sábado, novembro 19, 2016

Curiosidade do dia

Tudo é serviço

"Jobs theory essentially transforms products into services. [Moi ici: O mesmo que a Service Dominant Logic, ou tudo é serviço e o produto não passa de um avatar do serviço] "What matters is not the product attributes you rope together, but the experiences you enable to help your customers make the progress they want to make,"
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jobs are discovered, not created.
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Or consider things people don't want to do ("negative jobs" in the language of the book), such as taking a sick kid to the pediatrician on a busy workday."


Trechos retirados de "To Win Loyal Customers, You Need to Master 'Jobs Theory'"

A lógica do século XX

"Our study looks at all U.S. manufacturing plants from 1997 through 2007, an important and diverse sector of the U.S. economy where we can get detailed data on plant operations and that is responsible for about a quarter of all U.S. M&A deals.
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On average, we find that mergers do not have a discernible effect on productivity and efficiency. Specifically, we do not find evidence for plant-level productivity changes, nor do we find evidence for the consolidation of administrative activities that is often cited as a way in which mergers yield lower costs through economies of scale. We also don’t find evidence that merged firms are more likely to close down less-efficient plants. By contrast, we find substantial average increases in the amount that firms mark up prices over cost following a merger, ranging from 15% to over 50%, depending on the control group we use."
Trechos retirados de "Mergers May Be Profitable, but Are They Good for the Economy?"

Roubar a quem?

Esta semana ligaram-me para ser advogado do Diabo de uma ideia para uma startup.
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Depois da conversa, voltei para as minhas leituras, descia o Marão num autocarro da Rodonorte, e já a chegar ao Porto li "Who are you stealing from?".
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Ora aí está um bom teste para avaliar as possibilidades de sucesso de uma startup.
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A quem é que a startup vai roubar clientes?
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Se não for roubar clientes a ninguém ... vai ser mais difícil ter sucesso. Os potenciais clientes não estão habituados a pagar por um serviço alternativo. Assim, há que "educá-los" e "trabalhá-los" para que eventualmente se predisponham a equacionar o JBTD.

"Collaborative rather than oppositional thinking"

Na sequência de:
"In 1997, after many advances and setbacks, IBM’s Deep Blue finally bested the world’s greatest player, Garry Kasparov.
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But something strange happened to chess after 1997. Instead of capitulating, its masters rethought their own thinking. The following year, Kasparov opened the first tournament of what has come to be known as Advanced Chess. In Advanced Chess, players are allowed to use a computer to assist them – and the results have been revelatory. Thanks to hardware and software improvements in the years since Deep Blue’s victory, even relatively weak computers now routinely beat Grandmasters at tournament level. But as Advanced Chess has shown, relatively weak computers working alongside human players will wipe the floor with the most advanced supercomputers. Collaborative rather than oppositional thinking has yielded radical advances in chess theory, and opened up whole new areas of play."
Trechos retirados de "What's wrong with big data?"

sexta-feira, novembro 18, 2016

Curiosidade do dia




E isto nesta semana de aparentes sucessos económicos para Costa.
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Hmmm o que se passará?

Satisfação de clientes, CCR e ISO 9001

""The changes that will put a company out of business are those that happen outside the light of its current expectations."
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But, when researchers pursue the wrong topics or the wrong participants, they often get the wrong answers. How can you ensure that you find what you don't even know you should look for? How can you get outside a box you don't know you're in? Think about conducting some customer case research (CCR).
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It uses interviews and observation to trace the full stories of how real customers spend real money in a product category.
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Under certain circumstances, even the most loyal customers don't do what they usually do. Attitudes alone do not determine behavior."
Ontem, num projecto ISO 9001, numa empresa a discutir como faria sentido, para aquela empresa em particular, avaliar a satisfação dos seus clientes não pude deixar de pensar:


Acabamos por ficar numa versão assente em entrevista a clientes-chave com base num guião de perguntas
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Continua

Trechos retirados de "Looking 'Outside the Box'" de Gerald Berstell [não conhecia este autor, tenho gostado do que li no último mês. Outra vantagem de ler Alan Klement, a bibliografia] Denise Nitterhouse, Marketing Research Summer 1997.

Big Data, pois!

Basta pesquisar o marcador "big data" neste blogue para perceber facilmente o quanto desconfio do tema.
Por isso, foi com um enorme sorriso nos lábios que li "What's wrong with big data?" e descobri que a crença está ainda mais entranhada e é mais ingénua do que eu pensava. O artigo tem matéria para várias linhas de reflexão. Por exemplo:
"This belief in the power of data, of technology untrammelled by petty human worldviews, is the practical cousin of more metaphysical assertions. A belief in the unquestionability of data leads directly to a belief in the truth of data-derived assertions. And if data contains truth, then it will, without moral intervention, produce better outcomes. [Moi ici: Como não recordar este texto de Esko Kilpi que li recentemente "Your facts are not my facts"]
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But you don’t need to look to such extreme examples to see how a belief in technological determinism underlies much of our thinking and reasoning about the world.
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“Big data” is not merely a business buzzword, but a way of seeing the world. Driven by technology, markets and politics, it has come to determine much of our thinking, but it is flawed and dangerous. It runs counter to our actual findings when we employ such technologies honestly and with the full understanding of their workings and capabilities. This over-reliance on data, which I call “quantified thinking”, has come to undermine our ability to reason meaningfully about the world, and its effects can be seen across multiple domains.
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Implicit in Moore’s Law is not only the continued efficacy of technological solutions, but their predictability, and hence the growth of solutionism: the belief that all of mankind’s problems can be solved with the application of enough hardware, software and technical thinking. Solutionism rests on the belief that all complex activities are reducible to measurable variables. [Moi ici: Tudo se resume a mais 900 mil imigrantes à la amador a jogar bilhar] Yet this is slowly being revealed as a fallacy, as our technologies become capable of processing ever larger volumes of data. In short, our engineering is starting to catch up with our philosophy.
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The view that more information uncritically produces better decisions is visibly at odds with our contemporary situation.
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 The world is not something we study neutrally, that we gather neutral knowledge about, on which we can act neutrally. Rather, we make the world by understanding it, and the way we understand it changes it.
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“More information” does not produce “more truth”, it endangers it. We cannot stand as dispassionate observers of supposedly truth-making processes while they continue to fail to produce dispassionate ends."

Kilpi:
"Reality is no longer viewed as a singular fact of nature but as multiple and socially constructed. In a relational model, identity is constructed from being in relationships, being connected, as contrasted with the mainstream view of identity through separation. Knowledge of self and the other thus becomes viewed as co-constructed, the same way as our future is co-constructed."
Recordar Cavaco, os adultos e os factos.

Para reflexão (parte V)


Interessante, ver num país não europeu, talvez porque tenha menos custos afundados, e menos bastonários das Antrais dos incumbentes, aquilo que será a tendência de Mongo:

Quando isto pegar ... vai ser como os nenúfares no lago.

Logo, quando for correr os 10 km ao longo da EN 109-5 entre Estarreja e Murtosa, por volta das 19h, correrei às escuras porque as inúmeras luminárias estão desligadas para poupar energia.


Alguns números

Nos Estados Unidos:
"Department stores are dying, dragging malls down with them to the grave. Big box goliaths collapse under their own weight. And those Main Street businesses that for decades large competitors have pounded into dust? They are doing quite well, thank you.
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The percentage of companies that make it to that magic fifth year rose to 48.7 percent, from 45.9 percent the previous year.[Moi ici: Recordar os 96%]
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The report also shows that the smallest companies are trending upward. Today businesses with between zero and four employees account for 53.1 percent of Main Street companies. That's a jump from 49.5 percent in 1996."[Moi ici: A tendência de Mongo]
Trechos retirados de "Report: Small Business Survival Rates Are on the Rise"

quinta-feira, novembro 17, 2016

Curiosidade do dia

Imaginem as consequências de algo destas dimensões: "Correia de Campos: Portugal precisa de 900 mil imigrantes para crescer 3%":
"O presidente do Conselho Económico e Social (CES), Correia de Campos, afirmou hoje no parlamento que Portugal precisa de ter cerca de “900 mil trabalhadores imigrantes” para ter “um crescimento à volta dos 3%” do PIB."
Num país com 10 milhões de habitantes onde os iriam instalar? Fariam como na Alemanha, deslocariam as pessoas de vilas e aldeias para poderem criar espaços para conter e tentar formatar tanta gente ao mesmo tempo?

Gente que nasceu e continua mentalmente instalada no século XX. Gente que sonha com os exércitos de Magnitogorsk ao mesmo tempo que Mongo se instala, entranha e acaba com a produção em massa e o emprego em massa.

"he or she wants to make an improvement but doesn’t know how"

"JTBD is a struggle someone has to make life better. Someone has a JTBD when he or she wants to make an improvement but doesn’t know how. When that person finds and can use a solution to make that hoped-for improvement, there is no longer a JTBD."

Trecho retirado de "Where does JTBD come from? — What is a Job? — What makes it Done? — What isn’t a JTBD?"

A arte da renúncia

Ainda acerca da estratégia e da renúncia, (renunciar é tão difícil) na introdução do livro "The Laws of Subtraction" encontro:
"At the heart of every difficult decision lie three tough choices: What to pursue versus what to ignore. What to leave in versus what to leave out. What to do versus what to don't. I have discovered that if you focus on the second half of each choice—what to ignore, what to leave out, what to don't—the decision becomes exponentially easier and simpler. The key is to remove the stupid stuff: ... Better yet, refrain from add-ing them in the first place.
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This is the art of subtraction: when you remove just the right thing in just the right way, something good usually happens.
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I believe subtraction is the path through the haze and maze, one that can allow us to create clarity from complexity and to wage and win the war against the common enemy of excess.
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That's not easy, because subtraction doesn't come naturally or intuitively—not to me, not to anyone. From the days of our ancestors on the savanna, we are hardwired to add and accumulate, hoard and store."
Quando não se renuncia:


O que vai fazer?

"It seems reasonable to use these intentions as a basis for forecasting the impact on taxes, trade, demand, employment, and mobility of labor.
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One thing we can say with confidence is that uncertainty will remain high for some time in politics, macroeconomics, and business, at both global and national levels. We can also assume that precise point forecasts are likely to be wrong. Likewise, we know that whatever our historical assumptions have been, many are likely to change as technology advances. And the impacts of policies will be highly specific in nature, degree, and speed for each industry and company.
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The capabilities of adaptation, shaping the business environment, and ambidexterity (the ability to apply different and potentially conflicting approaches to strategy, as described above, in different parts of the business) are typically under-developed in large established companies and will likely become more important. This is necessarily so, since winning in uncertainty requires more than defensive moves, and every company will need to both run and reinvent the business.
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Companies need to detect, interpret, and translate patterns in politics and macroeconomics for business implications. We are living in an era where macro effects can easily swamp competitive and operational considerations. For example, the presence or absence of a trade deal or an interest rate cut can potentially have a bigger impact than reducing cost or increasing marketing."
O que é que uma PME pode fazer, deve fazer, para navegar nesta situação?
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Desenhar cenários, imaginar futuros possíveis, futurizar e preparar estratégias menos vulneráveis.

Trechos retirados de "The World Just Got More Uncertain and Your Strategy Needs to Adjust"

Século XXI vs século XX

Um texto sobre Mongo e muito em linha com o que aqui defendemos, "How We Will Kill Uber & Hijack the Internet of Things":
"Our third industrial revolution will be our last, according to Rifkin. I never say never, but he is confident this will mark the end of mass employment.
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But in Rifkin’s rosier view, “prosumerswill create and share physical products and services the same way we do WordPress posts today. “We’ll spend part of our day sharing, part of the day making money.”
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The most ambitious part of Jeremy’s vision is people will use tools like 3D printing, apps, and GPS to create cooperatives powerful enough to kill off Uber. Yes, kill off Uber."
Tudo coisas que aqui defendemos:



quarta-feira, novembro 16, 2016

Curiosidade do dia

"Chegámos ao ponto em que os que defendem novos modelos de negócio aparecem caricaturados como gente sem escrúpulos que se está nas tintas para os modelos mais antigos, como se fosse essa a opção. Chegámos ao ponto em que os grandes beneficiários da globalização se esquecem dessa mesma circunstância, alinhando em discursos antissistema.
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E a verdade é que, do lado dos que defendem a sociedade aberta, dos que acreditam que o crescimento e o emprego surgem mais consistentemente em países com maior liberdade económica, não tem havido capacidade para reagir a esse discurso.
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A eleição de Trump é mais um passo na afirmação do modelo de sociedade fechada, não é um passo qualquer. Quando o Presidente dos EUA, país que, mais do que nenhum outro, soube ser a reserva das liberdades, se permite relativizar a liberdade, menosprezar o livre comércio ou a livre circulação, estamos perante um sério revés do modelo de sociedade em que firmemente acredito."
Trecho retirado de "A crise das sociedades abertas"

Modelo e Continente

Ler "Small Box Retailers" e recordar este postal de 2011 "Será uma boa decisão?" e o comentário do Aranha.

"Big box retailers are getting smaller. Some are being compelled to do so by the market: Circuit City and Sports Authority liquidated. Others are shutting down less-trafficked locations. And some are doing so by design. Literally.
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In an age of e-commerce and muted spending, Target, like many retailers across the U.S., is trying find a way to reverse declining foot traffic and revenue.
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While Target is taking some of the usual steps such as cutting prices and bringing in new executives, the company is notably doubling down on mini-Targets. The plan is for the upscale downscale retailer to continue to roll out small shops in college towns and urban centers, which feature what it calls “curated” products (read: a lot less shelf space means room for only stuff that appeals to millennials, such as dorm-room and apartment-sized home goods and fast fashion).
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As baby boomers and gen Xers get in the habit of making everyday purchases from a smartphone instead of wandering through the aisles of big box stores, and as younger consumers who have never known a time when a couple of clicks couldn’t get all manner of goods delivered to their doorstep in a matter of days, or even hours, enter the marketplace, it’s clear that traditional retailers will have to get creative."



BTW

A vida não é justa! E?

Há um livro do Antigo Testamento, o Livro do Eclesiastes, que fala da vaidade humana, que fala daquele que muito se esforça e no final nada leva enquanto o preguiçoso pode acabar por colher os louros sem esforço.

Há a famosa lengalenga dos direitos adquiridos num mundo em que ninguém pode garantir quase nada.

E há a analogia das organizações como seres vivos, tentando conjugar a exploration com a exploitation para subirem numa paisagem enrugada em busca de melhores resultados. E quando estão quase a chegar ao topo do pico, ou quando estão a gozar o sucesso de terem chegado ao topo do pico, onde os retornos são mais altos... A paisagem move-se sozinha e o pico que era um pico transforma-se mais ou menos rapidamemte num vale perigoso de baixos rendimentos.

Uns mais lúcidos ou mais tarimbados exclamarão é a vida e partirão para a exploration, em busca de novas oportunidades. Outros baterão o pé e, como os protagonistas do "Quem mexeu no meu queijo", exigirão os direitos adquiridos por tanto esforço passado de exploration com fracos retornos de exploitation.

Foi disto tudo que me lembrei ao ler este texto "Nokia CEO ended his speech saying this “we didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost”.":
"During the press conference to announce NOKIA being acquired by Microsoft, Nokia CEO ended his speech saying this “we didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost”. [Moi ici: Mesmo fazendo tudo bem, mesmo seguindo tudo pelo livro, não há garantias de sucesso. Os seres vivos há muito que aprenderam isto e incorporaram-no nos seus genes. Por isso, mesmo quando tudo corre bem, aquando da reprodução há uma certa dose de aleatoriedade, que se traduz na evolução, just in case numa espécie de previdência] Upon saying that, all his management team, himself included, teared sadly. [Moi ici: Quando penso num homem adulto a chorar recordo sempre a imagem de um Verão na Figueira da Foz. Os meus avós eram retornados de Angola e montaram uma mercearia em Buarcos. Num ano nas férias de Verão fui ajudá-los na mercearia. Uma certa noite fomos à Figueira para visitar uma feira e, a certa altura, os meus avós encontram um "patrício", um conhecido de Angola. Conversaram e a certa altura  homem começou a chorar ao recordar tudo o que tinha deixado em África. Agora era feirante e até pediu um cigarro ao meu avô. Como aprendi com o Rei Lear a vida é assim, nem boa nem má, simplesmente amoral]
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Nokia has been a respectable company. They didn’t do anything wrong in their business, however, the world changed too fast. Their opponents were too powerful."
O que aprecio nos empresários anónimos, longe dos biombos e carpetes do poder, é a capacidade de recomeçar. As árvores não crescem até ao céu e, como tão bem descreveu Beinhocker, as estratégias são sempre transientes, os modelos de negócio são sempre transientes. Claro que os Trumps de direita ou de esquerda estarão sempre contra esta destruição criativa e exigirão activismo dos governos para criarem uma espécie de reserva integral onde possam viver sem terem de mudar. Ainda há dias um ex-fumador convertido ao "vaping" já sem nicotina contava-me as jogadas a nível mundial que as tabaqueiras e, sobretudo as farmacêuticas, fazem junto dos governos para impedir a propagação do "vaping".

Market-driven ou market-driving (parte IV)

Parte I e parte II e parte III.
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Este texto, "51 anos depois da primeira máquina de tricô, a Benetton já imprime camisolas":
"“Queríamos produzir algo especial, criar um novo clássico com total liberdade de movimentos,...“Este lançamento é muito importante porque significa voltar o foco para as nossas raízes e o nosso know-how”,"
Esta semana, ao conversar com o D. Pedro IV, que tinha comentado este postal, "Cuidado com o benchmarking" (e de certa forma o que a Benetton fez, como relatado nas partes I a III desta série, foi benchmarking e cópia de outros modelos que estavam e estão a resultar em outras empresas com outro ADN) falámos em Reeves e no, muitas vezes necessário, encolhimento para renovar e recomeçar tendo por base o ADN e não para copiar o que funciona com outros (cargo cult).

Recordo esta série com um título irónico: ""despedir é sempre resultado de uma maldade ou de preguiça da gestão" (parte V)" e recordo Steve Jobs:
"He shrunk Apple to a scale and scope suitable to the reality of its being a niche producer in the highly competitive personal computer business. He cut Apple back to a core that could survive."
Para depois criar o nível seguinte do jogo.
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Muitas vezes os custos afundados e, sobretudo a vaidade (palavra usada pelo D. Pedro IV), impedem as empresas de fazerem este encolhimento estratégico.

Um exemplo, tantas oportunidades

Um exemplo no artigo "He Went To The Desert With $3 Million In Cash—And Left With 150 Tons Of Cashmere".
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Quantas oportunidades deste tipo, eliminação do intermediário que deixou de trazer valor à cadeia, existem por aproveitar, agora que o mundo é bem mais pequeno?
"They went to Mongolia and paid $31 for a kilo of cashmere, which is more than 50% more than other brokers, but they never resell the raw material. Instead, they bring it to factories in Italy, China, and even Mongolia to be milled and then turned into sweaters, hats, and gloves. They charge between $99 and $200 for 100% cashmere sweaters that are milled in Italy, which is significantly less expensive than garments of comparable quality from brands like Loro Piana, Brunello Cucinelli, or Portolano.
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Over the last two and a half years, Scanlan and Rijsemus built a booming e-commerce business, but they discovered that there was also a demand for a wholesale business, where they could create and sell cashmere collections to retailers, sometimes under private labels. "We can get very good prices because we own the raw material and we can negotiate discounts at manufacturers by leveraging the cost of those law materials," Scanlan explains.
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By cutting out the middlemen margins, they are able to make 79% profits on e-commerce, 60% on wholesale, and 40% on private label, which is significantly higher than industry standards. And this year, they will make about $6 million in top-line revenue."