Porter based his remarks on economic studies that put the industry as the strategic center of attention. Porter sees good industries such as pharmaceuticals, where most participants enjoy high margins, he also sees bad industries such as trucking, where most participants suffer from low profitability.

Accordingly, a company will be successful if located within an industry where there is a good chance of owning a segment or the entire market.

Porter concludes that there are two ways to compete, through the Low Cost or Differentiation of Production. Lower cost is achieved by optimizing processes, either through technology or the purchasing and production.

Differentiation means creating a product that customers perceive as unique and valuable. This is achieved by designing the brand image, technology, features, and customer service and dealer networks.

Porter basa sus observaciones en los estudios económicos que ubican a la industria como el centro de la atención estratégica. Porter ve buenas industrias, como farmacéuticas, donde la mayoría de los participantes disfrutan de altos márgenes; él también ve malas industrias, como la camionera, donde la mayoría de los participantes sufren baja rentabilidad.

De acuerdo a esto, una empresa tendrá éxito si se ubica dentro de una industria donde haya buenas oportunidades de apropiarse de un segmento o de todo el mercado.

Porter concluye que hay dos maneras de competir, por medio del Bajo Costo o de la Diferenciación de Producción. El Bajo Costo se logra optimizando procesos, ya sea por medio de la tecnología o de la estrategia de compras y producción.

La diferenciación significa crear un producto que los clientes perciban como único y valioso. Esto se logra por medio del diseño de la imagen de la marca, tecnología, características, servicio al cliente y redes de concesionario.

When a company is successful, the rivals try to imitate its behavior. That includes the products and services they provide, the technology used to produce or work, and in general their activities as a company.

One way to prevent competitors imitate us is integrating activities together, the more integrated and more levels, more difficult will be to imitate. These systems, by their very nature, are very difficult to disentangle from an external company and therefore difficult to imitate. And so even if rivals could identify relevant interconnections, they would have difficulty reproducing all of them.

Achieving integration is difficult because it requires the integration of decisions and actions across many independent subunits.

Cuando una compañía es exitosa, sus rivales tratarán de imitar sus comportamientos. Eso incluye los productos y servicios que brindan, la tecnología que utilizan para producir o funcionar, y en general sus actividades como empresa.

Una manera de evitar que los rivales nos imiten es integrando las actividades entre sí, mientras más integradas y en más niveles, más difíciles serán de imitar.  Dichos sistemas, por su propia naturaleza, son muy difíciles de desenredar desde una compañía externa y por tanto difícil de imitar. Y así que incluso si los rivales pudieran identificar las interconexiones relevantes, ellos tendrían dificultad para reproducirlas.

Lograr integración es difícil porque requiere la integración de decisiones y acciones a través de muchas subunidades independientes.

I am certain that traveling for business reasons can be tiring but at the same time a relaxing and joyful activity.  Leaving the office and moving away from your day to day routine can bring many benefits. The first is the opportunity for entertainment and the discovery of new places. Even though business traveling can imply long hours of work, meetings and other sacrifices, it is the perfect moment to at the same time disconnect from stress related activities to your home. Other benefits include trying out new food and exciting restaurants, the professional benefits from the trip experiences and being able to spend some time dedicated to yourself.

Remember that traveling for either business or pleasure can be exciting; it all depends on how you see it. If you have a busy work agenda and must take a plane to travel, relax and enjoy. Who says just because it is work related it has to be stressful or difficult.

In many companies, leadership has degenerated into orchestrating operational improvements and making deals. But the leader’s role is broader and more important. The general management is more than managing individual functions. Its center is the strategy: defining and communicating the company’s unique position, to make amends to forge the form of activities. The leader must provide the discipline to decide which industry changes and customer needs the company will respond to, while avoiding organizational distractions and maintaining the hallmark of the company. At the lower level managers lack the perspective and confidence to maintain a strategy. There will be constant pressures to compromise, relax trade-offs and emulate rivals. One task of the leader is to teach strategies to others within the organization – and say no.

En muchas compañías el liderazgo ha degenerado en orquestar mejoras operacionales y hacer acuerdos. Pero el papel del líder es más amplio y mucho más importante. La gerencia general es más que la administración de funciones individuales. Su centro es la estrategia: definir y comunicar la posición única de la compañía, hacer compensaciones forjar la forma de las actividades. El líder debe proveer la disciplina para decidir a qué cambios en la industria y necesidades de los clientes responderá la compañía, mientras evita distracciones organizacionales y mantiene el distintivo de la compañía. A los gerentes de nivel más bajo les falta la perspectiva y la confianza para mantener una estrategia. Habrá presiones constantes para el  compromiso, relajar las compensaciones y emular a los rivales. Una de las tareas del líder es enseñar sobre estrategias a otros dentro de la organización – y decir que no.

Darwin’s last article

Madrid, September 2011

The Castilla del Oro Foundation, led by Richard Fifer-Carles and chaired by Cristobal Colon in Spain will develop an important social and environmental labor in the area of Cerro del Andevalo –Huelva.  In this line comes the concern about environmental issues, this time, we will tackle nature conservation.

The Famous naturist

On April 19, 1882, at 73 years of age, Darwin passed away in his beautiful country mansion in Down House.  Just two weeks before, on April 6, the weekly magazine Nature had published his last work, a note titled “About the dispersion of the fresh water bivalves”.  Darwin started by pointing out the great similarity that, in some very distant regions, have these and other species that live in fresh water, in contrast to the great differences exhibited by land animals, even though each river basin is independent from its neighbor.  The famous naturalist had already discussed this topic on the thirteenth chapter of the Origen of Species.  There, he attributed such similarities to changes on the ground levels which originated the rivers to pour into one another and, in the case of the fresh water mollusks, also to their dispersion by means of aquatic birds.  To this effect he told his experience with a duck he placed in an aquarium where there have been incubated mollusk eggs, without specifying the species.  A great number of young individuals stuck to the duck’s feet and survived there between 12 and 20 hours, time when, according to Darwin, the bird could have flown one thousand kilometers.

On his last note, Darwin made reference to another collaboration about the same topic already published four years before in Nature, on May the 30^th of 1878, this time under the title “Shell Movement”.  After the publication of the Origin of Species, Darwin received letters from all over the world and that note from 1878 made reference to one sent by an American called Arthur Gray, who offered a prove to corroborate his idea that fresh water clams could be transported by aquatic birds.  It was a drawing of the leg of a blue-winged teal (Anas Discors) hunted at a Massachusetts river with one of those clams stuck to a finger, in concrete a specimen of Unio Complanatus, possibly misidentified since this species is European.  In any case, the clam was alive when the teal was taken.

Meanwhile, the note from 1882 was referring to another letter that told something similar, only now the spreading agent wasn’t a bird, but a beetle, and the clam belonged to another great family of bivalves that, with the naiads, had colonized the fresh waters: the tiny spherical.  Darwin’s correspondent was this time a Walter Crick, a shoemaker from North Hampton fond of Natural Sciences and fossil collector.  About him should be said that he had a grandson called Francis Crick, whom he never met, who published in 1953 in Nature a two page article that awarded him the Nobel Prize on Medicine in 1962, which he shared with this collaborator James Watson, the topic was regarding the structure of DNA, molecule on which sequence are produced the mutations and which contains the intimate substratum of the individual variation and, thus, the evolution of the species by natural selection.

During his tour of made through five provinces of the country, Ruiz Pena said that he had the opportunity to appreciate the great variety and potential of the historical products, natural, and ethnographic of the interior region of the country.

Ruiz Pena who was accompanies by the international president of the Foundation Castilla del Oro of Spain, the Duke of Veragua, Cristóbal Colon of Carvajal, said that under the casual circumstances he met the directors of the organization who spoke about their interest of applying the model of integral development in the interior region of Panama, from which he decided to visit the country.

Entrepreneur Albert White, a member of the board of directors of the Chamber, said that before they heard favorable and unfavorable opinions, but after receiving the explanations from Petaquilla Gold’s specialists, they were able to draw their own conclusions by seeing what was happening and getting to know the details of the operation and the environmental protection systems they perform.

He stated that “although mining activity implies removing earth within green areas, the speed with which they are being reforested is remarkable, which is positive and we noticed”.  He said “what Petaquilla Gold is doing, under the vision of entrepreneur Richard Fifer Carles, is very positive and it reveals that what is said against this project is false, because the company is making a good job”.