In his long journey towards development, Man has always sought to improve methods and processes to produce products with efficiency and quality that could increasingly attract the interest of the consumer. Individual creativity predominated in that beginning and now the technology developed by competent teams has shown that it has always been and will be possible to manufacture products at lower costs, permanently with better levels of adequacy, performance and quality. It is important to note that this has been accelerating from the moment the most primitive of products was conceived to the last product, machine or equipment that comes out of today's modern factory. The permanent struggle to obtain the best production result and to conquer outstanding positions in the market has never stopped, on the contrary, the scenario is one of increase and overcoming of everything that has been seen so far.
The environments created by information technology, the way of doing business and economic globalization generate serious challenges for current production structures. Advances in electronics, global telecommunications and computers are causing an irreversible weakening of political borders between countries, opening up unsuspected spaces for global commerce. There was a clear denationalization of consumers who, currently more citizens of the world than nationals, can find out, compare prices and quality, or even acquire products or services quickly and efficiently in any country.
All of this has motivated an avalanche of transformations that affect modern society, imparting an acceleration to innovations, on a scale such as has never been seen in the past. We live today in a climate of dramatic changes, which occur at increasing speeds, whose fundamental characteristic is centered on the disappearance of 100% national products or technologies. In other words, production has also become global.
The intensity of knowledge generation creates important transitions, challenging governments and organizations, forcing them to rethink their models, operating projects or ways of doing business. The big companies, the richest and most powerful, which have significant financial resources are no longer guaranteed the first place, only because of these merely material conditions. Nowadays, a small and flexible organization can surpass a “lion”, as long as it has the use of new research techniques and development of productive and manufacturing processes capable and competent to generate and absorb knowledge, producing results. These elements can enable it to offer goods and services to customers faster, more appropriately, at lower prices and with high quality of manufacture and performance.
In this more internationalized trade, the modern productive society is adapting in a surprising way, making use of basic inputs, raw materials, components and equipment that will build its final products, today global, which can and are obtained anywhere on the planet . The consequences of this new phenomenon are clear and change the world economy from international to universal, with powerful and coercive effects on the development and competitiveness of nations.
The globalized (or transnational) economy is different from the international one. It does not recognize political boundaries and, therefore, is not subordinate to the will of National States. It became dominant, controlling and imposing, to a large extent, rules for the domestic economies of different countries in a way that has never been seen in the past. It increases the power of international and multilateral control and consultation mechanisms, not because they have become more prestigious or powerful, but as a result of the extraordinary development and democratization of communication systems that, surprisingly and efficiently, place the individual as a citizen of the World, globally informed.
A few years ago, we crossed a century and a millennium. The speed of change grows on an exponential scale and advances at a rapid rate. Today, it is said that technological advancement produces results that double every ten years, while information technology, every year. The 21st century offers us even more spectacular perspectives, via the already clear horizons of biotechnology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. Engineering has a crucial role and will be the engine of these transformations. It is being called upon to design, develop and manufacture equipment using basic science and knowledge.
More than that, engineering should be responsible for making what is known possible. However, the shocks do not stop there. In the world of creation, although the common phenomenon of competition is not thought much, it appears growing and on a global scale. This clearly means that winning in the market is no longer a challenge only for thinkers, creators, scientists and technicians, as it clearly and inevitably passes through the rules, regulations and legislation of nations and, even more, through the reactions, also universal, of the market .
Thus, what we understood as the national economy is under challenge - geographic borders separating countries by a complex tangle of laws, regulations and rules limiting communications and the flows of people, products and services. Successful policies in the past, centrally exercised by political power, such as protectionism and market reserves, no longer find space in the scenario towards which the world is taking great steps.
Finally, the main responsible for the dramatic changes we are witnessing seems to be simply the citizen – equipped with their best qualification as a producer and consumer. He, better informed, is at the heart of power and determines the directions to be followed by virtue of his purchasing decisions and imposes them as a beacon for production. In this scenario, the company's position should be understood only as a response mechanism to the impositions it can identify in the market. Therefore, it would not be up to the producer to try to guide or set paradigms or standards, as happened previously. Rather, it is a function of what happens in the market arena where the company operates.
In this new complex and sophisticated environment the conclusions are obvious. The individual, the prepared and trained citizen, armed with their qualifications, culture and attitudes, grows in importance thanks to their understanding of the environment in which they live, receiving from it the basic inputs for efficient and competitive production. It is clear that any international pressure can be minimized by the action of States, Governments, which, understanding this new global dynamic, can decide for more flexible and lighter regulations than the heavy bureaucracy that is present in the mass of all the least developed nations on the planet. .
National industries that cannot produce according to the parameters known and set by consumers, whether by internal organization or by external interference from their governments, will tend to withdraw from the market. It is not considered that the constituted authorities, as they did in the past, should establish privileged conditions for the domestic productive park (the so-called market reserves). Today, it is clearly understood that escape valves will emerge and the market will, most likely, move in the direction of the practices of less formal economies. All of this concludes by indicating that they are heading towards the extinction of captive and protected markets.
The new world consumer, unless subjected to unbearable political pressures, will never accept the parameters of control and political restriction under which they lived in the past. Today, populations are looking for horizons of growing freedom, which they will never abdicate. Thus, the new company of the present needs to look to the future, trying to use all the tools that technology and the culture of the populations allow them to. There is no choice. Better levels of efficient production at each new period, whatever it may be, is essential, since, in the opposite hypothesis, its elimination from the market will be inevitable.
Ozires Silva is founder of Embraer, former president of Petrobras, former minister of Infrastructure and current member of the Federal Government's Science and Technology Council