A pensar acerca do futuro

3 textos que me põem a pensar acerca do futuro que está a ser construído agora mesmo de forma muito gradual e que ao 100º dia explode e estará em todo lado.

"Num lago há um nenúfar que todos os dias cresce para o dobro do seu tamanho. Se em cem dias cobrir o lago inteiro, quantos dias serão necessários para cobrir metade?"

Primeiro este "Silence on social issues could be the kiss of death for brands, says UN marketing chief". Isto é assumir que nos "social issues" há um lado bom e um lado mau, é assumir um mundo a preto e branco sem tonalidades de cinza. As marcas clássicas que herdámos do século XX apontam para o mercado de massas, apontam para o máximo comum, apontam para o conjunto mais alargado possível de clientes. Isso implica não fazer muitas ondas porque ao cobrir o que um grupo de clientes quer, vai inexoravelmente criar problemas com um grupo oposto que quer exactamente o oposto. Também por isto é que as marcas clássicas estão condenadas a desaparecer, por não poderem tomar partido e por o mercado estar a fragmentar-se num conjunto muito diverso de tribos aguerridas que pactuam cada vez menos com quem não é da sua "cor".
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Segundo, este "LVMH vende marcas Donna Karan e DKNY por 592 milhões".

"O comprador é o grupo G-III Apparel Group e o valor foi de 650 milhões de dólares (592 milhões de euros), incluindo dívida.
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A estilista Donna Karan fundou em 1984 a sua marca de roupa feminina com o marido Stephan Weiss, tendo abandonado a chefia do gabinete de design da companhia no ano passado, para focar-se em projectos como a Urban Zen.
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A companhia G-III é, por seu turno, fabricante industrial de roupa sob insígnias como a Calvin Klein ou Vince Camuto."

Comecei por imaginar uma operação como a compra da marca "Fly London" para subir na escala de valor. No entanto, depois de ver o site da G-III e a quantidade de marcas que fabricam, sinto que é mais um sintoma do hollowing. Carcaças ocas que vivem de glória e nome feito no passado mas que já não têm chama. Outra contribuição para o fim das marcas clássicas.
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Terceiro, este "Procter & Gamble launches direct-to-consumer subscription business" um proprietário de marcas clássicas, habituado a dar plankton aos consumidores ao longo de décadas, tenta mudar de modelo de negócio, tenta fazer o bypass ao retalho físico. Não é mais uma empresa de média dimensão, é só o gigante P&G.

Exemplos

Exemplos de subida na escala de valor.
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Exemplos de segmentação e diferenciação: começar pela escolha dos clientes-alvo e montar mosaico dedicado ao seu serviço.
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Exemplos de paranóia ao serviço dos clientes-alvo.
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Exemplos do Estranhistão a funcionar.

"“O preço foi a decisão mais difícil que tomámos neste projeto”, confessa Maria do Carmo Barbosa, co-proprietária e diretora do hotel. “Mas foi uma escolha acertada, porque trabalhamos com operadores que não discutem preços e temos uma ocupação de 80% entre maio e outubro”, desvenda. Rentabilizar o investimento de três milhões de euros num hotel de luxo não ostensivo significa, para a empresária, uma preocupação constante com os pormenores que ditam o bem-estar dos hóspedes
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Entre maio e setembro, mesmo a 200€ por noite, o hotel está frequentemente esgotado, ainda que a média de ocupação anual ronde apenas 35%. “É rentável”, assegura a diretora, sem desvendar pormenores."

Agora pense no seu negócio, pense na sua empresa ... quem são os seus clientes-alvo? Qual é o seu ecossistema da procura? Qual é a sua proposta de valor? Que investimento faz na interacção e na co-criação de valor? Que mosaico montou para servir o modelo do negócio? Que indicadores utiliza para monitorizar o projecto? Que marketing usa e dirigido a quem?


Trechos retirados de "Turismo a crescer no Norte atrai investimento na hotelaria de luxo"

Curiosidade do dia

"Quanto aos fundos estruturais, o congelamento ficaria dependente do orçamento para 2017: se Bruxelas considerar a proposta credível, a medida não terá nenhum efeito.
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Isto pode ser um problema, já que, de acordo com o El País, a CE está preocupada com a possibilidade de o governo português “continuar a reverter algumas reformas” e que Bruxelas quer ver aprovadas medidas de austeridade na segunda parte do ano."

Trecho retirado de "Bruxelas dá-nos um ano para corrigir o défice. Mas não escapamos à multa"

Pensar acerca do futuro

Agora que ando a escrever um documento para ajudar empresários a pensar acerca da elaboração de cenários hipotéticos para o futuro das suas empresas,  encontro isto:

"The conversation was only possible because it was framed as a discussion about the future. The future is where people can abandon their immediate turf interests and think about new possibilities, new constituencies, things that may be “unthinkable” today. The future is often a “safe place,” maybe the only safe place for highly charged discussions. It is also a place where people can glean a bit from each other’s thinking, unpack each other’s assumptions, and start to build shared understanding, if not compromise.
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People must see themselves as actors in the future. To do that, the abstract future must be made proximate and tangible.
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Our present experiences and environments, including our physical surroundings, influence how we think. They are the filters on our imagination. And on a daily basis we are surrounded mostly by artifacts from the present or the past — buildings, streets, roads, infrastructure that was built decades, sometimes centuries ago. There is rarely anything in our physical environment and day-to-day interactions that gives us tangible and actionable signs of potential futures. For most people, the future is just not a part of their daily experience.
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People need to have a sense of urgent optimism. The future can inspire wonder, awe, and hope.
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Awe, unlike happiness or contentment, is that rare feeling we get when we are in the presence of something vast or great."

Trechos retirados de "The Future as a Way of Life: Alvin Toffler’s Unfinished Business"

Segmentação

"the management of the customer asset can be organized on a customer portfolio level. In the customer portfolio approach each customer is assessed in terms of its value capture contribution. Based on this information, customers are divided into customer portfolios and the customer asset management is designed based on portfolio-level concepts.
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In the proposed framework, each customer is initially assessed in terms of its contribution to value capture, which is measured with economic profit. Based on this information, the customer base of a firm is divided into customer portfolios. Differentiated customer management concepts are then created for each portfolio, with the aim of increasing the total economic profit generation in all customer portfolios. We define customer management concepts as portfolio-specific offerings, which outline both the products and services offered to the customers, as well as the target service level and channels to be used. Thus, the customer management concepts are not limited to any functional domain – and therefore these concepts should be managed cross-functionally. Finally, the customer portfolios’ contribution to the firm-level value capture is assessed, which provides the feedback-loop to individual customer level value capture assessments and portfolio creation.
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The cumulative economic profit contribution analysis is relatively simple: the economic profit contribution of each customer is calculated and customers are ranked in a descending order, placing the customer yielding the largest economic profit for the firm first to the graph, then the second most profitable customer and so forth. The economic profit generated by each customer is added to the cumulative economic profit buildup of the previous customers on the chart in such a way that the graphical illustration ends with the customer yielding the lowest economic profit
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Based on the analysis, three customer portfolios were created and the financial performance of each portfolio was analysed. After this, differentiated customer management concepts were created for each portfolio

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firm should pursue slightly different tactics in each portfolio in order to increase the overall value capture. For portfolio A the firm created a customer management concept called “margin and cash flow maintenance”. The main objective of this concept was to increase the margin and cash flow available from these large-volume customer relationships that already created a considerable positive economic profit. Portfolio B consisted of a large number of small business volume relationships that each individually had an economic profit contribution close to zero. Based on these characteristics, the firm created a customer management concept termed “risk management” for portfolio B. Its objective was to reduce the overall business risks by reducing the interdependencies in the customer base and by using the small-volume customer relationships as a buffer against business cycle variations. For portfolio C, the firm developed a customer management concept termed “capacity optimization”, the objective of which was to use the negative economic profit generating, but large-volume customer relationships to optimize the capacity utilization of the production facilities, thus reducing the average cost level of operations by reducing fixed and capital costs per production unit. The proposed three customer management concepts – i.e. “margin and cash flow maintenance”, “risk management”, and “capacity optimization” – affected directly or indirectly with the main levers of increasing economic profit: increasing operating profit, reducing capital employed, and reducing the weighted average cost of capital."

Trechos retirados de "Management of customer assets for increased value capture in business markets", Suvi Nenonen e Kaj Storbacka, Management Decision Vol. 52 No. 1, 2014

Estratégia e identidade

"It’s astounding how many companies produce a financial plan, customer segmentation document, or financial forecast when you ask to see their strategy. Mission, vision, and values statements are other common stand-ins. But although all of these things are important, they aren’t a strategy, and they’re insufficient for defining who a company is to its market, relative to its competitive set. Worst of all, these companies let their identity be formed by whichever customers buy the most product. Executives in midcaps sometimes think their companies are too small to do in-depth strategy work — but they think this at their peril."

Trecho retirado de "Midsize Companies Shouldn’t Confuse Growth with Scaling"

Comunicar benefícios em vez de atributos (parte IV)

Parte I, parte II e parte III.
"The Three Steps to Create Great Value Communications
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Step 2: Make Your Benefit Segment-Specific
... homogeneity is one of the biggest wrong assumptions you can make in your new product design. Your customers are different. The same value messages are not likely to work for all of your customer segments. You should tailor your value messages to the needs of each segment.

Recordar daqui:

Trecho retirado de "Monetizing Innovation"

Curiosidade do dia

A propósito de "Estado contrata um quarto das obras públicas com desconto superior a 30%".
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Que falta faz um pouco de jornalismo de investigação.
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Estas obras tiveram mais acidentes do que as outras?
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Estas obras tiveram mais derrapagens temporais da responsabilidade das empresas do que as outras?
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Estas obras tiveram mais intervenções após a entrega do que as outras?
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Este texto é só um megafone das preocupações dos que perderam os concursos. O que afirmam pode ser verdade ou mentira, faltam os dados.

O paradoxo central

"Business prizes being able to put prices on things and to know their value ahead of time. Yet, if you are inventing point B—in any area of life—you can’t know the outcome at the moment you have to invest money, time, and effort in the point-A world.
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This is the central paradox of business: The core assumptions of economics—efficiency, productivity, and knowable value—work best when an organization is at cruising altitude, but they won’t get the plane off the ground in the first place. That is to say, the history of business—the way we got here—follows from the kind of creative and open-ended work that the structure of business makes hard.
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companies can grow by two means. They can grow by scaling up to the most efficient level of production. Or they can grow artistically by the alchemy of invention."

Trechos retirados de "Art Thinking" de Amy Whitaker

Tanto dinheirinho em cima da mesa

"We find that managers use quite simple procedures, or routines, to set their prices. More complex methods, such as non-linear pricing, or bundling, are not really used in practice. If traditional methods still prevail, like cost-plus for example, managers in big companies in France seem to rely heavily on neutral pricing, to match competitors’ prices. We attribute this finding to potential price rigidity, i.e. the fear of taking the price leadership in a low market growth rate context, or of starting a price war.
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Our results show the capacity of a limited set of companies to fully take advantage of their pricing power, in other words to transform a favourable position on key pricing indicators by capturing value through a premium price. However, the vast majority of surveyed companies relied extensively on competitive factors when deciding on a specific pricing orientation, and aligned prices despite favourable environmental conditions. This observation is a form of nearsightedness, or pricing myopia, that we could describe following Levitt (1960) not as an unfavourable market context but rather as the failure of decision making, i.e. management.
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The vast majority of determinants of pricing strategies are related to competition (price levels, relative quality, differentiation, cost advantage) showing that companies’ strategic orientations regarding pricing in our study are defined mainly by their competitors and/or the market prices
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When firms use more sophisticated techniques (nonlinear pricing, bundling) to capture additional value through their pricing decisions, their choices are driven by market/product dynamics such as market growth rate or elasticity.
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Finally, the key drivers of price premium are differentiation and inelasticity, showing that firms tend to overestimate competitors’ reactions when setting their pricing policies and should focus on basic indicators."

Trechos retirados de "Pricing myopia: do leading companies capture the full value of their pricing strategies?", Manu Carricano , (2014), Management Decision, Vol. 52 Iss 1 pp. 159 - 178

O banhista gordo e o low-cost

A propósito de "Is China Stealing Jobs? It May Be Losing Them, Instead":

"In today’s China, however, workers face a more troubled outlook than Mr. Trump suggests. They are losing their jobs because of a slowing domestic economy, rising costs and stiffer foreign competition — including from the United States.
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Presidential candidates “are screaming about yesterday’s problems,” said Jim McGregor, chairman of the consulting firm APCO Worldwide’s Greater China operations. “Manufacturing for export is getting harder and harder” in China.
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China’s labor market has changed sharply in recent years.
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pushed wages for Chinese factory workers higher. Their monthly pay now averages $424, 29 percent more than just three years ago, the Japan External Trade Organization has estimated. Labor costs in China are now significantly higher than in many other emerging economies. Factory workers in Vietnam earn less than half the salary of a Chinese worker, while those in Bangladesh get paid under a quarter as much."

Chegados aqui, para os que acreditam na transferência da produção low-cost da China para o Vietname ou para a Indonésia, recordo:

• O efeito do "banhista gordo" (Fevereiro de 2013)
• Lembram-se do "banhista gordo"? (Fevereiro de 2014)

Vai ser cada vez mais difícil encontrar capacidade suficiente para a produção low-cost. 

BTW, não é só a produção, são os portos, a logística, os fluxos de matéria-prima, a moeda estável, a estabilidade política ... não vai ser fácil.

Comunicar benefícios em vez de atributos (parte III)

Parte I.
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Qual o problema do passo 1?
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O meu problema é com a figura da parte I

A colocação de cada benefício na matriz da vantagem competitiva depende de quem são os clientes-alvo. E a escolha dos clientes-alvo determina o grupo de concorrentes com que uma empresa trabalha. Uma empresa que serve clientes-gourmet não tem a concorrência das empresas que servem os clientes da distribuição grande.
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Consideremos a escala

Consideremos que os concorrentes são independentes do tipo de clientes-alvo:

Uma empresa compara-se com os seus concorrentes. Por exemplo, a figura ilustra o caso de uma empresa que não é competitiva nos custos unitários mas é muito competitiva a nível de prazos de entrega e de customização.
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Agora consideremos a importância para os clientes:

Em vez de pensar genericamente nos clientes, uma empresa deve pensar nos seus clientes-alvo. Se a empresa quiser competir pelo preço mais baixo, ou seja, competir com a China nos custos:

A empresa não tem hipótese de servir com vantagem competitiva este tipo de clientes.
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A mesma empresa, ao pensar em servir os clientes da gama média-alta, situou-se desta forma na matriz (não resistimos a manter a comparação com os concorrentes porque têm de ser diferentes)

Aqui verifica-se que a empresa tem uma série de benefícios na zona das vantagens competitivas ao tentar servir este tipo de clientes.
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E servir os clientes do fast-fashion?

Assim fica explicado o meu problema com o passo 1 de "Monetizing Innovation". Só faz sentido fazer a matriz da vantagem competitiva para um tipo específico de clientes-alvo.

Curiosidade do dia

"IN the mid-1980s, a University of Arizona surgery professor, Marlys H. Witte, proposed teaching a class entitled “Introduction to Medical and Other Ignorance.” Her idea was not well received; at one foundation, an official told her he would rather resign than support a class on ignorance.
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Dr. Witte was urged to alter the name of the course, but she wouldn’t budge. Far too often, she believed, teachers fail to emphasize how much about a given topic is unknown.
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Classes like hers remain rare, but in recent years scholars have made a convincing case that focusing on uncertainty can foster latent curiosity, while emphasizing clarity can convey a warped understanding of knowledge.
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many scientific facts simply aren’t solid and immutable, but are instead destined to be vigorously challenged and revised by successive generations. Discovery is not the neat and linear process many students imagine, but usually involves, in Dr. Firestein’s phrasing, “feeling around in dark rooms, bumping into unidentifiable things, looking for barely perceptible phantoms.” By inviting scientists of various specialties to teach his students about what truly excited them — not cold hard facts but intriguing ambiguities — Dr. Firestein sought to rebalance the scales.
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People tend to think of not knowing as something to be wiped out or overcome, as if ignorance were simply the absence of knowledge. But answers don’t merely resolve questions; they provoke new ones."

Relacionar com esta história "How a Guy From a Montana Trailer Park Overturned 150 Years of Biology"

Trechos retirados de "The Case for Teaching Ignorance"

Até ao próximo ano, já estou com saudades

O melhor do Tour 2016:

1. As 4 vitórias de Cavendish
2. A amarela de Cavendish
3. A vitória final de Froome
4. A combatividade de Rui Costa
5. O retorno de Herman

Para reflexão

É isto, sem tirar nem pôr!

"Big ideas loom every bit as large in successful B2B strategies. Take Crown Cork Seal, once the most profitable and innovative company in an industry — metal containers — dominated by much larger companies. In the early 1960s, Crown’s CEO, John F. Connelly, had the big idea of retooling the company to focus on filling special orders for smaller customers. Instead of going head to head with larger competitors for national customers — such as Miller Brewing Company — with huge orders enabling long, low-cost production runs, Crown became a “short run” specialist.
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Connelly crafted a coherent strategy to bring his idea to economic life that included rapid-response rush orders, high levels of technical assistance, holding inventory for customers, and carrying excess production capacity — all of which went against the grain of accepted wisdom in an industry where success depended on minimizing costs. He bet on being able to charge higher prices by serving smaller customers with far less bargaining power, [Moi ici: Para mim é mais do que uma questão de bargaining power, é uma questão valor criado percepcionado por esse tipo de clientes] and, as Richard Rumelt describes in , it worked. Within a decade, Crown was generating more profit than any other company in its industry, even without having the most revenue. But the big idea lasted only as long as the CEO’s tenure, which ended in 1990. Connelly’s successor shifted to a “strategy” of growth through acquisition. Seven years later, after completing 20 acquisitions, Crown was the world’s largest container manufacturer. But it had lost its distinctive approach and had not found a new one. By 2006, it was one of the industry’s least-profitable players."

Trecho retirado de "What is Your Strategy’s Big Idea?"

Comunicar benefícios em vez de atributos (parte II)

E voltando a "Monetizing Innovation" e ao conselho "Comunicar benefícios em vez de atributos":

"The Three Steps to Create Great Value Communications
Step 1: Develop Crystal-Clear Benefit Statements—Not Feature Descriptions
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A company that excels at value communications articulates its products' benefits in meaningful terms to customers. This is not about describing product features. A feature belongs to the product; a benefit belongs to the customer. Value is a measure of the benefit to the customer. Communicate benefits, not features. Take each feature and ask yourself this: What does the customer achieve because of this feature? If you are still unsure about how to phrase your product's benefits, probe your customers about their pain points and how your product would solve them.
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To be more specific, when you create a value message, you should determine the customer purchasing criteria and how your product or service might perform on those criteria compared to existing alternatives. Such information can be captured in a 2 x 2 matrix that we call the matrix of competitive advantages, or MOCA for short. (See Figure 10.4 for an example.) 

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The benefits your product delivers that are most important to customers and that competitors can't match (top right quadrant) are the ones to emphasize in your sales and marketing messages." 

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Qual o problema com este passo 1?

Curiosidade do dia

"Mário Centeno enerva camaradas do governo" 

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Só agora?!!!

BTW

Menos o último. Esses é que não pode ser. pic.twitter.com/EuMskgYvvn

— jcd (@jcaetanodias) July 23, 2016

A ideia é um resultado, não um começo

"Every great strategy stands on the shoulders of a big idea. History is littered with once-extraordinary companies that became mediocre when their strategies drifted away from the big ideas that made them great, or when their once-big ideas lost their commercial punch."

Este é o pensamento que aprendi a não seguir quando trabalho com uma PME no desenvolvimento de uma estratégia: Não começamos pela ideia, começamos pelo que já existe e funciona e procuramos a ideia que pode ser extraída e refinada. Mesmo quando uma PME tem resultados negativos é possível encontrar uma gama de produtos/serviços/clientes que funciona com resultados positivos.
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Recordar:

• "analisamos os meios que temos e imaginamos futuros possíveis" (Abril de 2015)
• Estratégia e pontos fortes, o ovo ou a galinha (Setembro de 2015)
• Do concreto para o abstracto e não o contrário (Outubro de 2015)
• Vantagem é uma classificação subjectiva (Fevereiro de 2016) 

Trecho retirado de "What is Your Strategy’s Big Idea?"

"We find our way by getting lost." (parte II)

Parte I.
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Relacionar com este texto de Mintzberg:

"not so fast: there’s a slower and sometimes more sensible way to make decisions. I call it doing first. I’ll leave how that works in finding a mate to your imagination. Suffice it to say that when you’re not sure how to proceed—often the case in making decisions big and small—then you will just have to do, in order to think, instead of thinking, in order to do. You try something in a limited way to see if it might work, and if it doesn’t, you try something else until you find what work. [Moi ici: Ou seja, quando não há mapa, o melhor é fuçar! Somos o que fuçamos! Humildade como a dos ratinhos no "Quem mexeu no meu queijo".] Start small to learn big.
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So, have you an important decision to make? Good. Hold those thoughts! Look around! Do something! Then you may find yourself thinking differently."[Moi ici: "A caminhada acaba por alterar o mundo, acaba por alterar-nos e por alterar a nossa percepção sobre esse mundo. Então, uma nova iteração terá de ter lugar."]

BTW, recordo a leitura de um artigo científico numa revista de biologia acerca da relação entre a génese do pensamento e a necessidade de movimentação.