É preciso trabalhar na originação de valor.

O @walternatez mandou-me o link para este artigo "Como meia dúzia de cêntimos mudaram a história da Comur".

Um artigo sobre o tema da subida na escala de valor.

"O primeiro passo foi criar uma estratégia diferenciadora e apresentá-la à grande distribuição, mas esbarrou na barreira do preço. A solução passou pela eliminação de intermediários."

Lembrou-me o velho exemplo da Frank Perdue Chicken Farms, e a importância da paciência estratégica. Se a distribuição não está alinhada com a orientação estratégica talvez tenha de se fazer o by-pass à distribuição.

"Não percebendo muito do setor tivemos muita ingenuidade e isso foi meio caminho andado para criar diferenciação face aquilo que já existia."

Lembrou-me a velha estória do suíço que veio para cá produzir azeite. 

"achámos também, por outro lado, que as conservas tinham um posicionamento económico muito baixo com muito pouco valor percecionado. Reinava a ideia de que a conserva é um produto de cêntimos."

Lembrou-me o comentário que fiz ao posicionamento das conservas da Comur em "Conservas e pricing" e em "Preço e JTBD são contextuais".

"O primeiro passo foi tentar criar algo de diferente e apresentá-lo à grande distribuição e esbarrámos na mesma barreira que quase todo o agroalimentar português esbarra e que é a grande dificuldade: preço, preço, preço. [Moi ici: Lembrou-me logo o exemplo da Raporal em "A prova do tempo... tudo por causa de um Pingo Doce"] A grande distribuição não estava para acompanhar aquilo que era a nossa intenção de valorizar e posicionar adequadamente e procuramos alternativas. Quase sempre a inovação surge da necessidade. A necessidade é o maior motor para rasgar o convencionado e como não conseguimos através de nenhum distribuidor contar a nossa história, fomos obrigados a ir por outras vias."

Fazer o by-pass à distribuição permite que uma maior fatia do valor actual seja capturada pela empresa, uma vez que elimina o intermediário. E lembrou-me um velho esquema de Larreché:

Fazer o by-pass à distribuição aumenta a captura de valor. No entanto, é preciso trabalhar na originação de valor.

"O caminho para toda a economia portuguesa e não apenas para setor do pescado ou das conservas só pode assentar na criação de valor acrescentado."

Repito, é preciso trabalhar na originação de valor.

Esqueçam o subsídio para compensar o custo mais elevado, trabalhem para merecer um preço mais elevado

Terminei o último postal com esta frase:

"When something is commoditized, an adjacent market becomes valuable"

No tempo de Jaime Silva e de Conceição Cristas eu escrevia aqui sobre o futuro da agricultura. Um país seco, um país pequeno, deveria apostar na agricultura de joalharia, deveria apostar na marca Portugal, deveria apostar na agricultura sustentável.

De então para cá os governos de turno têm apostado na direcção oposta, agricultura intensiva, agricultura que exige muita água, agricultura de volume elevado e margem baixa.

Oliveira, amêndoa, abacate, são alguns exemplos. Há duas semanas vi uma plantação intensiva de amendoal em Idanha-a-Nova que metia impressão, a densidade e o verde. Quanta água estará a ser gasta naquela zona? 

Claro que quem produz através da agricultura intensiva, ao externalizar os custos ambientais, consegue custos mais competitivos do que quem pratica a agricultura tradicional.

Como é que quem pratica a agricultura tradicional pode competir?

No semanário Vida Económica da passada semana encontrei este artigo "Urge criar uma “Estratégia Nacional para a Valorização do Olival Tradicional Português” escrito pelo Presidente da Direção da APPITAD – Associação de Produtores em Proteção Integrada de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.

A certa altura pode ler-se:

"Relativamente à fileira do olival e do azeite, as preocupações são enormes. Se o olival intensivo e superintensivo de regadio apresentam maior rentabilidade, a realidade do olival tradicional é bem diferente."

Depois, o autor avança com ideias e sugestões para subsídios e apoios ao azeite de produção tradicional.

Primeiro, voltemos à frase "When something is commoditized, an adjacent market becomes valuable"

Segundo, esqueçam a "Estratégia Nacional", é muita gente, é muito heterogeneidade, não vão conseguir fazer nada, a não ser tornarem-se ainda mais reféns do governo de turno e da máquina burocrática normanda. O vosso cliente passará a ser o estado, o vosso produto será abastardado em termos de valor. Esqueçam o subsídio para compensar o custo mais elevado, trabalhem para merecer um preço mais elevado.

Terceiro:

• Recordo o meu exemplo - "E sem intenção, e sem querer, apareceu na minha mente a decisão de pôr de lado o azeite alentejano" (Junho de 2019)
• Chamo o exemplo do alvarinho de Monção e Melgaço (Abril de 2015) e acerca da salvação do brand value (Dezembro de 2016)

Criem uma marca associada à produção do olival tradicional transmontano. Comecem a colocar nas garrafas informação sobre a localização da produção, sobre o tipo de azeitona usada/produzida, sobre o tipo de produção, sobre o ano da produção. Trabalhem para valorizar o vosso produto, trabalhem para educar, criar o vosso cliente-alvo. Participem em concursos que tragam notoriedade e valor. Estudem o artigo referido neste postal de Janeiro de 2020: Azeite e Trás-Os-Montes.

O olival intensivo e superintensivo de regadio apresentam maior rentabilidade, porque têm custos mais baixos. OK, recordemos os números de Marn e Rosiello e de como o burro era eu. O olival tradicional pode aspirar a praticar preços mais altos se trabalhar para desenvolver o gosto dos seus clientes-alvo. 

Usem as redes sociais para começar a seduzir clientes, o vosso alvo tem de ser o consumidor final. Na actual situação não têm qualquer hipótese de convencer a distribuição grande a aceitar preços superiores. Por isso, impõe-se paciência estratégica e trabalhar para que sejam os consumidores a pressionar a distribuição grande a aceitar as vossas condições. Estudem o exemplo da Purdue. 

Paciência estratégica porque todas as estratégias são provisórias

Quando li pela primeira vez que a Amazon ia comprar a Whole Foods interroguei-me sobre o que iriam fazer com a marca.

Sabia que a Whole Foods estava a perder clientes, intuía que teriam de mudar algo e pensava que talvez precisassem de alguma paciência estratégica para descobrir esse novo algo.  Por isso, só consegui assentar em duas coisas: tempo para fazer mudanças e aproveitar as lojas físicas para servirem de apoio às lojas online.

Agora, em "Amazon Is Changing How You Buy Groceries at Whole Foods (Starting With Cheaper Prices)" encontro algo que faz sentido, sobretudo depois de ter lido há dias o texto que deu origem ao postal "Quando a diferenciação sofre uma erosão":

"Whole Foods, meanwhile, gets to exhale. Before the deal, the chain was under intense pressure from shareholders to improve its financial results and figure out how to stop customers from going to lower-priced supermarkets to buy natural foods."

Jeff Bezos é conhecido por ser adepto da paciência estratégica.

Recordar:

• Turn, turn, turn (Março de 2017)
• Turn, turn, turn (parte II) (Março de 2017)

BTW, ainda este trecho:

"The deal gives Amazon more than 465 physical stores in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Before the acquisition, Amazon had a small brick-and-mortar presence with less than a dozen bookstores, a prototype convenience store in Seattle and pickup locations in some cities near college campuses. The tie-up may also give the Seattle-based company valuable data on how people shop in stores, where the vast majority of retail sales still take place. Amazon is an expert in using data on past purchases and browsing to offer suggestions that might make people buy more, and could start applying that in stores as well as online."

A evolução do pensamento

Esta figura é um bom resumo:

do que critico no pensamento da tríade, no pensamento gringo. por exemplo:

"A falta de paciência estratégica e a disponibilidade de dinheiro para fazer deslocalizações nunca permitiu que a economia manufactureira americana desse o salto que a alemã ou a portuguesa deram. Por isso, o reshoring que vemos acontecer na América está muitas vezes manchado por este pecado original da focalização paranóica no custo" (fonte aqui)

Ou:

"É este pensamento fossilizado que domina o mainstream do pensamento económico nas universidades, nas empresas, nos media e nas políticas públicas." (fonte aqui)

Volto tantas vezes a esta reflexão:

"Para quem escreve há anos sobre a paranóia da eficiência e do eficientismo, para quem aponta para a vantagem de trabalhar para aumentar o numerador, em vez da paranóica concentração na redução do denominador, é reconfortante ler:" (fonte aqui) 

Talvez nem sempre o que as PME precisem seja concentrarem-se na "The Customer opportunity". No entanto, essa é a minha abordagem by default. Provavelmente por ter começado este trabalho com PME encostadas às cordas pelo choque chinês. Empresas com pouco capital, com uma experiência e competências na bagagem mas a precisar de as repensar, como um artista em frente à tela, para se concentrarem num outro tipo de cliente-alvo, numa outra oportunidade.

Imagem retirada de "THE OUTCOME ECONOMY – A DATA DRIVEN ECONOMY BASED ON SUSTAINABLE VALUE CREATION"

Small is the new

Como este artigo "Small is the New Big" entra em sintonia comigo.

Há anos que os media e académicos olham para as estatísticas económicas e chegam a certas conclusões. Eu, procuro ir mais fundo e chego sempre a conclusões mais optimistas. Ainda recentemente esta visão gerou "Exportações: Olhando para os números à minha maneira".

Recordo também: E sem pópós?

Ainda ontem vi no oráculo de uma TV antes das 7 da manhã que as exportações de automóveis em Janeiro de 2017 cresceram mais de 50% em relação a Janeiro de 2016. É mau para o país? Claro que não. E longe de mim demonizar esse progresso. No entanto, acredito que são as empresas anónimas, as PME, as que criam emprego e as que fazem com que o dinheiro circule em cascata e de forma densamente ramificada pela sociedade das pessoas comuns.

Por isso, sublinho bem:

"Nearly all of what happens in business is too small and ordinary for Wall Street to care much about. [Moi ici: Como não recordar os meus desabafos "Reflexões sobre a imprensa económica" (2008) e "Retrato da economia portuguesa e dos jornais portugueses"] Same goes for investors and business reporters. Even economists don’t pay much attention. What they see are the waves and weather on the surface of the world’s economic ocean, when most of what matters happens the mass of water below.
...
The other characters are people you don’t know: Pat, Fay, Julie, Rebecca, the mason, roofer and landscaper. All those are people with small businesses. None of them want to grow their businesses any larger than they need to be. None thought about an exit when they started up. None call themselves “entrepreneurs,” or go to expensive conferences. Instead they socialize at bars, clubs, gyms, restaurants, churches, city parks, beaches, ball games and on the street. They tend to have roles rather than jobs. When you need one, you look for a mechanic, a painter, a lawyer or a driver. All of them also help each other out, side by side, face to face, in the physical world.
...
By whatever definition (they vary), SMEs: Small and Medium sized Enterprises comprise a sum that rounds to nearly everything:

• 99% in the EU (Eurostat)

• 97% in Australia (Xero),

• 99.7% in the US (Small Business Administration.)

... small business accounted for about 43% of all private sector employment in Australia. The Small Business Administration (at their link) says 48% of all US employees (56.8 million people) work in small businesses, and that 97.7% of US exporters are small businesses — and generate 33.6% of known export value. [Moi ici: Um número que me impressionou e que de certa forma está em sintonia com o que penso acerca da economia gringa e da sua falta de paciência estratégica. Quanto maiores as empresas mais ainda mantêm o mindset do século XX e a concentração numa competição baseada no preço. As PME têm muito mais paciência estratégica e para competirem internamente com os gigantes tiveram de fazer o que as PME portuguesas aprenderam a fazer depois do choque chinês, tiveram de subir na escala de valor] They add, “firms with fewer than 100 employees have the largest share of small business employment.”

Pois

"But stats are boring. [Moi ici: Dá trabalho, implica estudo e aprendizagem, consome recursos. Coisas que os media comoditizados e os académicos-Saruman não gostam. Recordo um João Ferreira do Amaral e a sua missionação contra o euro sem, no entanto, olhar para os números mesmo. Meu Deus que série!!!] That’s why it’s so easy to look at business through the prism of what the big brands are doing. No shortage of great stories there, especially when you can cover fights between giants using sports metaphors." 

Como não estar optimista quando se olha para a economia transaccionável... pena é o monstro que continua a crescer.  Quando penso na dimensão do sector administrativo-financeiro numa empresa com 100 trabalhadores em 1987 e a comparo com a de hoje... pergunto: por que é que o Estado não pôde fazer o mesmo, por que é que o Estado continua a crescer. E a informática não permitiu reduzir pessoal?

“To be successful, you have to bring something to the table"

Excelente texto "This Man Explains Why 'Closed Market Japan' Is Bunk: 'It's The Selling That's Hard.'". O jornalismo de investigação passa por coisas como esta, fugir da lengalenga e lerolero e perguntar a gente com skin-in-the-game:

"he thinks the idea that Japan is a closed market is ridiculous. “It is much easier to bring cars into Japan than most other markets,” Hansson told me. “The hard part is selling the car when it’s in Japan.”
...
“Strategically, Japan is a very important market for JLR. Being successful in one of the world’s most demanding markets holds a lot of prestige. It also is quite profitable because the import market to Japan is very high-end. What we sell is quite high up in the trim ladder in a quite lucrative model mix.”
...
[Moi ici: Pensem no que escrevo sobre a falta de paciência estratégica dos gringos e a sua paranóia com um modelo em que o preço mais baixo é o factor crítico de sucesso] Ford threw in the towel last year in Japan, claiming, long before “alternative truths” became fashionable, that “Japan is the most closed, developed auto economy in the world.”
...
“Japan is not an unusual market. Japan clearly is not more complicated than most other markets, and compared to America, it is less complicated.”
...
“The U.S. is totally different. Very unique crash-test standards. The whole emission standards are different. The U.S. system is far more cumbersome than in Japan, it requires a large deal of re-engineering, changes in body structure, different blinker systems, and so forth. The Japanese system is clearly smoother for us. It doesn’t require massive re-engineering. From my global experience, the requirements of the U.S. are tougher.”
...
“There is a lot of talk about Japan being closed. That’s blahblah – that is not the barrier. Those barriers can be much bigger in other markets like China, or America.
...
And then again, why are only 10% of registered cars in Japan imports, or 6% if you count in mini vehicles, or “kei” cars where there is (nearly) no foreign competition? Hansson recommended a closer study of the sales charts. What sells in Japan are high-end foreign cars. Premium cars is a low volume, big profit business. Japan’s biggest import-brand is Mercedes, closely followed by BMW. There are more Bentleys and Lamborghinis sold in Japan than Dodge or Chrysler units.
...
[Moi ici: O trecho que se segue encaixa-se no bê-à-bá da estratégia] If you want to make it as a car maker in Japan, you need to be aware “that the country has at least seven globally important carmakers, even more than Germany,” explained Hansson, “and they all are pretty good.” They have extensive distribution systems in Japan, they deliver cars make-to-order within a few weeks, they have plentiful parts and service. “To be successful, you have to bring something to the table the Japanese don’t have,” Hansson explained. The table of Japanese premium cars is pretty bare. ... If you are the “doctor, lawyer, or professional athlete” Hansson identified as his target group, and if you really want to show your status (which is not the Japanese thing to do) you need a foreign car. That market is not huge in numbers, but it is profitable, as Hansson conceded with a smile.
...
U.S. makers do not compete in that market.
...
the “doctor, lawyer, or professional athlete” would lose his clients or fans would he be seen in an Escalade. American cars have a reputation problem, explained Hansson, and reputation is big in Japan
...
you need to “have a consistent and long-term view on distribution, product lineup, brand strategy. You need patience and consistency, and that costs a lot of money. If you and I would start a new car company with one car that would revolutionize the world, Japan probably would not be the best place to start.”
...
[Moi ici: Dedicado aos Jerónimo e Martins] What Trump wants is not more exports, but fewer imports. He wants a closed market America, behind a wall with Mexico, and a 20% border tax, on top of the already onerous 25% “chicken tax” on light trucks, a market already ringed by non-tariff regulatory barriers only the big automakers can afford to scale. With that, the U.S. auto industry will lose its global competitiveness. Walls do that.[Moi ici: Leu isso aí Brasil?]

Ler também "Why GM struggles in Japan"

Acerca da paciência estratégica

Há muito que refiro a falta de paciência estratégica dos gringos.
.
Ontem, li um exemplo de quem a teve e soube utilizar não confiando na força bruta.

"What is your favorite mass customized product?When I was in business school in 1994, I did a lot of research on the Motorola Bandit project and it remains my favorite mass customized product and one of the formative role models that I look to for Cimpress. The product no longer exists, and this example is going to make me sound kind of old, but the Bandit pager that Motorola produced at its Boynton Beach, Florida factory was one of the most forward looking implementations of mass customization of all time.
.
Back in the mid-1980s, the pager market was becoming extremely competitive, and Motorola was one of the last standing American companies in the face of Japanese competition. Motorola responded not by shipping all of the assembly to Asia but, instead, by rethinking every aspect of the value chain. [Moi ici: A abordagem que fez das PME portuguesas máquinas super competitivas] They started with design for manufacturing, and flexibility, allowing for tens of millions of variations in a lot size of just one unit. They used what was, at that time, cutting edge information technology systems to allow field sales teams to configure and enter orders from portable PCs. It was computer integrated manufacturing, focused on mass customization, at its best."

Flexibilidade e customização são muito úteis mas não chegam num produto tecnológico, é preciso evoluir.

Trecho retirado de "Leading Mass Customization and Personalization - 24 expert interviews: How to profit from service and product customization in e-commerce and beyond"

Está neste quadrante? (parte I)

"Opportunities for companies in every industry are occurring on two critical dimensions: knowledge of the end customer and business design, i.e., breadth of product and service offerings. These dimensions combine to form four business models for creating value (see exhibit): Suppliers, Multichannel Businesses, Modular Producers, and Ecosystem Drivers.

Suppliers, in the lower left quadrant, have little direct knowledge of the preferences of their end customers, and may or may not have a direct relationship with them.
...
they are vulnerable to pricing pressures and commoditization as customers look for less expensive alternatives.[Moi ici: A importância de se trabalhar o ecossistema!!!]
...
If you are a Supplier, you need to make sure your operations are as efficient as possible, but that’s only the first step. As digitization continues, end customers will increasingly expect you to cater to their likes and needs. So if you don’t know much about your end customers and aren’t intent on solving their problems, you’ll need to find other ways to ward off commoditization. That means making sure that your product is highly differentiated or that it goes through a distribution channel other than one controlled by an Ecosystem Driver, [Moi ici: Como não recordar a Purdue e a sua paciência estratégica] another of the business models, which has a broad supply base. Otherwise, you risk losing all the value your enterprise has created."

A sua empresa está neste quadrante? Como encara e trabalha o risco de ocupar essa posição?


Trechos retirados de "Four Business Models for the Digital Age"

A tríade também está em Wall Street

A tríade que povoa os media em Portugal faz parte deste grupo:

"Economists often suggest that the loss of jobs in U.S. manufacturing is simply the result of lower-wage labor in other countries and the inexorable impetus of automation as it eliminates employment in manufacturing just as it did a hundred years ago in agriculture. Nothing we can do. It’s just economics. [Moi ici: Muggles que só acreditam no eficientismo e nas folhas de excel pois tudo se resume ao preço mais baixo]
.
The inconvenient truth here is that not all countries have been equally affected by automation and global wage disparities.
...
Studies show that the USA lost proportionately more manufacturing jobs than comparable countries. For instance, between 2000 and 2009, U.S. lost 33% of its manufacturing jobs, while Germany only lost 11%. Why?
.
Like the U.S., Germany has generally played by the rules of the global trade system. But unlike the U.S., many German firms are privately owned. [Moi ici: Gente com paciência estratégica]
...
In effect, while Germany and Asian competitors were strengthening their capacity to compete, U.S. firms were focused on the short-term issue of maximizing the share price, at the expense of long-term competitiveness, and allowing the policy environment supporting the competitiveness of its manufacturing industries to wane."

Não se esqueçam, desde Pedro Ferraz da Costa num extremo até Francisco Louçã no outro extremo do espectro político, quase todos os comentadores e académicos em Portugal partilham da mesma cultura embora o manifestem de fora diferente. Um quer baixar salários e o outro quer sair do euro, outra forma de baixar salários.

Trechos retirados de "Why Does US Lose More Manufacturing Jobs Than Germany?"

"top source of sustainable competitive advantage"

"As soon as a smart product or business idea becomes popular, the urge to copy it and commoditize it is the strongest force economics can unleash. Jeff Bezos summed this up when he said “Your margin is my opportunity.”
.
The key to business and investing success isn’t finding an advantage. It’s having a sustainable advantage. Something that others either can’t or aren’t willing to copy once your idea is exposed and patents expire.
...
Finding something others can’t do is nearly impossible.
...
That leaves doing something others aren’t willing to do as the top source of sustainable competitive advantage.
.
Here are five big ones.
.
The ability to learn faster than your competition...
The ability to empathize with customers more than your competition...
The ability to communicate more effectively than your competition...
The willingness to fail more than your competition...
The willingness to wait longer than your competition"[Moi ici: E volto à Purdue e à paciência estratégica]

Trechos retirados de "Sustainable Sources of Competitive Advantage"

Cuidado com a prateleira que se escolhe!

A situação:

"Slotting allowances are paid by food manufacturers to retailers in order to get items onto shelves. The money is paid upfront and often varies with the number of stock keeping units (SKUs) introduced and the number of stores in which the products will be stocked. The term comes from the act of creating a space — i.e., a slot — for an item in a warehouse or on a store shelf. The origin story is that retailers at some point started demanding that vendors compensate them for the costs they incur in helping launch new products (which often fail). The reality is that the money involved is now significantly higher than the cost of rearranging products. In effect, retailers are selling off their real estate."

A pergunta:

"If one believes that smaller firms are more likely to develop truly novel offerings, then one has to wonder whether paying to gain distribution keeps those new products off of shelves. Paying upfront money to the retailer doesn’t create value for the customer but does create a barrier to entry. This would be particularly true if overall demand for a category is not really growing. A new product then is largely just going to shift sales from Product 1 to Product 2. If Product 1 is made by a deep-pocketed multinational, then it can easily afford to launch a new product (say, 1A), outbid the maker of Product 2 for shelf space and protect its sales." 

Ao chegar aqui, recordei logo um dos meus heróis de 2010, a Purdue.

Até que ponto a prateleira certa para uma PME com um produto verdadeiramente inovador é a deste tipo de distribuição?

Há os que têm paciência estratégica e percebem que "volume is vanity and profit is sanity". Cuidado com a prateleira que se escolhe!

O que é bom para os grandes não é necessariamente o melhor para os pequenos grandes inovadores.

Trechos retirados de "Paying for grocery store shelf space"

Porque Mongo é gigantes-unfriendly

Porque Mongo é gigantes-unfriendly:

"“Owners” who are changing all the time, and many of the stock analysts who do their bidding, couldn’t care less about engaging employees, about pride and respect in work, about serving customers, about quality in products and services.  All they care about is MORE: squeezing out more revenues, more savings, more profits. Manage the enterprise the way you make orange juice.
.
But what happens when there is no more to be squeezed out of a place that has been run really well? The answer is easy: provide less to make more. Rip the customers off with add-on fees. Pressure the staff to cut corners. Or “downsize” them altogether so that there is no-one to replenish the toilet paper. And don’t forget to pay the CEO outrageous bonuses to drive all this."

Uma PME pode fazer milagres se vir que ganhar dinheiro é uma consequência e não um objectivo directo, se tiver paciência estratégica, se tiver ao leme quem tenha paixão, se apostar na interacção e na co-criação.

Trecho retirado de "The devil is in a detail"

Mongo e as tribos

Depois de publicar "Mongo, tão claro" houve uma ideia que me assaltou. Ainda pensei em fazer uma nota mas desisti.
.
Entretanto, estes comentários do @nticomuna no Twitter fizeram-me sorrir porque a tal ideia ia ao encontro desta opinião:

@ccz1 E haverá o "Mongo", em que a granulação dos mercados acelera precisamente por causa dos mercados serem maiores ("globalização")

— anti-comuna (@nticomuna) September 30, 2016

Qual é a ideia que queria sublinhar?

"New technologies such as 3D printing and biosynthesis are likely to expand this trend into physical product businesses.
...
products that are targeted to the specific needs of small groups of customers" 

Acredito que o vector com mais força na definição dos mercados não será a tecnologia mas a existência de cada vez mais tribos, tribos mais pequenas e tribos mais aguerridas.
.
Por isso, acredito mais na hipótese Mongo como um oceano de mercados com um continuum de heterogeneidades. Vão existir empresas grandes, os tais unicórnios? Acredito que de vez em quando surgirão algumas apple com um poder de atracção capaz de federar muitas tribos mas serão um fenómeno para durar ainda menos que a Apple porque as tribos são cada vez mais heterogéneas e mais aguerridas.
.
Empresas grandes preocupam-se com o que é comum ao maior número de pessoas, a menos que tenham uma maioria accionista com muita paciência estratégica, o que é cada vez mais raro.

Pena os Estados Unidos terem aderido ao euro

O que é que escrevo aqui no blogue há anos e anos?
.
Que o problema não foi o euro mas a China!
.
Recordar:

• It's not the euro, stupid! (parte IV) (Dezembro de 2011)
• "It was never the euro" (Novembro de 2015)
• Lições do calçado português (parte IV) (Fevereiro de 2016)

O que escrevo aqui no blogue acerca dos gringos?

• Acerca da paciência estratégica (Novembro de 2012)
• Porque falta a paciência estratégica (Junho de 2016)

Assim, é com um sorriso de "Bem vindos ao clube" que leio estes artigos:

• "Why China Trade Hit U.S. Workers Unexpectedly Hard" (muito bom e muito documentado);
• "How the China Shock, Deep and Swift, Spurred the Rise of Trump"

Claro que os gringos, sem paciência estratégica, com dinheiro para deslocalizações e com o suporte teórico da academia, foram para a China.

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Em Portugal, sem dinheiro, sem suporte da academia - completa prisioneira mental do século XX e dos seus modelos do Normalistão - os empresários das PME fuçaram e fuçaram e fuçaram e descobriram como dar a volta e tornaram-se alemães sem o saberem.

Porque falta a paciência estratégica

Há muitos anos que aqui no blogue escrevo sobre os gringos e a sua tradicional falta de paciência estratégica.

• O avatar
• Acerca da falta de paciência estratégica
• Mais produtividade não implica mais salário^
• Fazer o by-pass ao país

Agora, em "Beyond competitive advantage : how to solve the puzzle of sustaining growth while creating value" de Todd Zenger, encontro uma interessante justificação para isso:

"the primary path to value creation results from the creative, theory-building capacities of managers—those hired to see things investors often cannot.
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the CEO’s task is to make strategic choices that will maximize the firm’s long-run profitability, even if capital markets fail to see this value in the short run. After all, the CEO is hired to be smarter than investors. The challenge is convincing investors this is true—a task made all the more challenging because frequently it simply isn’t; sometimes managers’ theories are bad, aimed at building empires and not value.
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The quality of a corporate theory is massively difficult to assess—the product is a mere cognitive vision of a path to sustained value creation. A more difficult-to-evaluate product is hard to imagine; the true value is unknown even to the manager and is revealed only as “experiments” or strategic actions are pursued over a period of years. Accordingly, managers can all too easily disguise poor-quality theories as high-quality ones.
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managers are paid to know more than capital markets about the quality and future value of their theories, but they are often incapable of persuasively articulating that inherent future value. As a consequence, high-quality theories paradoxically may be discounted in capital markets, especially when they are difficult to evaluate.
The big problem with such discounting is that managers rely on capital markets for resources to pursue their corporate theories. Perceptions of low quality elevate financing costs. Moreover, managers’ compensation and continued employment typically depend on their capacity to generate market value in the present. Thus, this lemons problem leads to a strategic dilemma of massive significance. Managers may be tempted to pander to the beliefs and preferences of the capital markets rather than pursue the corporate theories that would maximize value for the firm.
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my experience suggests that managers generally do face a real dilemma as they craft and then sell their corporate theories to capital markets. They can choose simple, familiar strategies that are easy for capital markets to decipher or they can choose complex, unfamiliar, or unique ones based on theories that are difficult toevaluate. In the latter case, valuation is costly, prone to error, and likely leads to a discount in the market.
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four types of corporate theories that differ along two dimensions: quality and ease of evaluation. Type I theories—theories that are of high quality and easily evaluated—are clearly the preferred choice. However, such theories are unlikely to exist in great abundance since, as discussed, good theories are unique—and unique seldom means easy to evaluate. Type IV theories—theories that are of low quality and relatively opaque—are clearly to be avoided. The majority of options, however, are likely to be type II—theories that are lower in quality and therefore long-term value, but are easily evaluated and therefore may maximize investors’ current value— or type III—theories of high quality that maximize long-term value but are difficult to evaluate and are therefore discounted in the present. The correct choice is by no means obvious.
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In capital markets, there are securities analysts who specialize in assessing the merits of each firm’s theory. Their task is to assemble information, monitor performance, and evaluate the quality and likely future performance of the theories that managers propose, as these provide information to investors through earnings forecasts and buy and sell recommendations.
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Analysts, like all individuals, seek to allocate their effort in ways that generate the best return on their time invested. Covering more firms expands order flow and reduces the costs spent per firm in analysis. But to economize on the effort expended per firm, and thereby cover more, analysts prefer firms that are easy to analyze— in other words, those pursuing theories that are familiar and simple.
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firms tend to reshape themselves through divestitures and spinoffs to essentially “match” the “categories” covered by analysts.
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We examined the impact of a strategy’s uniqueness on the level of coverage and the premium or discount that it received in capital markets. We assumed that the most valuable corporate theories are built around uniqueness: either unique foresight about the value of a strategic bundle of assets, or the possession of unique assets that preclude others from enjoying similar value as they pursue complementary assets.
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The bottom line is that this uniqueness paradox is pervasive even in the market for publicly traded firms. Choosing unique theories, which may maximize long-term value, will likely receive a discount in the present."

Assim, é natural que os incentivos para estratégias intuitivas, as baseadas no preço/custo, sejam a opção de base.

"Competir e ter sucesso no negócio do preço mais baixo não tem segredos, é a estratégia mais fácil e intuitiva de implementar."(fonte)

Agora, recordar o título, "Por que as grandes estratégias têm de ser fora da caixa"

Pensamento visual e estratégia

"The list of questions makes clear that an important premise behind the ViSM approach to making strategy is that there should be a strong connection between strategy and operations, or else the strategy is relatively useless. In other words, if the strategy cannot be put into practice, then it will have no effect on changing the organization, its relationships with its environment, or any part of the environment. The strategy, in other words, will be equivalent to the typical New Year’s resolution. In contrast, ViSM is designed to focus attention on coherence and consistency across what people say (rhetoric), what they decide (choices), what they are willing to pay for (budget), what they do (actions), and the desirable consequences of those actions in terms of mission and goals, as well as any likely undesirable or untoward consequences that need to be managed.
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The list of questions also makes clear another important premise behind the ViSM approach to making strategy: beyond any conceptual connection between strategy and operations, there must also be strong links between the strategy in question and the psychological, social, and political commitments on the part of key stakeholders needed to implement it. [Moi ici: Recordar "uma estratégia empresarial não é uma ciência newtoniana, também tem muito do que querem os empresários fazer, do que gostam, da sua experiência, da sua paciência estratégica"] Again, without these linkages the strategy will be little more than hand waving on the part of the strategy formulators without any subsequent heavy lifting by the implementers. The need to create these commitments means that the process of developing strategies is typically as important—perhaps even more important—than the actual content of the strategies."[Moi ici: Quantas vezes sinto isto. O processo é tanto ou mais importante como o conteúdo. Chegar ao fim e sentir que as pessoas estão alinhadas e possuem a propriedade do resultado, é deles ponto]

Trecho retirado de  "Visual Strategy Strategy Mapping for Public and Nonprofit Organizations" de John M. Bryson, Fran Ackermann, e Colin Eden.

Paciência estratégica: Q.E.D.

Há anos que escrevo aqui no blogue sobre a importância da paciência estratégica para as PME:

"A recent study by three professors at Purdue’s Krannert School of Management is part of a growing mountain of evidence of the superior and more lasting performance of companies where the founder still plays a significant role as CEO, chairman, board member, or owner or adviser. Specifically, the study found that S&P 500 companies where the founder is still CEO are more innovative, generate 31% more patents, create patents that are more valuable, and are more likely to make bold investments to renew and adapt the business model — demonstrating a willingness to take risk to invent the future."

Trecho retirado de "Founder-Led Companies Outperform the Rest — Here’s Why"

"We find strong empirical support that for S&P 500 firms over the period 1993–2003, a founder CEO is associated with greater innovation as measured by the citation-weighted patent count, number of patents, and citations per patent. In other words, the R&D investments of founder CEO-managed firms are more effective and efficient in generating innovation. As boundary conditions of the relationship, we find that the positive effect of founder CEOs on innovation is stronger (weaker) in more (less) competitive and innovative industries. We also find that firms with founder CEOs have a tendency to explore diverse technological domains and to generate substantially impactful innovations that can provide new potential opportunities for subsequent technological developments. We interpret these findings as evidence that founder CEOs are more likely to positively affect their firm’s innovation strategy."

Trecho retirado de "Founder CEOs and Innovation: Evidence from S&P 500 Firms"

América e o comércio internacional

Lembrei-me do significado de "Mongo e a automatização... pois!" em que reflicto sobre a decisão da Mercedes retirar autómatos da linha de montagem para os substituir por humanos.
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Lembrei-me da habitual postura gringa de concentração no preço como factor de decisão que refiro em "Tit for tat" e da sua habitual falta de paciência estratégica.
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Lembrei-me, depois de ter lido:

• "Manufacturing Jobs Are Never Coming Back"
• "Why Donald Trump Is Wrong About Manufacturing Jobs and China" (muito bom)

"John Strotbeck, a former Olympic rower and the founder and C.E.O. of the Philadelphia-based team-uniform maker Boathouse Sports, told me that his company tried a few years ago to start manufacturing some of its sports apparel in China, but brought the production line back to a factory in Philadelphia soon afterward. The main factor was the lead time from when a customer placed an order to delivery. “Six months, and today it is even longer,” he said, of timelines at Chinese factories. “Compare that to how fast we can be now: average from the date of the order to out the door is twenty working days. And our workers are flexible; they can work anywhere in the factory and on any equipment. If all of a sudden we get a spike in demand for Gortex outerwear, a labor-intensive product, we can shift more resources and take advantage of it.”"

• "Americans Remain Upbeat About Foreign Trade" 
• "We Are Being Killed On Trade – Rapidly Declining Exports Signal A Death Blow For The U.S. Economy"
• "China’s Inflation Flashes Warnings for Smokestack Industries"
• "Exportações chinesas afundam 25% na maior queda em quase sete anos"

Um exemplo de paciência estratégica

Um excelente texto "Why Clothing Startups Are Returning To American Factories", um pouco contra o que aqui costumo escrever, um pouco atónito, acerca da falta de paciência estratégica dos gringos e a paranóia do preço como critério único de sedução dos clientes (ainda ontem).

"When Bali started his company three years ago, his decision to manufacture locally wasn't motivated primarily by a desire to bring back business to dying factories or to ensure that workers were being well treated.
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I simply couldn't produce the clothes I wanted to make overseas."
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Bali wanted to create his own technical fabrics, monitor quality, and have the flexibility to scale up his business as quickly as possible.
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Two years before launching Yogasmoga, it occurred to Bali that a large proportion of yogawear on the market is made of nylon and spandex, both of which are very dated fabrics, invented by DuPont in 1938 and 1958, respectively. [Moi ici: Recordar o recente "Sintomas de Mongo"] And even though he had spent his career at Goldman Sachs and didn't have a lick of textile manufacturing experience, he wanted to see exactly how hard it would be for him to develop new materials that would be ideal to wear for the practice of yoga.
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That search led him to Invista, a company spun-off by DuPont in 2003, which develops synthetic fibers. "It turns out that while many companies are still using nylon in their clothes, there has been a huge amount of technological advancement in textiles," Bali says. However, developing new fabrics is expensive and requires a lot of time collaborating with specialty companies like Invista, which is why it is easier to rely on existing synthetic materials that are abundant and cheap.
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He's spent the last few years working closely with Invista, testing out how different combinations of fibers feel and perform when they come together.
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Bali eventually worked with scientists to create 30 different technical fabrics that use various combinations of synthetic and organic fibers to create specific effects
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Bali explains that it would have been impossible to manufacture these garments overseas. Asian factories would not have had the infrastructure to produce these brand new fabrics: Bali had to source out a speciality mill in California to turn the Invista fibers into cloth. And on a basic level, communication would have been a challenge, especially given that Asian factories would never have encountered the fabrics he had just invented. If there were issues with quality, he would not have been able to spot them until too late, which might result in a lot of expensive fabric going to waste."

Tit for tat

A falta de paciência estratégica e a disponibilidade de dinheiro para fazer deslocalizações nunca permitiu que a economia manufactureira americana desse o salto que a alemã ou a portuguesa deram. Por isso, o reshoring que vemos acontecer na América está muitas vezes manchado por este pecado original da focalização paranóica no custo:

• Why it’s now cheaper to produce some goods in the South than in China

Assim, não admira que este sentimento esteja na moda "On Trade, Angry Voters Have a Point". Claro que a multidão gosta de pensar na próxima jogada e esquece que isso tem consequências, retaliações, nas jogadas seguintes.