World Food Programme – Fill de Cup

At the right side, on  this page, you will see a widget from the WFP. You can help to Fill the Cup of someone just clicking on the widget. It will cost nothing, just some time. The sponsor, which is Colgate, will have the costs.

Let’s do it! Just click and help the World Food Programme.

Many thanks.

Mario

Doing Business in Brazil – Part 4

Just a quick update about some figure recently published.

The Brazilian GDP Growth Rate of the second quarter reached 1.9%, removing Brazil from the “pseudo-recession” and returned to the same level of the first quarter of 2008, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

The recover was pushed by families’ consumption coupled with government expenses.

The principal factor that influenced positively the growth rate was the increase of the activity in the services sector.

Would like to highlight that part of this figure is related with financial services, that increase 8.2% comparing with same period of 2008. Which means the increase offer of credit.

Just an observation about this credit increase, mostly the acceleration of credit availability was provoked by the public (government) banking system.

The industrial sector had an increase of 2.1% related to first quarter, but the accumulated in the last 12 months still is negative in 3%.

As I said in the part 3 of Doing Business in Brazil, let’s see third and fourth quarter, the figures will be interesting.

Globalization Strategy Focused on Small Businesses

This post is for Portuguese language readers and it is about a project – book – that we finished couple years ago and decided to publish it.

It is a different vision of globalization and with a systemic and transdisciplinary approach. It is not a “recipe” or a “magic plan” to develop internationalization of small and medium companies.

It gives a broad vision of globalization and some aspects related with entrepreneurship, economical trends, social changes, technology,  a model to develop a global entrepreneurship network and the possible results that could be achieved if the network was implemented.

The Portuguese  comments, about the book:

Lançamos um livro sobre Estratégia de Mundialização para Pequenas e Médias Empresas, as PMEs. Este livro foi escrito em parceria com um amigo, Mário Luís Magnani, e nosso objetivo não é oferecer uma “receita de bolo” ou algum plano estratégico, no sentido convencional ou acadêmico.

Cultural Differences in Business

Nowadays, in a totally connected world, it is not possible to have a successful business without being aware of cultural differences.

We have two important aspects to analyze, about the importance of cultural differences.

The first is when analyzing the internal business environment, and the second is when we make the approach to the external environment, local and global, to sale our products or services.

Doing Business in Brazil – Part 3

Some more updated information about doing business in Brazil.

Last week we had the world’s biggest IPO (Initial Public Offering) in the last year.

The Brazilian company Visanet (VNET3.BR) raised 8.4 billion reais ($4.3 Billion). It is the Brazilian largest credit card networking company.

Change Management – Synopsis

Here, bellow, you will find a link to a pdf document, which is the synopsis of the six posts about Change Management. The posts were organized and created a table of contents.

The link will take you to the Box.net web page and it will ask you, if you want to download it.

ChangeManagement – Synopsis pdf

Change Management – Part 6

5. Change as a Process
In this last part, the objective is to revise some points about human resources and to present a more pragmatic vision about change, with a perspective of a process. So that, in the overall, it will be possible to have a systemic vision, as before mentioned, as well, to have a detailed vision of a singular process of change.

 Rephrasing last paragraph, you will have the vision of the whole, go to the parts and return to the whole, which mean, systemic vision.

Change Management – Part 5

4. Change Management or Contemporary Management

The truth is that, nowadays, what we call change management, could be named as contemporary management of the XXI century. The Cartesian and Newtonian model of order, stability, linearity and forecasting, doesn’t exist more, maybe, never existed.

Extreme Affordability

Stanford University has a web site, and project, called Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability.

It must be seen and who has possibilities, should participate.

Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability

Their Vision:

Why are 90% of the world’s products and services designed for 10% of the world population?

Change Management – Part 4

3. Change Management

“… men always pursue to equate changes’ problems, but never have the concern with the problem of change.”
Ruben Bauer, “Change Management, Chaos and Complexity in Organizations”

The objective of the introduction, last item (article), was to focus on “the problem of change”, itself, and to allow that the discussion of change management may have a broadest systemic vision.

Change Management – Part 3

2.11. The change potential in a self-organized system

It is based in its informal network of interactions between people.

When the organization has a strong informal network, it is observed that people stay more time together, they self-help, they are more emotional involved, and, by consequence, it emerges mutual trust that generates security and it is a potential to the change process.

Change Management – Part 2

2. Basic Concepts

In this section, it will be discussed some basic concepts about chaos, complexity, changes, organizational culture, holism, transdisciplinarity, besides other matters.

Change Management – Part 1

1. Introduction

More than ever, in these confused and changing times, management – enterprise management – will need to be agile, will need to reinvent itself and break paradigms. Also, management will need to be able to surpass the current challenges and the future ones generated by the current global crises, coupled with the evolution of business practices, markets and consumers’ profiles.

For that, the Change Management will have a fundamental role in the success of the organization. Also, it will have an important role in the development of new organizational structures that will be necessary to face the new way of doing businesses.

Blue Ocean Strategy – Synopsis

Here, bellow, you will find a link to a pdf document, which is the concatenation of the three posts about the Blue Ocean Strategy. The posts were organized and created a table of contents.

This document is based on the book of Kim and Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy, and its objective is to give a quick and simple vision of the principles. (It will take you to the Box.net web page and it will ask you, if you want to download it.)

Blue Ocean Strategy – Synopsis pdf

Blue Ocean Strategy – Part 3

Surpass the Organizational Barriers, the Fifth Principle

After the definition of the blue ocean strategy and checked the accomplishment of the idea, now it needs to be implemented. Its execution is also a challenge and some issues need to be addressed.