a sua incapacidade para construir e concretizar uma estratégia para o futuro, que é a condição de legitimação do poder político."
Trecho retirado de "Poder e política"
"We also need to understand that there is no economic law that says that all advanced countries will see their economies grow indefinitely, especially when they are being challenged by the rise of countries such as China today....The market-efficiency school of thought includes the Physiocrats, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Alfred Marshall, Paul Samuelson and Paul Krugman. The production-capability school of thought includes such figures as Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List, the German Historical School and Joseph Schumpeter....According to the production-capability school, however, wealth originates from innovation and creativity, with the accumulation of assets taking place as a result of discoveries and innovations changing people's stock of knowledge and their tools....Secondly, the analytical focus of the two schools of thought is different. In the market-efficiency school, the focus of analysis is on barter and men and women as traders. In the production-capability school, the focus is on production and men and women as innovative producers..Thirdly, because the market-efficiency school of thought was based on the trade and commerce conducted by the English, the English economists who played a large part in developing it came to see all economic activities as being qualitatively alike.[Moi ici: BINGO!!! Recordar o lead deste postal]...As a result, while the production-capability school of thought sees different economic activities as offering different 'windows of opportunity' for achieving national welfare, the market-efficiency school of thought sees all economic activities as having the same potential....Finally, the production-capability school of thought sees no limits to progress, believing in the 'never-ending frontier of human knowledge....[Friedrich] List also understood that innovation is the engine of economic growth...[Schumpeter] saw competition as a dynamic process of moving from one disequilibrium to another, rather than a process of moving towards equilibrium.Secondly, he understood that we do not live in a world of perfect competition, [Moi ici: BINGO!!!] and that the traditional theorist's focus solely on price is wrong. As he said:In the capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not [price] competition that counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organisation (the largest-scale unit of control for instance)."Thirdly, he saw the process of innovation as the engine of economic growth, remarking, "without innovation, no entrepreneurs, without entrepreneurial achievement, no capitalist returns and no capitalist propulsion?"
"Saitex says it can boost LA manufacturing in a way that benefits both brands and the local economy. Its new factory is highly automated, equipped with all the latest tech, from 3D cutting to auto-sewing to a “dancing box” that requires only 0.6L of recycled water to wash each garment....while it takes 250 people to make 1,000 pairs of jeans in Vietnam, in Vernon it takes less than 100.We’re creating a hybrid manufacturing model that could be a formula for the industry.“There is always a point in time when technology is ready,” Bahl said. “We’re creating a hybrid manufacturing model that could be a formula for the industry.”...For a start, making jeans at the facility will allow brand partners to burnish their ethical credentials and signal their support for American jobs. But it could also make smart commercial sense. With small-batch production options and proximity to American consumers, Saitex’s Vernon plant enables brands to quickly replenish inventory, responding to consumer interest for particular products rather than placing big bets upfront. That means better aligning supply and demand, with the hopes of significantly reducing excess inventory.Plus, there’s a test-and-learn opportunity. For instance, a brand can send the factory a new denim design and have just 500 pairs produced for trying out with consumers. Based on hard data, the brand can then choose whether or not to scale up production. In traditional apparel manufacturing, it can take up to a year for a product to go from concept to sales floor. Working with the new Saitex facility, it could be as little as three weeks. For e-commerce orders, Saitex offers brands a service that also ships their products directly to the consumer, further speeding up the process.“This factory will allow for real-time data and real-time ROI,” Bahl said. “Think 90 days versus 270 or 365.”Some believe the launch of factories like this mark a tipping point in the way clothes are made....Interest in responsive, or “just-in-time,” manufacturing — successfully deployed by Spain’s Inditex, parent of fast-fashion giant Zara, which famously moves product from concept to sales floor in two-to-three weeks — has gathered steam in the US over the past decade.As a result, the US has experienced a small-but-steady uptick in local apparel and shoe production. In 2019, 98 percent of shoes and 97 percent of clothes bought by Americans were imported, but the number of these products manufactured locally increased by 72 percent over the previous 10 years, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA), a trade group.“These aren’t bringing back jobs that left decades ago,” said Stephen Lamar, president and chief executive of the AAFA. “Instead, it’s creating jobs that are driven by technology.”[Moi ici: Segue-se um trecho com novidades interessantes] Scaling these efforts has been challenging, however, in part because many retailers have a vested interest in the old way of doing things. For some, cheaply produced, large-inventory volumes can help to weave a growth narrative for investors, where retailers claim they are manufacturing more products in order to open more stores and fuel top-line sales. The success of the off-price channel has shown that this approach can work, allowing brands to increase sales for years while maintaining slim margins.But now, brands have so much excess inventory — especially after 2020 hit consumer demand and forced many to shut down their physical stores — that prices often can’t go any lower, nor discounts any deeper, without resulting in losses.“That growth has either disappeared or is highly uncertain,” Thorbeck said. “Without that engine of growth, the formula for cheap inventory is an unsustainable burden.”Even so, convincing brands that produce en masse to implement on-demand manufacturing remains an uphill battle. For one, it requires upfront investment. It also costs more per item to manufacture in small batches, a hard hump to get over, even though items made this way are more likely to be sold at full price, resulting in increased profits.Brands like Nike and Adidas, which have opened on-demand manufacturing facilities in recent years only to close them, often aren’t willing to take the risk, even if it means a leaner, more efficient business in the medium to long term....“It became clear that the company would be unable to reach a commercially viable solution,” Flex said at the time.[Moi ici: Faz-me lembrar a VW e as carrinhas eléctricas para a Deutsch Post]...Thorbeck is convinced that the pandemic’s squeeze on margins is the push that retailers needed to modernise their operations.The alternatives have been exhausted.“I’m optimistic because honestly, the alternatives have been exhausted,” he said. “Companies have not dramatically improved retail performance, and their only growth channel, which online, is inherently more expensive.”"
Trechos retirados de "Is a New Model for Manufacturing Finally Here?"
"Uma das coisas que aprendi em 2008 foi a da variabilidade da distribuição de produtividades. Existem mais variabilidade da produtividade entre as empresas de um mesmo sector de actividade económica do que entre sectores de actividade económica. Percebem as implicações disto? No mesmo país, com as mesmas leis, com o mesmo povo, dentro de um mesmo sector, a variabilidade da produtividade é enorme. E isto quer dizer que o factor mais importante para a produtividade é o ADN que está numa empresa." (fonte)
Uma mensagem clássica deste blogue, a primeira vez que usei o marcador "distribuição de produtividades" foi em Maio de 2010.
Ontem, li um texto de 2006, "A long-term look at ROIC", onde aparece escarrapachada esta verdade desconhecida por muitos:
"historical ROICs can vary widely by industry. In the United States, the pharmaceutical and consumer packaged-goods industries, among others, have sustainable barriers, such as patents and brands, that reduce competitive pressure and contribute to consistently high ROICs. Conversely, capital-intensive sectors (such as basic materials) and highly competitive sectors (including retailing) tend to generate low ROICs.
...
we found that the median or mean returns of general, broadly defined industry groups can be downright misleading. Executives who look at the mean or median ROIC of an industry without understanding the distribution of ROIC performance within it may not have sufficient information to assess a company or to project its ROIC accurately.
.
Indeed, intra-industry differences are sometimes far more dramatic than those among sectors (Exhibit 3). Take the software and services industry. Its median ROIC from 1963 to 2004 was 18 percent, but the spread between the top and bottom quartile of companies averaged 31 percent. In fact, the industry’s performance was so uneven as to render this metric meaningless. These wide variations suggest that the industry comprises many distinct subgroups that have very different structures and are subject to very different competitive forces."
"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."
E chamei a atenção para a transitoriedade do status quo no sector privado exportador. A base do sucesso do modelo nos últimos 10 anos posta em causa por dois países próximos do centro da Europa com custos de produção muito baixos. Por isso:
"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."
E isto joga bem com a mensagem do lucro como uma ilusão, parte significativa dele é para pagar os custos do futuro, como aprendi com Schumpeter. Há que estar sempre focado no amanhã, recordo esta série "Quantas empresas". Recomendo a parte X dessa série.
E já agora, na sequência dessa parte X, voltar ao postal de ontem sobre "The search for a profitable niche market"
"Niche markets are distinct from mass-markets in two important ways. First, niche markets are, by definition, focused and serve consumers with specialized preferences.
...
The search for a profitable niche market begins with the search for less-than-satisfied customers-those whose needs are not being met by existing offerings. In their book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout argue that understanding the customer is the first-step in the battle to create a position in the customer’s mind: “…you have to get off your pedestal and put your ear to the ground. You have to get on the same wavelength as the prospect.”
If listening is hard, making sense of what one hears may be even harder.
...
What do prospective customers value and why will they buy (and not buy) your product? Theory cannot provide conclusive answers to these questions. The answers must be discovered by experience, experimentation and evidence."
Trechos retirados de "Strategy in Niche Markets"
"In Germany people believe that the net profit margin, after all costs and all taxes, is 23%. The real margin over many years is 3.4%. Similar in the US. The believe is 32% net profit margin, the reality is 4.9%. The record holders are the Italians. They think that the margin is 38%, the reality is 5%. There are two messages: Real net margins are 5% or less, typically. Furthermore, people overestimate profit margins by 600%. That’s unbelievable."
"large corporations are not more profitable. The median of the net margin of the Fortune Global 500 is 4.49%. This tells us that half of these giants earn less than 4.5%. Most likely they don’t make an economic profit, meaning that they don’t recover their cost of capital. That’s the case for half of the Fortune Global 500. The public perception is misguided by a few profit stars....profit always depends on the combination of three profit drivers and there are only those three: price, volume and cost."
Sem lucro as empresas são como Portugal, um país sem autonomia, sempre a passear-se pelos areópagos internacionais como pedinte profissional.
2º Para que servem os lucros?
A maior parte das pessoas pensa que o lucro é importante para remunerar os accionistas. Sim, o lucro serve para remunerar o risco de quem empreende. No entanto, as empresas que se ficam por isso não têm futuro.
Final dos anos 80(?) estava eu em Valongo, numa sala à espera de uma entrevista de emprego na UTA e lia um dos livros de Peter Drucker. Não recordo o título, tenho e li tudo o que encontrei dele, mas nesse livro Drucker apresentou-me a mim, engenheiro com formação básica de gestão, mais um austríaco que eu não conhecia: Joseph Schumpeter.
Com Schumpeter aprendi que o lucro é fundamental para pagar os custos do futuro! Ainda esta semana sorri e recordei esta ideia. A trabalhar numa empresa, estivemos a sistematizar a metodologia de qualificação inicial de subcontratados. A empresa referia-se a eles como fábricas, contudo também recorrem a outros subcontratados que não podem ser apelidados de "fábricas". Então, apostarm no termo "unidade de produção". Gente mais nova não tem essa memória, mas eu tinha mais de 10 anos quando foi o 25 de Abril de 1974, na minha cabeça apareceu logo a expressão "unidade colectiva de produção". Tinham um pecado original, focavam-se na gratificação imediata e nunca acumulavam capital para pagar os custos do futuro. Recordar que este Schumpeter é o mesmo que nos apresentou a destruição criativa. Quem não quer ser destruído tem de investir no seu futuro.
3º Como se obtém o lucro?
Associada a esta pergunta está uma outra: A parte do lucro que se distribui, por quem sem se distribui? Pelos accionistas ou pelos stakeholders (partes interessadas)?
E aqui, no vídeo, refere-se a ideia do Milton Friedman sobre a importância do lucro e da sua maximização. Esta ideia de Milton Friedman expressa em “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits” está ultrapassada. Ao longo dos anos que escrevo sobre isso, mas sem criticar Friedman. Há muitos anos que uso esta imagem aqui no blogue:
"Quanto mais crescer o interesse e vantagem em trabalhar a nível de ecossistema, em que os ecossistemas que ganham são os que maximizam o valor a ser criado pelo conjunto dos actores, e não por um em particular."
Acredito que Friedman hoje pensaria de forma diferente. Hoje, o lucro tem de ser visto como um objectivo obliquo. É tão absurdo, aos meus olhos, eleger o lucro como um objectivo directo como ouvir um político eleger como objectivo directo a redução do desemprego. Dá sempre asneira.
Como objectivos oblíquos, o lucro ou a redução do desemprego são consequências de outras coisas. O lucro é uma consequência de clientes que se ganham, clientes satisfeitos e de clientes que continuam a trabalhar connosco.
Ganhar, satisfazer e desenvolver a relação com os clientes é fruto de se trabalhar bem a montante: E quem trabalha?
"Cada vez mais, o sucesso de uma empresa exige que se tenha em consideração as necessidades e expectativas de outras partes interessadas que podem contribuir para a sustentabilidade do desempenho. É claro que os clientes são uma parte interessada, afinal são eles que nos dão o dinheiro com que pagamos as contas, preparamos o futuro e suportamos a impostagem. No entanto, podemos identificar outras partes interessadas:"
Portugal é isto!
Seja qual for a justificação, ilegalidade ou provincianismo parolo, Portugal é isto, é esta falta de decoro nos gastos públicos.
"In performance cultures, people often become attached to best practices. The risk is that once we’ve declared a routine the best, it becomes frozen in time. We preach about its virtues and stop questioning its vices, no longer curious about where it’s imperfect and where it could improve. Organizational learning should be an ongoing activity, but best practices imply it has reached an endpoint. We might be better off looking for better practices."
Trecho retirado de “How to be Strategic” de Fred Pelard.
"To be strategic, first be creative, then be analytical. Since strategic thinking deals with the future, you will have very little quality data available to you, and starting with analysis would be a mistake.
The more strategic the issue you face, the less data there will be. Which is why you should keep your powder dry, and use whatever data there is to validate or kill ideas, not to generate them. An additional benefit to this approach is that the dataset you need to test an idea is much smaller than the dataset you need to generate an idea.
...
So ‘Down’ [Moi ici: Na figura acima] is about diving from a great height into the world of data to identify the likelihood that an idea you’ve already had will be successful or not. Not uncommonly, data will prove sparse, unreliable and contradictory. Unsurprisingly, you might feel at that moment that you’re further away from Completion than at any point since the start of the project.
...
The Helicopter of Creative Discovery is brilliant at tackling the future. The future can’t be analysed, it can only be created. Generating many creative options with limited data is what many people naturally do when they envisage future holidays or entrepreneurial ventures. This takes no time. The vertical way is exciting, light and free. The rest of the time is dedicated to slowly maturing the options, through discussion and reflection, until reaching an answer that feels right. The Helicopter approach, however, is too reliant on subjective matters of personal taste to be entirely convincing in a business context."[Moi ici: É preciso massacrar as opções criativas iniciais com dados obtidos de pequenos testes iniciais que rapidamente validarão ou rejeitarão hipóteses]
Trechos retirados de “How to be Strategic” de Fred Pelard.
Um texto sobre o problema de usar o pensamento científico para resolver desafios estratégicos. Recordo o exemplo da Viarco e o exemplo dos muggles:
"where do the key facts of strategic thinking reside? In the future.
Of course, solving strategic issues relies on facts from the past and the present too, but the most critical data you need for resolution does come from the future. And that’s why, the more strategic the issue we are trying to solve, the less likely the [Submarine of] Analytical Research is going to work. The more strategic the problem you are dealing with, the less applicable the Submarine route becomes.
The horizontal route relies heavily for its success on the availability of data, in both quantity and quality. And when you look to the future, which is where most of strategic thinking operates, data is going to be scarce and often highly unreliable. We’ll see shortly how the third route to Completion compensates for that.
...
So the horizontal, Submarine route is the preferred problem-solving method of smart, analytical people. And strategy and strategic thinking are commonly held to be some of the smartest problems around. Yet the horizontal route doesn’t work very well to solve such strategic issues. How ironic. The problem-solving method most beloved of eggheads doesn’t work for the most egghead of problems!
That’s because it’s impossible to solve the future using just hard facts, since there are no hard facts in the future, just hidden possibilities. The future can’t be analysed; it can only be created."
Trechos retirados de “How to be Strategic” de Fred Pelard.
A propósito deste postal de Seth Godin:
"The windmills aren’t the problem, it’s the tilting.In Cervantes’ day, ’tilting’ was a word for jousting. You tilted your lance at an enemy and attacked.Don Quijote was noted for believing that the windmills in the distance were giants, and he spent his days on attack.Change can look like a windmill.When we say, “the transition to a new place is making me uncomfortable,” we’ve expressed something truthful. But when we attack a windmill, we’ve wasted our time and missed an opportunity to focus on what matters instead.When my dad taught at the University of Buffalo, the heart of his MBA classes was teaching about the ‘change agent’. This is the external force that puts change into motion. The change agent, once identified, gives us an understanding of our options and the need to respond, not to react.Every normal is a new normal, until it is replaced by another one."
"A practice’s ability to deliver value to clients rests on the skills of its professionals, and the skill set of those professionals affects the choice of clients. In turn, the clients being served affect the development of the professionals’ skills. The strategy of a practice therefore is tightly linked to its clients and the professionals serving them. Whom a practice hires affects the clients it can serve, the clients it serves affect how the skills of its professionals evolve, how the skill set evolves affects the clients the practice can acquire in the future, and the cycle keeps repeating."
"To achieve superior performance, a practice has to manage both its capabilities and its client portfolio systematically.A useful way to examine portfolios is to determine where clients fall in the four quadrants formed by comparing the cost to serve clients (CTS) with clients’ willingness to pay (WTP)."
"Most practices discover that their clients are spread across all four quadrants. That indicates that they have no clear strategy and are trying to be everything to everyone. This happens mainly because they can’t say no to clients. Irrational confidence about being able to turn any situation around makes it hard to pass up opportunities. And a lot of practices will undertake any task a client puts forward rather than allow a competitor to develop a relationship with it. The tendency to obsess over revenues rather than profits, moreover, fosters an “any business is good business” mentality."
Trechos retirados de "What Professional Service Firms Must Do to Thrive"
"O número de insolvências empresariais no concelho de Braga disparou em janeiro de 2021 cerca de 300 por cento face ao período homólogo. E o número de novas empresas criadas caiu mais de 40 por cento face a janeiro de 2021.
...
O concelho de Braga iniciou o ano de 2021 com uma forte derrocada no tecido empresarial, que sinalizou um forte impacto da pandemia na destruição de empresas e, por erxtensão, dos postos de trabalho.
Durante o mês de janeiro deste ano, a maior economia do Minho perdeu 147 empresas para as insolvências, revela um relatório que acaba de ser publicado pelo Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE).
...
À escala da região do Minho, o mês de janeiro de 2021 fica marcado por 583 empresas declaradas insolventes, ou seja, mais 245 por cento que as 238 que entraram em processo de falência em janeiro do ano passado.
Contas feitas, nos distritos de Braga e de Viana do Castelo faliram, em média, 19 empresas por cada dia do mês de janeiro.
O número de insolvências de empresas minhotas no primeiro mês do ano corresponde a mais de 36 por cento de todas as falências de 2020, que foram de 1607.
...
Os números avançados pelo INE dão conta que os oito concelhos que integram a sub-região do Ave acumulam a maior destruição absoluta de empresas e o maior agravamento das insolvências empresariais face ao período homólogo.
A maior área industrial do Minho acumulou, em janeiro último, 260 insolvências, mais 283 por cento que em as 92 registadas em janeiro de 2020."
Trechos retirados do artigo "Falências sobem 300 por cento entre as empresas de Braga" publicado no Diário do Minho de ontem.
"The imagery of a ship navigating to discrete waypoints for the purpose of reaching a destination aligns well with the activity of a company plotting and carrying out strategic initiatives. It is observed therefore that the development and implementation of strategy may be conceived as a series of discrete activities that may be managed as projects. Although the refining of strategy often occurs on an annual cycle, the macroenvironment changes as does the internal situation of the business. For this reason, every strategic planning cycle includes elements that are unique. Since the strategic planning process is unique in every planning period, and the activities carried out in each of the strategic planning phases are temporary, often complex, and involve the application of resources, the process of strategic planning is an ideal candidate for the use of project management practices."
Como não relacionar com o que tenho escrito nos últimos 16 anos neste blogue:
"Como não existem acidentes nem acasos, se aspiramos a resultados futuros diferentes dos resultados actuais, temos de transformar a realidade. Temos de criar a organização do futuro através de um somatório de projectos de transformação: as iniciativas estratégicas."
Trecho retirado de “Project-Led Strategic Management” de James Marion.
"Scientific progress has been stifled many times over the years because the gatekeepers who established and enforced orthodoxy believed they knew all the answers ahead of time.
...
Consider that in 1894, the prominent physicist Albert Michelson argued, after surveying the great advances in physics realized during the late nineteenth century: “It seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established. . . . An eminent physicist remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.” In contrast, over the subsequent several decades, physicists witnessed the emergence of the theories of special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics, theories that revolutionized our understanding of physical reality and thus disproved Michelson’s forecast.
...
Similarly, in August 1909, Edward Charles Pickering argued in a Popular Science Monthly article that telescopes had reached their optimal size, fifty to seventy inches, and there was thus little point in building instruments with larger apertures. “Much more depends on other conditions, especially those of climate, the kind of work to be done and, more than all, the man behind the gun,” Pickering wrote. “The case is not unlike that of a battleship. Would a ship a thousand feet long always sink one of five hundred feet? It seems as if we had nearly reached the limit of size of telescopes, and as if we must hope for the next improvement in some other direction.”
Pickering was mistaken, of course; telescopes with larger apertures collect more photons, allowing scientists to see farther out into the cosmos and deeper into the past. Pickering directed the Harvard College Observatory from 1877 to 1919, and his unfortunate words therefore carried a lot of weight, especially on the East Coast. As a result, the West Coast became the center of observational astronomy in the United States for decades to come.
...
Pickering had erred due to his arrogance. Not personal arrogance, but professional arrogance. He thought what his generation of scientists observed, understood, and determined was of interest was the peak of discovery; he didn’t appreciate that the ascent of science is one false peak after another."
Trechos retirados de "Extraterrestrial" de Avi Loeb
"In recovering from the crisis, the effectiveness of sales efforts will be of strategic importance for companies....Few companies have adequately adapted their sales models to fundamental shifts in the way customers make purchase decisions. Buying has long been framed in terms of a hierarchy-of-effects model in which customers move from awareness to interest to desire to action. However, the AIDA formula and its variants—the basis (often unconsciously) for sales activities in most firms—is becoming less relevant as buyers work through their own parallel activity streams in making a decision....Effective selling requires an understanding of where customers are, how they navigate between various streams of activity, and when to interact with them....Despite technology advances, most sales models are the ad hoc accumulation of years of reactive decisions made by multiple managers pursuing different goals....Like perishable goods in grocery stores, any sales model has a sell-by date. Across a market life cycle, customers typically start as generalists and over time become more discriminating....Decisions about scope, or where you play in a market, are central to any business strategy and sales model... But in practice, scope is determined by sales call patterns—where reps’ time and expense are allocated. Scope must also take into account opportunity costs. Money and time allocated to accounts A and B are not available for accounts C, D, and so on. Executives know that you can’t be all things to all people, yet they fail to make this an explicit and managed part of their sales models. They basically tell salespeople, either directly in meetings or implicitly through compensation plans, to “go forth and multiply.” With an eye to meeting their volume quotas, salespeople then sell to anyone, often at discounted prices, leading to lost revenue and damaged brand positioning. Profitable growth requires clarity about how to “separate the suspects from the prospects.”Most sales models are the ad hoc accumulation of years of reactive decisions made by multiple managers pursuing different goals....A company must also adapt its sales model as it pursues new customer segments."
Trechos retirados de "Selling After the Crisis"
...
Why has UK growth slowed to a crawl? The best analysis I have seen of the determinants of growth is in Windows of Opportunity by David Sainsbury,
...
As Sainsbury states, neoclassical economics does not have a theory of growth, because it does not have a theory of innovation. He does: it is driven by innovative businesses. This he calls the “capability/market-opportunity dynamic”. There are four conditions for success: demand for new products and services; activity-specific technological opportunities; firms capable of exploiting those opportunities; and institutions able to support those firms. Growth then is an evolutionary process characterised by trial and error, uncertainty, economies of scale and scope, network externalities, temporary monopolies [Moi ici: Os meus monopólios informais] and cumulative advantage. Historical experience confirms that growth is a race to the top. [Moi ici: Nunca esquecer esta regra - race to the top, subir na escala de valor. Mudar de clientes!!! Mudar de produto/serviço!!!] It means exploiting new opportunities that generate enduring advantages in high productivity sectors and so high wages.
...
Sainsbury argues that there are four possible strategies towards innovation: leave it to the market; support the supply of relevant factors of production (science and skilled people); support key industries and technologies; and pick specific firms/technologies/products. He argues that governments should do the second and third, but not the last. [Moi ici: Quanto à segunda, não posso estar mais de acordo, é o "set the table" de Bloomberg. Quanto à terceira, tenha dúvidas. Não basta privilegiar um sector, isso não pode ser feito em abstracto. E quem é que vai aproveitar esse privilégio? Pois, os macacos não voam, trepam as árvores. Quanto à quarta, é típica dos governos socialistas, de direita e de esquerda, picking winners, promovendo o chamado "crony capitalism", o capitalismo da "famíglia", dos amigalhaços, dos donos disto tudo] That can be better left to bankers or venture capitalists. But governments can and must fund science and the development of scientific and other skills and should promote a few broad industries and technologies."
Trechos de Martin Wolf publicados ontem no FT em “Why once successful countries get left behind”
"In my classes, I teach that most sales strategy and management decisions revolve around three issues: how to sell what to whom. The shift from selling products to selling services requires leaders to rethink not just the what (services instead of products) but also the who (the types of customers the sales force pursues) and the how (the way salespeople engage with customers before and after the sale, the new skills necessary for the job, and how they are trained and compensated). That’s a tall order, and many tech firms have seen waves of sales force reorgs and downsizings as they struggle to fill it.
...
Although tech companies are the most prominent examples, the guidance applies to any organization making this leap. Daimler Trucks, for instance, is shifting from leasing vehicles to large companies, such as UPS, for set periods of time to charging them for miles driven. The prescriptions—which involve resegmenting the customer base, rethinking the sales organization’s structure, and changing the way salespeople interact with customers and targets on a day-to-day basis—enable companies to transform their sales forces to most effectively support the new strategy.
...
To effectively shift to selling a service, salespeople and their managers must rethink the metrics that identify a potential enterprise client. This is more difficult than it may seem.
...
Rethinking customer segmentation focuses on the question: Who are the company’s target customers? Once they are identified, the sales organization must focus on how to sell to them. The traditional sales process typically involves generating leads, qualifying prospects, demonstrating products, and closing sales. Many salespeople have spent decades learning and implementing that routine. A consumption-based model requires a different process. “Closing the deal” becomes an interim step because the contract will generate substantial revenue only if the client subsequently uses the service at high volume. The industry’s euphemistic term for this is “customer success,” and it has begun to dominate the way companies think about selling. As Microsoft’s chief financial officer, Amy Hood, puts it, “Ultimately, in a consumption-based business, customer success is all that matters, because it builds on itself over time.”
Although salespeople still must be skilled at building relationships, the new approach requires them to have far more technical expertise.
To drive that success (that is, to increase customer usage), salespeople must stay engaged after the contract is signed. They become quasi consultants to their clients, helping them grow adept at using (and finding new ways to use) the metered technology. Although salespeople still must be skilled at building relationships, the new approach requires them to have far more technical expertise. Many companies, including Microsoft, have supplemented their sales teams’ technical prowess by creating “customer success teams” and “technical sales teams” to drive consultative work after a customer signs a contract. Companies have always provided after-sales service as a cost of doing business; these new functions illustrate how this unglamorous task has become a vital part of generating revenue.
The benefits of having highly skilled cloud engineers as part of the sales organization go beyond increasing revenue, however. One result of the shift from selling products to selling services is that the relationship with customers becomes both closer and more continuous. That gives sales teams deeper, ongoing insights into customers’ pain points, product features that might add value, and new ways to use products. This is valuable feedback that companies can use to spark innovation—a source of information that was rarely tapped in the old “see you in three years” model.
...
In developing a new offering, a company needs to first identify the potential customers’ pain point. Only then can it determine whether the customers’ pain is sufficient to make the company’s value proposition viable. These calculations are important, but they are not enough to create sustainable profit: The firm must also find the right sales strategy to effectively pair with the innovation to engage customers.
