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SHIPrites Vol 3: The Childhood Spaceship Dream
The Manifesto is proud to present the third installment of a month-long series by friend of the blog and creator of SHIPtember, Simon Liu.
Welcome to volume 3 of SHIPrites, the SHIPtember Sunday spectacular. The Last two weeks I went on and on about the Journey.
This week we talk about the obvious: SHIPs.
SHIPtember is frankly the most obvious theme month and it was a just a matter of time before someone took the usual theme month concept and said, let's focus on the thing most builders aspire to create in all of Sci-Fi/Space-dom.
But why is a SHIP so special? Let's start with the definition of a SHIP. Despite what some claim, SHIP stands for: Seriously Huge Investment in Parts. And I can prove it. I asked some OG spacers for help and we actually found this original LUGNET post concerning the coining of the phrase. In 2002, James Brown first proposed SHIP acronym: Seriously Huge Interstellar Plastic, and it was the great Jon Palmer who was first to christen the phrase: Seriously Huge Investment in Parts. And ever since then it's been some what of a communal aspiration to create a SHIP.
A great builder, Mark Kelso once said: "You're not a man (or woman) until you've built a SHIP." And judging from his latest, he is da MAN.
But what makes SHIPS so special to Space builders? We have said it's a rite of passage. Heck, this whole series is dedicated to the idea of building this milestone, in a month none the less!
If you look at all the other themes there isn't really a comparison. Sure in castle you build.. well a castle. And trains you build… trains. That's like saying space builds space.
No other group seems to be so obsessed with defined categories of builds. There are some strict limitations in say train – to build on the LEGO based train chassis but that's because it's effectively defined by LEGO. In town, in recent years there's a pretty big shift to build on the Cafe Corner 'modular' standard – but do town builders aspire to build their 'dream modular'?
Maybe there is, and please let me know, as I'm a primarily sci-fi or space builder. I like to think that I'm a well-rounded builder and know all the various facets of the community, but really I don't, I'm heavily biased towards the groups that I tend to build in, and even going to the 'big three' conventions in the United States, that's still a drop in the proverbial bucket of LEGO builders out there.
It's kinda interesting if you think about it, sci-fi and space themes are all about exploring the new and different, strange new world and civilizations and such. Where anything can happen. And Space builders are encouraged to build weird and funky designs of the impossibilities.
Yet the Space/Sci-fi theme tends to have the most constrained rules to build the most unconstrained imaginative builds. Look at the plethora of Sci-fi theme months:
SHIPtember
MA.kTober
Novvember
Dronurary
FebRovery
Marchikoma
That's 1/2 the year right there! And yet each one of these so-called open construction months have a very specific requirement and/or aesthetic.
I'm not actually sure why this is the case, or why that Sci-Fi has a disproportionate number of yearly theme months. There are definitely some others out there, but these are the established ones that almost run themselves. I believe the first true theme month would be Novvember, started by the late, great NNENN:
With this first theme month he created the standard which we have all seemed to have prescribed to, define an objective – in his case a specific type of starfighter – two forward prongs, two rear fins and a big ass vertical stabilizer.And there it was, magic. Everyone bought into this seemingly simple criteria and built a slew of some of the best styled starfighters in LEGO form. And others started repeating the pattern, creating a simple set of criteria and letting the imagination run wild. But again, mainly in space.
I look at the Classic Castle Contest – which has been running longer than all these theme months and their approach is slightly different, the categories usually state 'what' to build but not 'how' to build it. For instance build a 'battering ram' not 'build a battering ram with 4 wheels and a skull head' – when placed in context of the castle theme, these rigid design criteria seem totally draconian!
Yet in the sci-fi months – this is what happens time and again, and builders thrive on it, flexing and building around the rigid constraints! I don't get it – Someone please explain!
Though the most hallowed design criteria of all sci-fi/spacers is the SHIP – the 100 stud long golden yardstick. How did this happen? The LUGNET thread isn't exactly specific how the 100 stud marked was chosen, though it's probably safe to surmise that it's simply a nice round number. But it's interesting that this number is extremely arbitrary to most builders, many SHIPtember vets don't really aim for 100, just aim to be MORE than 100. I think this relates directly to the fundamental childhood dream of building a big spaceship. And it is just that, a spaceship, it's not defined by 100 studs when we were younger. SHIPtember facilitates a bit of that dream – and there have been some builders that used the theme-month as their first time to finally build that bucket list item, not just spacers, but all sorts of builders.
But I think we're missing a critical element that defines a SHIP. I don't know about you constant reader, but when I was a kid, and was dreaming about building a big spaceship it had an interior. Note that for all the restrictions in theme months SHIPtember is pretty lax in terms of design criteria, interiors are encouraged but not mandatory. And that's MY mistake and shame to bare. SHIPtember has almost come to redefine what SHIPs are, and it was an unfortunate choice that interiors or minifig-scale wasn't more of a defining design criteria for SHIPtember. But if you ask enough of those same OG space builders – it WAS.
In an effort to accommodate builders with various collection sizes and styles, this one design criteria was purposefully de-prioritized. Andrew Lee eloquently pointed out how I basically screwed over the definition of SHIP. Over the years definitions do change as do building styles and capabilities, a decade ago a SHIP used to be such a huge deal to get to the 100 studs mark, now with LUGbulk, Bricklink, PAB walls, 100 studs is actually pretty easy for most people. But with a full interior ? …
Even 4 years later, and after some deep thought over this article I still debate that off the cuff decision. It was a pretty fundamental design criteria from the 'childhood' spaceship dream. But if we had added that to SHIPtember, would it have made the challenge too difficult? We've talked in the past about how SHIPtember is only as hard as you want to make it, but if minifig scale with interior was such a requirement, would that make it simply too hard?
The reasons I think SHIPtember is so popular is that it's fun. It's probably only the only 'collaborative' theme month and people latched on and worked towards building in this month. For the most part most people are able to accomplish what they set off to do. Those more 'advanced' builders choose to build harder builds, with more advanced techniques, or even stupidly brick intensive designs. But would this still be what it is today if we had made it much harder to start off with?
At the same time there's been a huge resurgence in giant SHIP building these last few years. At BrickCon 2015, one of the higher SHIP nexuses in the United States, we counted I believe 15 SHIPs on display, 12 of which were built just the month before in SHIPtember. We may have gained a new era in SHIPs by burying one of the key designs of the old era.
So I now sit here staring at my hull pieces and I ask myself, and in turn you constant reader, what's does a SHIP mean to you?
Posted on September 19, 2016 September 19, 2016 by KeithGPosted in SHIPrites (Author Simon Liu)Tagged Bricks&Beer, Communitay, SHIP, SHIPtember, Simon Says, Theme Months.
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22 thoughts on "SHIPrites Vol 3: The Childhood Spaceship Dream"
It's so true that for many of us, the SHIP is the culmination of our childhood dreams realized. I remember Giddens saying once that it was always his dream as kid to have a fleet of ships that shared the same look and were part of a unified design family.
While I've yet to tackle the SHIP, as a kid my thing was bases. The basic design and many of the play function elements of my Ice Base Gamma have literally been purifying in the cask for 35 years. I do have reams of drawings for SHIPs, but never have taken the plunge as I usually start getting dreaded 'builders creep' before I even snap a single brick. I really take my hat off to builders like the many here who can take the build-with-abandon philosophy of a polybag sized table scrap and graft it on to large, complex project like a SHIP.
Great series of articles, Simon. It's awesome to read about the switchbacks, deadfalls and unclear paths that builders travel on their road to producing a final product.
"as a kid my thing was bases."
A thousand times, yes!
Yes great point, There was always a BASE to go along with my SHIP in my childhood builds. Though I think from me, I had a bit of a space-town which was a base, but never did have that EPIC SHIP I've always wanted. I wouldn't call it 'Build-with-abndon' philosophy – more 'strategic stupidity' 😛
And thanks Gil! And great to see you on here.
PS there's a Hedgehog mecha with your daughter's name on it next time you come out to a show 😉
Bribes work! Have to check when the next meeting is. 🙂
I was thinking about the micro / fig scale for SHIPs, and I recall the first time really seeing an example of how microscale could be taken from the 8-bit, squint-and-you-can-sorta-see-a-ship-shape to full blown high res glory. Of course, I'm talking about Old Skool Kung-Fu Master Priest, Paul Baulch and his revolutionary, Lance of Athena:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=45321
Man, when that thing dropped on Lugnet.space, the poles of the Earth swapped. The size, detail, incorporation of of the hangar bay… nobody (in the West anyway) had seen something like that before. It felt that after the Athena, the whole scale had entered a brave and awesome new world.
The idea spawns from the Galaxy Explorer. Yup, it's that simple. Think about it, look at that ship. Cool design, hitting on all notes in looking like the Shuttle, and minifig scale.
But look again.
Two figs sit in that cockpit, there are NO chairs and NO headroom. They cannot stand up or the top glass won't close. How do they move around? Stretch their legs? Where do they eat and piss? Why can't they get into the cargo hold with the rover without having to land first? At least there's some head room there. Where are the fuel tanks or the power plant?
Logic is the mind killer here. And it resides in the name. GALAXY EXPLORER. How the hell do you explore the galaxy in this cramped vessel? Seriously?! Those tiny engines cannot possibly (granted, we have already suspended our disbelief to some extent) propel this thing across the entire width of this corner of the universe. And those little bastards sure wouldn't be smiling all the time!
How do you fix this as a builder? BIGGER. For starters. Okay, you've got an idea for size but now you've got to make it make sense. Cockpit with more controls (and chairs); you've got a bigger ship, need to control every aspect now including flight operations, navigation, communication, etc. Crew accommodations including more crew members to run a bigger ship means a section dedicated to their well being; that means a galley, head, relaxation area/lounge of some sort, storage for food, medical, etc. Now you've got to run the ship to shorten the galactic distances and/or time; engineering must explain propulsion, gravity (somehow), atmospheric control systems, water and waste, etc. And then, WHY are you exploring? Or are you? What is the purpose of the ship? War? Transport? Cargo? Medical? Criminal? Now you've introduced a whole level of history/story/narrative/character that will need some bit of an explanation OUTSIDE the actual SHIP. A delicious rabbit hole to descend into if I may add. 😉
THESE are what define "minifig scale" and "full interior." And it is because of that damn smiling, ubiquitous, little bastard that these things NEED to be big. We all are empathetic to him and want our SHIP to be how we would want it. With headroom first of all. Who wants to explore the galaxy in a Yugo when you can do it in an Escalade? Then you need style.
The SHIP is the true rite of a Spacer only because EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US has that shared itch to scratch. Lego started this by screwing with our perspectives in order to keep costs down and piece counts low. Now we're hippies with money and access to any piece we want and in quantity. Bring it! We should be seeing more of these by anyone that dares call themselves a Spacer.
Nice one, Simon!
Maybe you should be writing the articles !
That is a pretty great hypothesis that makes a lot of sense.
And you're right all the LEGO sets of old I always imagined them as shuttles for a much bigger uber SHIP. Which I still don't have enough parts to properly build … yet.
now that's the dream, something that could fit a fleet of ice defenders or galaxy explorers
bramlego says:
Ditching the "full interior" requirement opens up the possibilities for more creative exteriors. Advanced shaping techniques don't often lend themselves to clean inside surfaces and nice rooms. A strong skeleton likely occupies the same space that the interior would…either the interior detailing needs to be compromised to fit around the skeleton and inside the superstructure, or the exterior suffers.
Even at SHIP sizes, interiors are compressed and compromised. The materials, eg, a 1x brick wall, are so large relative to the minifigs themselves, that you can't fit everything in. On top of that, the exterior needs to be designed to make the interior accessible… in effect you're designing a play-set instead of a piece of concept art or a movie model.
Nice to see you on the blog, dude.
Excellent point – SHIPs are simply way more dense and complex than they used to be, and that cost is interior space. And it's interesting to see the seismic shift towards hyper detailed complex SHIP builds which are visually stunning. Though part of the kid in me does wish there was more surprises in the inside.
I think we as a group might have partially realized this, and this year's theme (besides curves!) seems to be hangars – I've seen LOTS of hangars, a little glimpse of the inside section, but not enough the same extensive trade off that would have been required if we had interiors again….
I don't think you damaged SHIPtember in any way by not demanding an interior. People either take that challenge or they don't. Back when I built the Ghoul, the prevailing trend was definitely to have an interior, it was considered the hard road, to use your vernacular. I distinctly remember being reactionary to that Idea and none of my SHIPs had interiors. While interiors can certainly look cool and be super fun in person, they do require design compromises that don't always make for an attractive final product, so I agree with Bram's description. Most of them end up being long hallways with small rooms along the way.
I'm with Gil, I was more into bases than ships as a kid, even though it wasn't Lego. One of my favorite toys was an army-man playset with a mountain and a giant artillery piece and all kinds of vehicles. When I think of SHIPs it's usually all about the exterior.
Another good article, I kind of wish this one was the first in the series, but that's the downside of the unscripted, stream of consciousness style that you've adopted to fit the blog. I dig it, this is exactly the kind of insight I was hoping for. I'm looking forward to next week's installment, much more than my won SHIPtember updates.
I meant more damaging the concept of SHIP. though SHIPtember and SHIPs are seemingly intertwined now. My first SHIP, the Hudson I remember the debate and the remarks about it not having full interior, it was actually minifig scale, and I easily brushed them off since I had a whole NXT unit, and couple of motors driving various mechanical motions, so there was no room – plus the thing was massive. I think like 175 long and 60 wide or something stupid. Mostly to cater to fitting these motorized mechanisms.
It was such a beast I think I've been personally skittish about building another of that size….
Yeah talking about SHIPs was always on the radar for an issue, but the journey seemed to be a good opener as it reminded people of some of the things I thought would be important. Starting with this would have been the vanilla start 😛
Huib Versteeg says:
Great article once more, Simon.
To me, part of the fun of SHIPtember is indeed that it isn't just a design challenge, the 'in a month' part is also actually important to the whole thing. You don't really "need" a month to build a drone or a vic viper, but you kinda do for a SHIP (of course depending on how much you're willing to challenge yourself).
Other theme months more or less go by without me noticing what everyone is posting or if something is specifically for that month. I kinda hope theme months won't stay here for another few years, they're becoming slightly dull. They started off fun because they were 'new' and exciting, now they're starting to feel more like bureaucracy and a mandatory chore, rather than a fun challenge. SHIPtember still has that feeling of excitement for me, but for how long…
Anyway, enough doom and gloom.
I have to admit that I've personally never made a SHIP with a proper interior (one ship had minifigs in it, but nothing else, one was a frame with unfinished exterior, one was full of technic and pneumatics, the other was so thin, it was basically just the frame). It's still more or less on my to do list. Though other stuff I still want to SHIPpify includes an ultra swooshable ship with a handle and triggers for (pneumatic) functions, and a super modular ship in the lines of 'the Gothica', so it may not be the first on the list. (A combination would be madness, but who knows).
The nights spent building on my first SHIPtember SHIP are still a fond memory.
Thank you for putting all that in motion.
Thanks Huib!
Ha I still remember your first SHIP – also extremely fond memories – I think when I first started seeing in pre-SHIPtember that second year that I realized, wow, we're on to something. And I think you really lead the way and really reset the expectations of everyone going in.
First year everyone had a month's notice and no one knew what to expect. But second year, everyone saw you building and realized that SHIPing is serious business and people really had to step it up since you were the race leader setting the pace. I don't think the second year would have been as strong without your amazing build.
I do agree with you on the months, I still build for them but it serves more as a 'okay take a break from XYZ and pump out a whatever theme it was'. It's still kind a fun, but more of a 'hey it's first of the month I should build something' instead of 'OMG it's 3 weeks to SHIPtember, what am I doing?!?!?'
Ryan Olsen says:
Great article Simon! For me, the first SHIPtember came along exactly at the right time. I had come out of my dark ages in mid-2012 with buying and building just the official sets, and was just starting to get into MOCs in 2013.
It was really the microscale ships from the likes of Pierre, Stijn, and Soren that were really inspiring to me. It's by far my favorite scale and the logical choice for building a ship with a crew that numbers into the hundreds or thousands.
That being said, I do completely agree that the fleshed out interior of a minifig scale build is the more difficult road and the one that calls back to childhood the most, but as an adult, I would rather build a beautiful display piece than a play set.
Looking forward to the next article!
Ryan, don't ever change, you're one of the best and in good company with Pierre, Stjin and Soren. It'd be a loss to not get your amazing micro SHIPs. I'm so very glad you found SHIPtember when you did, lest we miss years of your awesome builds!
And to a certain extent a minifig SHIP can only be so big…. to build some of the creations you have in minifig scale would be size of a house…
Though let me ask you this…. are there such thing as micro scale interiors? 😀
You might be on to something! Hanger bay interiors is the obvious answer, but I could see an interior view of the reactors/propulsion system or computer core or something like that being an awesome microscale interior! I'll have to think about this more for next year! 😀
donutsftw says:
I don't know about anyone else, but I sometimes feel like the number of monthly sci-fi challenges is getting out of hand… Mainly because I find some of their names so grating (Dronurary and Marchikoma are the worst offenders).
I think the cheesiness in the names is kind of endearing. But yes I agree, at one point I had jokingly planned to fill out every month with a theme, but after SHIPtember I'm like – yeah, we have way more than enough to keep idle hands busy, and then some.
I suppose one of the plus sides of recurring theme months is that they provide a yardstick for improvement when you compare your previous years' entries with your latest one. That said, I think theme months/contests shouldn't be annual deals and instead rotate every 2-3 years like the small starfighter contest or the speeder bike contest did so things don't get so stale, or worse, lead to stylistic circle-jerks. There are plenty of other possible themes to explore than just those six that we have right now. I for one would like to see a resurgence of the real-world starfighter contest since that came and went before I felt confident enough to tackle it, plus I'd like to see what other people come up with now that we have newer techniques and a wider palette Or maybe more themes based on specific artists or universes ("Foss-cember," anyone?).
Regarding why there are so many theme months for sci-fi compared to castle or town, I think it's because sci-fi is such a vast realm. With castle and town you're already constrained to a certain time period and technology, and even the more fantastical designs in the former are still fairly restricted to the same old LotR/D&D lore. But the possibilities in sci-fi are, well, astronomical. And sometimes overwhelming. We don't have real-world equivalents as fundamental, unshakable foundations for our designs like castle and town have (recent scientific discoveries and extrapolations notwithstanding), so we often need something specific as a starting point. This is where community challenges and theme months come in. They give us something to work from and are also exposure to new sub-genres and aesthetics of sci-fi for the uninitiated. I would have never known what Maschinen Krieger was without the Lego space community and now it's one of the biggest influences on my work along with Star Wars.
And speaking of Star Wars, my childhood years were spent playing out dogfights with alphabet ships instead of swooshing around giant battle cruisers, so that may be why I primarily build starfighters and don't have the same SHIP aspirations that most spacers seem to have. I wasn't a Star Trek kid so I never got exposed to the idea of large crews that operate the various functions in the interior. Andrew is a major 80s toy nostalgia guy and that shows in his builds, so it doesn't surprise me that he thinks Simon "ruined" the SHIP criteria. I'm with Bram and Ryan in that I enjoy SHIPs more as display pieces than as nostalgic playsets, particularly the works of Pierre and "LEGOLIZEITMAN" (whose real name I can't seem to find anywhere and I don't feel like playing to the end credits of Krater to find out). I do enjoy stand-alone interior displays though, such as this lovely number by Tayasuune: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tayasuune/6304325634
Excellent point … I think you nailed it on the head of space vs town/castle/other themes.
Though as an extension of theme months getting stale by stylistic repetition I would also add that there are some that just come to completely dominate a month that it actually becomes not fun. I'm talking to you Mr. Trotta. He's effectively ruined NoVVember for me. Ever since he showed up and dropping mad VV's I can't even get close to his level of competence. I never really treat these months as serious contests and I don't need to be in the running for 'best XYZ' but man, I want to be at least be seen able to be even allowed on the race track. Last two years I tried NoVVember and my results were so pathetic compared to his I just didn't even finish….
And between Gil and yourself, I think you've made a really great point that I didn't really think of, I just assumed most kids wanted the super big SHIP – cause I did. But you're right, those that play with bases and starfighters would naturally gravitate towards those builds. My preoccupation with Space Marines and Dropships probably stems from the love of Aliens (and sneaking downstairs to watch it that one night!).
And this is getting a bit into the next article (maybe), but I'm curious how many people, in this current spacer community – also prefers the new era 'display piece' SHIPs vs the 'Playset' SHIPs of old?
There's also a third type of SHIP going by that measurement, of which I can only name a few: the giant minifig-scale starfighter/GARC. F@bz did one a while back and it seems there's a new kid on the block this year (https://www.flickr.com/photos/141712196@N06/29591192811). You could probably include a lot of Vince Toulouse's work in this category as well, though his style is more dieselpunk. I'd suggest a section dedicated to unconventional SHIPs if it fits logically into the next volume. Alysa's Astra Luminara and Chris Perron's Astral Voyager come to mind. I also recall the term "SHIP" being applied to seafaring vessels once upon a time, but that seems to have fallen out of fashion lately.
I can see how Nick Trotta would irritate you considering he's a master of the widely-imitated starfighter design philosophy laid out by the likes of nnenn and Fredo. Then the Mayos come out of the woodwork and replicate his style perfectly (goddamn them). That clean, colorful style rightfully reminds me of early space shooter sprite work, and the 3D realization of that is something Lego is particularly good for. It's also not something you see much in other sci-fi mediums these days. Games seemed to stop caring about bright colors and unique shapes once graphics got to the point where you could tell ships apart without them.
Interesting article Simon! I have yet to tackle building a SHIP, but when I do, it will likely be micro scale. Like Christopher, I grew up watching Star Wars and playing with Star Wars LEGO (the first piece of Star Trek media I ever watched was the J.J. Abrams movie in 2009), so when I think of a "ship", I don't think of "starship" like the Enterprise, I think of "capital ship" like a Star Destroyer.
I'm also more of a build to display kind of guy, so if I'm going to make a Seriously Huge Investment in Parts (and money! SHIPM?) it needs to be something that seems massive and epic! To build something at minifigure scale seems much more daunting, not to mention complicated, (making it structurally sound, figuring out an interior that makes sense, designing interior access that your adult clown hands can fit into, etc.), and I'm already having a hard enough time getting off my butt to try and make one!


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Dr. Amlan Chakrabarti is a Full Professor in the A.K.Choudhury School of Information Technology at the University of Calcutta. He was a Post-Doctoral fellow at the School of Engineering, Princeton University, USA during 2011-2012. He has 20+ years of experience in Engineering Education and Research. He is the recipient of the DST BOYSCAST fellowship award in Engineering Science (2011), the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) Visiting Faculty Fellowship (2014), the JSPS Invitation Research Award (2016), Erasmus Mundus Leaders Award (2017), the Hamied Visiting Professorship from University of Cambridge, UK (2018), Siksha Ratna Award by Dept. of Higher Education Govt. of West Bengal (2018) and has been awarded as the Fellow of West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology (2022).
Since his Ph.D. research, Dr. Chakrabarti has been an active researcher in Quantum Computing Logic Synthesis, Quantum CAD and Quantum Algorithms. In his Ph.D. research, he developed strategies for quantum logic synthesis and was one of the key contributors in formulating the nearest neighbor problem. During his Postdoctoral Research at Princeton University, he contributed to the circuit optimization techniques for PMD-specific quantum gate libraries and also in the development of the first-of-its-kind Fault-Tolerant Quantum Logic Synthesis tool coined as "FTQLS". He and his research team have made good contributions to Quantum Algorithms such as Random Walks, Binary Welded Tree, Graph Coloring and Click problems, which solves many of the important computing problems in the Quantum Computing Domain. In 2021 his research group devised the entire Ant-Colony Optimisation problem in the Quantum-setting, which was the first of its kind and this resulted in the award of IBM Quantum Researchers Access Award to his group, and they were the first group in India to receive this award. His Ph.D. students are working in top Quantum Computing Organizations such as HCL, ATOS, PWC, etc. He is also the mentor of the first Quantum startup in Eastern India coined "QRDLab".
He has also served in various capacities in various higher education organizations both at national and international levels. He has published around 200+ research papers in referred journals and conferences and has graduated 20 Ph.D. students. He is the Series Editor of Springer Transactions of Computer Systems and Networks, the Series Editor of the Springer Book Series on "Water Informatics, an Associated Editor of the Elsevier Journal of Computers and Electrical Engineering and Guest Editor of the Springer Journal of Applied Sciences. He is a Sr. Member of IEEE and ACM, IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor, Distinguished Speaker of ACM, Secretary of IEEE CEDA India Chapter, Member of the International Water Association, Vice President of the Data Science Society and Life Member of CSI India. His areas of research are Quantum Computing, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Reconfigurable Computing and VLSI CAD.
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Quantum Paradigm for Machine Learning

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


As a beach province, Limón is best known for its party culture and its openness. The tourism in the area is built around both the strong Afro-American culture that has deep traditional roots in the community and the party all the time beach atmosphere that so many tropical locations with wide access to the waterfront cultivate. Not only will your stay in Limón give you the chance to hear, see, and taste, the local culture, it also gives nature lovers the chance to see some truly unique sites, including Limón marine turtles, which draw divers from all over the world who hope to be able to observe them in their natural habitats.
When you come to Limón for an eco-friendly vacation, there are a number of opportunities for sustainable lodging for you to choose from. Local hotels compete for both the quality of their amenities and the ways they are able to enrich the local community. That is done through a few different design initiatives including the use of traditional building materials and methods where available to minimize the environmental disruption of their construction. Another way to do this is by incorporating sustainable technologies to power the facilities, including solar, wind, and where available, geothermal energy. Water reclamation and recycling technologies also reduce the hotel's footprint and demonstrate proof of concept for sustainable water use plans in the community.
All of these features allow the eco hotels in Limón, Costa Rica to offer amenities that travelers look for without creating a disruptive environmental footprint. That means you can still enjoy pools, room service, and even in-room climate control, all while knowing you are doing what you can to participate in a culture of sustainable living.
Being on the east coast of Costa Rica, many of Limón's attractions are built around the beach, which makes up the entire eastern border. This means there are plenty of local opportunities for water-based activities, and not only for those looking to see Limón marine turtles. There are also opportunities to charter crafts for diving or fishing expeditions, as well as coastal kayaking and parasailing. Snorkel the Caribbean with a local guide or simply enjoy the ability to unwind in the sand. No matter what you are looking to do, there's a lot to see on Limón's beaches. If you're looking for specific outdoor destinations, remember to check out popular hot spots such as La Amistad International Park, Cahuita National Park, Barra del Colorado Wildlife Refuge, Tortuguero National Park and more.
The deeply rooted Afro-American roots in this area become apparent when you journey to any of the beach towns and cities scattered up and down the coast, where local cuisine and entertainment is deeply tied to the cultural traditions of Costa Rica. Enjoy Caribbean dance music, and come to taste the unique flavors that make Costa Rican cuisine one of the must-have experiences that define Caribbean travel, because the atmosphere in most Limón entertainment districts is one that says it's time to party all the time.
If you are ready to plan your next trip, Limón makes a great destination, but you will need to plan ahead to find the right lodgings. Planning in advance for the attractions you plan to see will help you select a hotel location that is centralized and reduces your travel time. From there, it's just a matter of researching the available amenities and rates at each of your sustainable hotel choices.
With so much to do and see, you might even need to plan two trips to the province to see everything you want to see. After all, with both educational and adventurous opportunities for travelers, Costa Rica is one of the most popular destinations in Central America. Come and see it for yourself today.


This one's filler-y but cute. I remember when I was drawing it I knew I should cut down Mell's dialogue in Panel 1 to make more room for the art, but I couldn't do it because I loved it so much.
Where does Mell get grenades? It's an eternal mystery.
All I can say is that sometimes lettering is really hard. That second panel was a total mess, and it still looks pretty sketchy after extensive Photoshop cleanup.
"Blueberry" is (or at least was) a secret code word between my friend Laura and me. It comes up a few times in Narbonic.
Blue Corridor is sometimes referred to as Blue Sector. This comic has very lax continuity standards.
I find Dave's pajamas-and-robe combination very cute for some reason. At home, as seen in various other strips, he sleeps in T-shirts and boxers.
There's another Sea Monkeys Ocean Zoo in the third panel. Helen does a lot of Sea Monkey-related research, evidently.
I know there's a TV Tropes entry for the trope where a plan (usually kept offscreen) requires a long list of improbable and wacky implements. I don't know if there's one for the trope where the plan is shown and all the implements actually do turn out to be essential. At any rate, Narbonic does both variations multiple times. This is the kind of gag you end up doing if you grow up reading too much Bloom County.
Mell is, of course, an entire hit squad on her own.
Man, this would be a weird plotline to explain to anyone who wasn't familiar with the strip. Did anybody start reading Narbonic with this storyline? Was it just totally confusing?
I was getting better at drawing Caliban by this point. Eventually I gave him less limp-looking hair.
It's nice when I give Mell protective gear for firing her ridiculously oversized weapons. It adds a little something.
As often happens in Narbonic, the best gag is in the first panel, and the rest is downhill from there.
I assume she gets them from some form of "Hammerspace", or in this case, "Grenadespace".
Has anyone kept up the Big Freakin' Gun ™ count?
I love Helen's expression in panel 4.
Also, what does the 'W' stand for?
Wildflower, believe it or not. It was revealed in "Li'l Mell".
Yep. Melody Wildflower Kelly. Which always reminds me of that line in Good Omens.
What do you mean? Grenades just happen.
@E.T. : Yes, matterofactIhave … Big Freakin' ™ Gun count now stands at 41 (assuming today's gun is a different one than what Mell had three Saturdays ago — the muzzle looks different, so I would think so).
Mel looks particularly badass in the first panel. Narbonic as a whole has also established "ginchy" as one of my favourite phrases.
See, I've never noticed anything off about the second panel because I love Helen's line in it so much.
On the other hand, if you're fighting supernatural agents from beyond the material realm, surely the disembodied voices in your head would make ideal advisors? Madness is often regarded as a backhanded blessing from the gods, after all, and who's to say that the lilting babblings of your gibbering mind are not the Delphic dictates of holy will, to be pitted against unholy might?
So Mell and Helen dwell in Hell!
Behind my eyes float random words!
Or if it's Dadaist absurd!
"Blueberries," huh? Well, this is no time to waffle. Besides, wouldn't Mell be kind of useless in this situation if Helen suspended her aggression patterns?
I'd imagine that Helen would very much want to call things "Sector" that otherwise wouldn't deserve the word, if only to make the lab sound more impressive. "Red Sector" for the break room, "Omega Sector" for the men's bathroom, that sort of thing. Wonder what "Pink Sector" would be?
Heh. And, @Jon: Helen's room.
In case it wasn't clear, Dave is again yelling at the heartless gods above, who apparantly think now is an excellent time to game his prayers.
Presumably either Dave or Artie informed Helen that you can't properly call an area a 'sector' unless it is a pie-slice shape comprising part of a circular region.
… which just goes to show that a career at Narbonic Labs is, in fact, a trivial pursuit.
Dave yells at the gods more than once in this storyline, which, considering the nature of the threat, makes sense, I guess. Not that the gods care.
Hmm… to actually use all of the seemingly disconnected implements would constitute a 'subversion' of the trope. This episode is most deliberately subversive as Dave's dialog calls back to when said trope was 'played straight' just two days ago.
"Bowels of hell" is kind of a funny phrase. It invokes some particularly unique imagery for the nether regions.
If you look closely, Mell has a Big Freakin' ™ Gun in each hand. Assuming one of these is the same one as earlier this week, BF(tm)G count = 42 … ah, that explains how Helen figured out the answer!! And for Mell, of course, guns are the answer to everything!
And a Wheelbarrow and a Holocaust cloak.
And some kind of remote link to the hologram disk projection system, a hexagonal power transfer adapter capable of holding spikes of up to 5 million volts, and a B47/7RF resistor.
Nonsense, Shaenon! That last line is great!
These are agents of the underworld. Don't call them "friends".
I agree with Deecee … the last line is the epitome of Mellness.
She's got a penchant for violent crime!
You better run if she's coming near!
Blow 'em into small seg-ments!
With plasma rifle, they're gonna get a surprise!
She's gonna get her some exorcise!
Her guns will blaze, Mell's swell!
The temperature raise, Mell's swell!
Mell is wearing ear protection when on the firing range? I'm relieved to see that she's so safety conscious. A person might have gotten worried.
Mel appears to be watering at the mouth, which is even better.
I dunno. I'm partial to the "best sleepover ever" line. I love how a lot of Narbonic strips have subtly funny bits up until the end, where there's the big absurd punchline that just ties it all together and makes it hilarious.


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Arvind Kothari January 30, 2022 DIVE IN, open, playbooks, players
Hacking Unilever: Vulnerabilities in Innovation & Organization
A selection of Unilever's iconic brands
Part I of our vulnerability assessment of Unilever, one of the world's largest CPG companies, in light of its recent 'troubles,' criticisms from shareholders, and stake buildup by activist investor Nelson Peltz.
Why Unilever? We believe it is a beautiful case study in corporate susceptibility, making this a timely post.
A selection of Unilever's iconic brands
Readability Score: 50.5 (Tenth Grade and above/akin to New York Times)
Hacking The House
Unilever's Troubles
The Ballad of Terry Smith
No Nonsense Investing
The Purpose of Mayo
The Strategist's Take
Context in Numbers
Unilever: Market Performance
Unilever: Managerial Performance
A View on Underlying Issues
Depression in Brand Innovation
Aging Brands at Unilever
Why Brand Ageism?
New, Small, and Local
Perspectives on Solutions
Bloat At Unilever
Observations On Simplification
Questions on Simplification
Productivity at Unilever
Right Sizing Unilever
Better Ways To Downsize
Alternative Operating Models
Upskilling, Not Downsizing
Some Questions on Right Sizing
An Insular Organization?
Incommunicado: Shutting Out Shareholders
The Kraft Heinz Bid
The Fundsmith Debacle
Inaction Makes for Resolutions
No Mix, No Fix: Inbred Leadership
Unilever Leadership Executive
Unilever's Market Leadership
Silver Linings of Diversity
Pockets of Excellence or Internal Silos?
Involving Shareholders
Diversifying the Leadership
Connecting Pockets of Excellence
This post and its planned follow-up are a vulnerability assessment for Unilever, albeit short. Think of The Strategist as the safecracker brought in to test the safe in the house, the one where you keep the things dear to you, for weaknesses.
A closer parallel is ethical hacking. Instead of finding the weak spots in your cyberinfrastructure, it's about finding the vulnerabilities of your organization's structure, culture, and strategy. It's one of our specialties, an offering under our Design to Grow program at the Leverage.
You should know that I was an employee of Unilever between October 2015 and May 2021. The analysis comes from publicly available data, and I write it as an ethical grey hat.
Because this post is a good faith account by someone playing the devil's advocate, it is critical of Unilever. Sridhar Ramanathan lists the phrase 'let me play the devil's advocate' at number ten on his 'How to kill a good idea' list. And I agree wholeheartedly although, from personal experience, I would put it at number one. It was the favorite refrain of my former boss at the company.
But in the present case, it does the opposite. By actively seeking weaknesses in their house, real or perceived, organizations can seek proactive and sincere solutions for underlying issues and take a nuanced stand on corporate principles of record before others (read: competitors, shareholders, activist investors, et cetera) shove them down their throats. Only then can one affect changes needed to build a growing, future-fit enterprise.
With these disclaimers in mind, let's start hacking the house.
When your company's share price jumps 5.7% in its biggest intraday gain in a year and a half after news breaks of an activist investor's (read: Nelson Peltz) stake, the chances are that managerial economic performance has left the shareholders wanting.
Terry Smith represents one such shareholder for Unilever through his eponymous Fundsmith Equity Fund.
The outspoken man behind the UK's most significant equity fund isn't out to make a quick buck.
Terry has been clear as day about his investment strategy and has the numbers to prove it —
Buy good companies
Don't overpay
'Do Nothing' is rare in the wheeling-dealing world of equity markets. Terry famously declared to his shareholders in 2011, a year after he established his fund —
We remain critical of attempts to measure investment performance over short periods of time. Even a calendar year is too short for this purpose — it is the time it takes the
Earth to go around the Sun and has no natural link to the investment or business cycle.
Terry Smith, Annual Letter to Shareholders, 2011
If that doesn't scream strategic investing, I don't know what does.
Ten years later, Fundsmith continues to have low turnover in stocks. It sticks with the equities in its portfolio that continue to reflect the first pillar of Terry's strategy — buy "good companies."
"We continue to pursue a policy of trying to run our winners," Terry declared in the 2021 edition of his widely respected annual letter to Fundsmith's shareholders.
The brevity of Terry's process makes him brutal on bullshit. He has little patience for corporate yarn more characteristic of US-based corporations than European companies like Unilever.
He might let it slide if the underlying performance of your company is robust and the fundamentals remain strong. But, as Unilever has found out in the past weeks, he will call you out, disdainfully, I might add, if you are slipping.
And Unilever has been slipping.
Terry Smith v/s Unilever
Unilever was the worst performer among Fundsmith's CPG stocks over the last two years. In his letter to Fundsmith shareholders in January 2022, Terry Smith called out Unilever's management for the poor showing.
Unilever seems to be labouring under the weight of a management
which is obsessed with publicly displaying sustainability credentials at the expense of focusing on the fundamentals of the business.
The most obvious manifestation of this is the public spat it has become embroiled in over the refusal to supply Ben & Jerry's ice cream in the West Bank. However, we think there are far more ludicrous examples which illustrate the problem.
A company which feels it has to define the purpose of Hellmann's mayonnaise has in our view clearly lost the plot. The Hellmann's brand has existed since 1913 so we would guess that by now consumers have figured out its purpose (spoiler alert — salads and sandwiches).
Although Unilever had by far the worst performance of our consumer staples stocks during the pandemic we continue to hold the shares because we think that its strong brands and distribution will triumph in the end.
Many observers have called out Terry over what appears to be his 'attack' on Unilever's penchant for sustainability. That interpretation is at once naive and scandalous. The quip on mayo makes for a good soundbite. But there's a lot more going on here.
A long-term investor like Terry knows the importance of staying in black when it comes to ESG. Penalties and taxes on corporations failing to meet such requirements (e.g., plastics in the EU and sugar in Latin America) are only going to go up with time. From that perspective, a focus on sustainability does pay, or, more accurately, save.
It's the lack of balance between purpose and profit that he calls out, quite clearly I must add, in his lament. It's not about the Mayo and should be read for what it is saying between the lines.
As he elaborates in his more acerbic follow-up from January 20, 2022, Unilever has been less than forthcoming to its shareholders on several matters over the past decade or so. These things tend to pile on with time.
You take that frustration, the frequency of Unilever's missteps, and the size of Terry's holding in the company and you start getting an accurate picture.
Unilever is a truly global business.
Its Daily Active User (DAU) count is 2.5 billion — that's over 30% of the world's population, spread in nearly 190 countries! This consumer pedigree, supported by a network of 25 million retailers worldwide (read: strong distribution), comes with a business that goes back to 1860 (read: resilience).
As of January 2022, Unilever has three verticals — Beauty & Personal Care, Home Care, and Food & Refreshment. Turnover stood a little less than 51 Million Euros in 2020. Of nearly 400 brands that Unilever currently owns, thirteen have sales of over a billion euros each.
These numbers scream scale. But that enormous scale can sometimes come with dis-economies and sluggishness that no amount of 'word mongering' on agility can thwart. And therein lie a lot of Unilever's woes. But first, let's take a quick look at the symptoms of what's going on at the company.
The table below shows how much an investment made in Unilever in November 2010 is worth today vis-à-vis investments in its competitors.
Value of a November 2010 Investment in Unilever, Today | Source
Here's an equally sad demonstration of Unilever's EPS since 2010.
Unilever's Nominal EPS Shows A Luke Warm Progress | Source: Unilever's Annual Reports
EPS has been sluggish, barring the outliers in 2017 and 2018 when buybacks and disposals triggered by the ill-fated Kraft Heinz bid propped it. It may go up in 2021 due to a share buyback worth €3 Billion in market value.
The same may turn out to be true for 2022, assuming the completion of CVC Capital's acquisition of Unilever's tea business. But the underlying performance leaves you wanting for consistent gains.
Now you might prefer to judge your "investments by what is happening in their financial statements than by the share price," à la serious investors like Terry Smith or Warren Buffet. But, like them, you know that ten years is a long time, long enough for the market performance to mirror managerial performance. The lowdown on the latter comes next.
Here's the return on capital employed by Unilever since 2010.
ROCE or EBIT per Euro of (Total Assets less Current Liabilities) | Source: Unilever's Annual Reports
If you hover over the annotations, you will find the drivers behind sudden jumps in the chart above. The underlying performance, however, raises concerns. Unilever now employs 1.3× more capital to earn what it earned back in 2010 on a nominal basis. And the Euro's value has eroded in the last decade.
Sluggish EPS and falling ROCE make for a bad marriage. But things get worse when you add a falling USG to that mix. See the chart below.
Unilever's Declining Sales Growth | Source: Unilever's Annual Reports
These figures help put Terry's recent acerbic attacks in perspective. After all, he characterized the first pillar of his investment strategy, "buy good companies," thus —
Consistently high returns on capital are one sign we look for when seeking companies to invest in. Another is a source of growth — high returns are not much use if the business is not able to grow and deploy more capital at these high rates.
As the numbers show, Unilever isn't doing well on either metric. The business remains grossly undervalued and suboptimal and has been so for a long time. That makes it a juicy target for activist investors. It wasn't a surprise when I learned about Trian's stake in Unilever in the middle of this analysis. Unilever has had a bull's eye on its back for a very long time.
There are three distinct themes to look at when forming a view on the underlying issues at Unilever —
Innovation or specifically the lack thereof
Organization or specifically structural bloat and insular culture
Direction or Unilever's strategy and its fit for growth
Issues in these themes may or may not exist, but optics may suggest otherwise to an outside observer. Remember that this is a vulnerability assessment. We will consider the first two themes in this post and relegate the third to a follow-up piece on The Strategist.
So what's going on and how to fix some of it? Let's ponder.
Unilever's R&D expenditure as a percentage of its turnover has declined consistently over the last decade. See chart below.
R&D Intensity at 3 of top 4 Global CPG Companies | Source: Annual Reports
While top competitors like P&G and Nestle are also in R&D hell, they still spend more on R&D than Unilever.
One could argue that R&D intensity is not necessarily a determinant of innovation (though there's enough literature out there suggesting otherwise). After all, a lack of innovation from its most prominent players mars the CPG industry despite the R&D spending (though I would still argue that a lower than critical R&D intensity is driving that).
The last time a category-building innovation came along in CPG was way back in 2012 when P&G launched Tide Pods. And please don't cite vegan meats and 'just add water' soaps and detergents as these are old ideas. Since then, most innovations have been claims-based (read: free from this and free from that) or ESG driven. These are areas that smaller companies, local brands, and upstarts increasingly dominate.
However, even with what Unilever spends, it hasn't built a market-leading brand of its own in a long time. As the graphic below shows, most Unilever brands (at least the most recognizable ones) were born before the turn of the century.
Most Recognizable Unilever Brands are Old | Source: Leverage Analysis
Of the brands that came after 2000, only two came up in-house — Love, Beauty & Planet (launched in 2018) and its sister brand Love, Home & Planet (2019). Rest are all acquisitions with an average brand age of 14 years. These optics call into question Unilever's internal brand innovation and brand-building capabilities of late.
As for M&A, it is a legitimate route to growth. Unilever built its stable of brands on the back of acquisitions. Some of its oldest brands, e.g., Pears, Vaseline, Pond's, Wall's, and Hellman's, were acquired. But without a penchant for groundbreaking innovation in-house, even groundbreaking acquisitions will falter sooner or later—more on Unilever's M&A activity in our follow-up post.
To be clear, aging brands aren't necessarily a source of concern.
Alan Jope correctly called Unilever's 'portfolio of leading category and brand position' one of its differentiating strengths in his presentation to investors last year. 81% of Unilever brands were #1 or #2 in their respective markets in FY2020. 50% of Unilever's turnover came from its thirteen billion-euro brands, of which Magnum is the youngest. It came along in 1988/89.
Many of these brands have seen enormous odds — world war(s), the Great Depression, the Cold War, the Great Inflation, the Internet, and the GFC — and survived. Some date back to the Long Depression of 1873—1896! There's resilience here; people tend to fall back to old established brands in times of great uncertainty.
But brand age can also make for complacency, sacred cows, war stories, and sluggishness. Even more dangerous are consumers' apathy and stereotyping. Innovation and reinvention are crucial to survive and prosper, but it's challenging to reinvent and stay relevant.
You may disagree, but there's a reason why P&G decided in recent years to shed 105 brands to focus on 65 profitable ones (of which 22 are billion-dollar bands). Or why only 13 of Unilever's 400 brands have billion euro sales, the youngest of which is 34 years old.
And the whole argument around CPG brands requiring long years to grow makes no sense. That would mean the €16 billion M&A capital Unilever deployed between 2015 and 2020 will payoff in 2030?
New brands that work are nimble, unafraid to experiment with their image. They can be infectious in infusing their energy and concepts in older ones (that's one reason why many CPG companies try to grow via M&A).
Such brands are often small, local, and digital natives. That gives them degrees of freedom (and consumer proximity) not available to old, large brands locked in their established brand image. That's the combination gaining traction across the strategic CPG markets.
Consider China, for example, where insurgent brands contributed 40% of the CPG growth between 2019 and 2021. Moreover, the local insurgents have made inroads into organic growth.
The Rise of Insurgent Local Brands in China
In the US, small (< $150 million in revenue) and medium (< $750 million in revenue) brands contributed 45% sales growth in CPG between 2016 and 2020. See chart below.
The Rise of Small and Mid-sized CPG Brands in the US
Even for large CPG companies, 'all of their organic volume growth and almost 90 percent of their overall value growth came from small and medium-sized brands.'
New, Small, Local is also the mantra in India, where 2020 and 2021 have been transformative in terms of consumer behavior. See, for example, #1 and #2.
I chose China, India, and the US because one of Unilever's five strategic choices is to 'accelerate in USA, India, China and key growth markets.' But other markets are likely seeing a similar surge (here's an example).
What does this mean for Unilever?
Here are some considerations for Unilever —
Stop cutting down on R&D intensity (and no the answer isn't supplementing internal research with external partners — that's admirable and should be done but that's not the solution)
Separate Research (on new products) from Development (of iterative improvements). Monitor the spend on each and check disproportionate Development spend.
Test new ideas with new(er) Brands and infuse successful ones into older propositions. Subject the ideas to a different set of KPIs. The answer isn't in 'x-year' paybacks but in number of prototypes tested; ideas killed; or brands/products launched/tinkered with.
50% of the turnover comes from 387 small and mid-sized brands with average revenue €65 million. That's a strength. Identify hero brands that could suit the New, Small, and Local mantra from among that crop. Cross-pollinate brands geographically. E.g., no one knows Conimex in India but they care about spices in that country.
In order to utilize existing small brands, stop divesting viable businesses instead of fixing them.
Look inside. Love, Beauty & Planet is a wonderful case study in how a new brand can originate with passionate intrapreneurs. Other examples of lightening fast idea-to-launch exist. Why not build on them?
Unilever foundry — $50M invested is laughable. That's 0.1% of the company's annual turnover invested over how many years? Set targets for investments and geographies that aren't silly. The same goes for Unilever Ventures.
Review the innovation process — there's a definite resource allocation issue. But is organization structure also stifling innovation and brand building? Is it discouraging external partners from bringing ideas to Unilever? How will the new structure ensure faster innovation?
Ultimately, organization structure will be crucial to the success of any initiative — innovation or otherwise. The current setup leaves enough by way of a target for activists like Peltz. Let's take a look.
In its January 25 press release, Unilever announced a simplification of its organization.
The company will move away from its current matrix structure and will be organised around five distinct Business Groups: Beauty & Wellbeing, Personal Care, Home Care, Nutrition, and Ice Cream. Each Business Group will be fully responsible and accountable for their strategy, growth, and profit delivery globally.
To enable Unilever to benefit from its scale and global capabilities, the five Business Groups will be supported by Unilever Business Operations, which will provide the technology, systems, and processes to drive operational excellence across the business. A lean Unilever Corporate Centre will continue to set Unilever's overall strategy.
Reginaldo Ecclissato, Chief Supply Chain Officer, will lead the Supply Chain and Unilever Business Operations as Chief Business Operations Officer.
The reorganization is looking a lot like P&G's with its Sector Business Units (five SBUs as of 2021) supported by Global Business Services (GBS) and "a very small corporate group with best-in-class functional expertise." It's a conglomerate without separate listings on the stock exchange (that may come later). Unilever says the reorganization will cull about 1,500 management roles worldwide.
I assume that the Performance Management Units (PMUs) proposed under the geographical reorganization in 2019—2020 (see page 40) will go hand in hand with the new Business Groups. Again, much like P&G's Market Operations or the Lafley-era Market Development Organizations. The earlier reorganization is consistent with Unilever's retreat from Aggregation (and its continued emphasis on Adaptation) — moving from eight clusters to fifteen PMUs for local focus.
Here are my observations on the latest reshuffle —
The reorganization panders to Nelson Peltz. Alan Jope said that the "new organisational model has been developed over the last year", but really it smells like they cooked it after July or August 2021.
The split from three divisions to five Business Groups is in line with Unilever's retreat from Aggregation as a lever of global strategy since 2012.
Giving global strategy and P&L responsibilities to the Business Groups prepares the company for future spin-offs and disposals — e.g., Foods business (now called Nutrition)
Combining Supply Chain with newly created Unilever Business Operations opens the company to Arbitrage opportunities beyond IT , Payroll, and facilities management. I wouldn't be surprised to see a Nike – Apollo like setup in certain geographies in the future.
The reorganization is an acknowledgement of a bloated management — role reduction represents 15% senior management and 5% junior management roles.
There's more headroom for right sizing Unilever than the press release lets on. More on that in a bit. Let's dive into some questions on simplification.
The questions below are relevant as the details on the new structure are scant.
How will the Business Groups interact with the PMUs? Will they get control of regional and local sales and marketing organizations and other non-arbitrage functions?
Will the regional leaders get control and responsibility of the geographical P&L so that those with consumer- and customer- proximity are responsible for growth and profit?
What degrees of freedom will the regional leaders have over the shared services (i.e. Corporate Center and Unilever Business Operations) they need and want? Will they have control over corresponding cost allocations?
How will the new structure incentivize 'New, Small, and Local'? What will be the interplay between top-down plans and bottom-up initiatives?
What mechanisms will be put in place so that the different regions 'talk' with each other? Ditto for different Business Groups?
I am sure shareholders like Terry Smith and Nelson Peltz will have similar queries, and it's essential to answer them. Otherwise, it's more of the same where the buck doesn't stop anywhere, or it stops everywhere.
Next, we turn our attention to productivity at Unilever and right-sizing the company.
The chart below speaks for itself.
Turnover per Employee for Four CPG Majors
Nestlé and Kraft Heinz represent two extremes of productivity among Food companies — the two companies' product portfolios are different, as are their operating models.
Unilever is unique among these companies — its product portfolio is like Frankenstein's Monster, built from the other three. On a 2020 turnover basis, 62% of Unilever resembles P&G, while the balance looks like a portmanteau of Kraft Heinz and Nestlé.
The insight above gives us a way to identify the ideal range of employees. Assuming Unilever to be a patchwork quilt* built from P&G and Nestlé, we get an estimate of 116,583 employees.
*Take Unilever's combined turnover in Beauty & Personal Care and Home Care divisions and divide it by P&G's employee productivity. Do the same for Foods & Refreshment business with Nestlé's employee productivity.
Apply the same treatment assuming Unilever to be a combination of P&G and Kraft Heinz, and we get an estimate of 81,137 employees.
Unilever had 150,000 employees in 2020, representing an excess of 33,000 to 69,000 employees. The calculation ignores Unilever's exposure to emerging markets, where productivity and automation are lower than in developed markets where the other three companies have a more substantial presence. One also ignores product portfolio differences when accepting these estimates.
My argument is that there is headroom to optimize headcount despite these differences. These are big numbers.
Should Unilever pursue a pink slip policy to deal with the bloat?
It may have to IF the shareholder pressure is unbearable — which it may be in the coming months with Nelson Peltz showing up on the scene. If such eventuality becomes inevitable, Unilever can opt for solutions aligned with its credo. Some examples —
The Dutch Way
When the company downsized positions in The Netherlands in 2017, it fired complete teams and encouraged all those fired to reapply for the downsized teams anew.
Instead of picking people to cut, it chose to give everybody a chance to reapply for the new positions.
It is likely that the above is a legal requirement in the Netherlands (all sorts of feel good things happen in that country).
But it gives a template (albeit time consuming) for downsizing fairly elsewhere.
Network Effect
When Better.com CEO Vishal Garg fired 900 staff en masse over a Zoom call, several company employees activated their professional network to help those leaving find employment.
While that was a personal prerogative, Unilever can choose to set an example by building formal mechanisms to help those it asks to leave.
Such models are highly contextual and have had varying degrees of success. Disposal of assets often accompanies these models. Here are some examples —
Volume Aggregation
Making up for revenues lost to overestimated (and therefore underwhelming) growth by contract manufacturing for others.
It helps prevent idling of assets and the workforce in a manufacturing setup.
It can work well in cases of brand disposals where Unilever may continue to retain manufacturing capabilities
Unilever can also choose to support CPG startups in manufacturing while improving its output per employee
Clauses for Causes
Models like asset sell and leaseback where a contract condition involves the buyer retaining a proportion of the seller's workforce to service demand.
Models like discounted asset sale where a contract condition involves the buyer retaining a proportion of the seller's workforce.
Such models work well with disposing tangible (e.g., manufacturing units) as well as intangible (e.g., brands) assets
Unilever can also consider alternatives that involve training the employees otherwise marked for termination. With a clear growth strategy, the company can upskill the right employees and earmark them to sustain future growth instead of handing them exit letters.
Unfortunately, that approach requires breathing room that may no longer be available to the company. Despite the wake-up call in Feb 2017 from the Kraft Heinz bid, it remained gun shy, and that lethargy may come back to haunt Unilever.
Investments in upskilling and automation will be needed either way to improve productivity, whether by shrinkage, growth, or a combination thereof. Arbitrage by way of outsourcing locally or producing/servicing in low-cost regimes, by way of wages and cost of capital, will play a part.
Any future downsizing or productivity improvement will require combining these approaches and more. But will shareholders give the company the runway it might need to implement the best solution? That hinges on answers to two questions —
Does Unilever have a clear strategy for the future?
Will it have the trust of its shareholders?
We will return to these questions in the follow-up to this post, looking at the third theme on Direction. For now, let's take a look at insularity in Unilever's organization.
Organizational insularity takes on three distinct forms —
Shutting out Shareholders
Inbred Leadership
Internal Silos
Let's look at how Unilever fares on these three dimensions.
Allow me to recount some instances of the company going incommunicado with its investors or simply not reading the room with shareholders. Here we go —
The bid came out on February 17, 2017 and was withdrawn mere two days later. The entire episode unfolded over a weekend.
It valued Unilever at 24 times its earnings at the time and at an 18% premium to its share price (which is similar even today, painfully so) on February 16, 2017. There's a reason why Unilever shares climbed 13% when the bid was revealed.
True, the two companies remain fundamentally incompatible in terms of strategic priorities. The deal would have overleveraged the joint entity, raising questions about Unilever's credit-worthiness. But that's assuming Unilever would have accepted its terms 'as-is'.
May be it was a good deal, may be not. May be a better deal was possible, may be not. But good corporate governance suggests presenting shareholders with a choice and arming them with the knowledge to take an informed decision. Unfortunately that wasn't to be.
Unilever management didn't see it fit to consult the shareholders on the fundamentals of the bid or its underlying analysis. It didn't give a choice to the investors.
The legitimate questions that the bid raised about Unilever's operational performance remain answered. For e.g., the question of productivity which we looked at in the previous sections.
It took a shareholder revolt for Unilever to scrap its planned unification (from dual Anglo-Dutch structure) and move to Rotterdam back in 2018. The company has since unified into a single PLC and moved to London.
As you will see below, the company's Investor Relations team did reach out to some shareholders on the matter, albeit to seek help with other, protesting, shareholders.
Clearly that wasn't enough. Paul Polman, then the CEO, departed after a month and a half. And despite denials from the Board, the departure felt like the aftermath of the failed Dutch move.
Better consultations would have helped Unilever read the room with its significant shareholders and avoid a potential embarrassment. That was not to be. Unilever would repeat the missteps three years later with its GSK bid.
I will let Terry Smith elaborate this one. Here's an excerpt from a letter he wrote on January 20, 2022 —
"[...] the company did not even attempt to contact us for the first eight years we were shareholders. We have always assumed that one job of the investor relations team was to keep in touch with the largest shareholders and especially one with the characteristics of Fundsmith – a long term investor who has never sold a share. It wasn't as if the investor relations team didn't know about us. They managed to make contact easily enough when they were struggling with the attempted move to Holland. It is never a good start if the first time you hear from someone it's because they need a favour."
Terry's fund is now the 13th largest shareholder (10th largest by some accounts) in Unilever. I wonder if other investors have felt similarly cut-off (see next section). But it doesn't matter really. You just need to piss off one no-nonsense shareholder to project an image. Unilever seems to have done just that.
All of the above instances are from the Paul Polman era. Maybe things have changed under Alan Jope, as Terry Smith suggests. But he also adds that the management still has a ways to go.
He claims that Unilever consulted his team on the ill-fated GSK bid, unlike the Polman era. But some things haven't changed. Here's what Terry said about Unilever clarifying the fundamentals of the GSK bid —
"Instead we were faced with a statement that the bid worked based on financial metrics including the all-important return on capital. However, getting management to discuss what that number was, was like a dentist pulling a back tooth. This was all the more puzzling given that GSK is a listed company and the profits and cash flow of the Consumer division can be established from its segmental reporting. So investor communications may have become more frequent under the current executive team but there is still some way to go on openness in our view."
Let me close this section with another instance from the Alan Jope era.
Every two to three years, the Access to Nutrition Initiative releases its independent assessment of the nutritional performance of products marketed by the world's 25 most significant foods and beverages companies.
The 2021 assessment found that despite all the verbiage around SDGs and sustainability in Unilever's corporate filings, the company lags behind several competitors regarding the percentage of foods sales from healthier products. See chart below (Unilever is nineteenth from top).
Sales Weighted Proportion of Healthy Products Sold by Companies (excludes Beverages) | Source: ATNI
The leaderboard above uses the Health Star Rating system to compare the companies' offerings. By contrast, based on an internal metric, Unilever reported that 61 percent of its food and drink sales were from healthy products in 2020.
Now I haven't read the source report from ATNI cover to cover. Still, a cursory glance makes me uncomfortable with its methodology (e.g., different products, different geographical coverage of companies, et cetera).
But that didn't stop small institutional shareholders of Unilever like Castlefield, EQ Investors, and Polden Puckham Charitable Foundation from questioning Unilever's internal metric. They submitted a question to the Unilever board at the May 2021 AGM to develop a long-term plan to ensure Unilever derives most of its future sales from healthier products.
ESG activist ShareAction coordinated the collaboration among these investors. It's a benign ask and a genuine ask. However, ShareAction suggests that 'the company has not made any significant commitments or progress since.'
So this year, they coordinated with not three but eleven institutional investors (cumulative AUM worth $215 billion!). They added a hundred retail investors to that group for good measure. And that question is now a resolution that's likely to be voted on in this year's AGM.
A simplistic take suggests that the resolution may help Unilever double down on purpose in an apparent rebuke to Terry Smith. But as I said before, Terry's critique is not about purpose alone. What's more, the news of the resolution couldn't have come at a worse time than January 20, 2022, around the same time as the Fundsmith reprimand, the GSK folly, and the Trian stake. Optics!
Here's the coverage between the sources, long and short —
Unilever Faces New Attack From Investors Over Health Credentials | Bloomberg
Investors round on Unilever's 'health blind spot' in fresh wave of attacks | City A.M.
Unilever faces shareholder heat on health impacts | ShareAction
Constructive consultations last year would have helped the company in a time of rising regulations in a sector that represents ~40% of the business. Richard Williams, EVP Investor Relations, and his team have work to do for sure.
There's another dimension of cultural insularity wherein an organization promotes internally, forming an increasingly inbred leadership and lacking in diverse external experience.
Deep 'in-organization' experience isn't unheard of among CPG leaders, and it is not necessarily a liability. Indeed seasoned executives with long internal tenures bring experience to the table. But so do seasoned outsiders. Long tenures can indicate mutual loyalty between the company and the employee and nurturing culture. But it can also mean comfort zones and ennui.
An organization with a low proportion of external talent at the top is more likely to reject outsiders, ignore outside perspectives, and suppress new ways of thinking. The Einstellung effect, groupthink, island mentality are all corporate realities, and history is replete with companies that suffered decline due to inbred leadership.
Diversity of external experience at the top can revitalize companies by bringing in the necessary antidote. So, how diverse is Unilever's leadership? Let's consider the top brass.
The likely Unilever Leadership Executive (ULE) on April 01, 2022, will have an average (and continuous) Unilever experience of 22 years!
Average Unilever Experience in the Unilever Leadership Executive | Source: Leverage Analysis
That is, on April 01, 2022, an average ULE member would have been with the company since the turn of the century! That's a significant lack of experience, overall or recent, outside the company.
Of the thirteen executives (last supper comparisons will become inevitable) in the ULE, only five have ANY experience outside the company. I am discounting Sanjiv Mehta's work at Union Carbide before joining HUL in 1992.
Of these five, only four have been with the company for less than five years (see dark blue textboxes in the portrait above). Thankfully these four have significant external experience in CPG at P&G, Revlon, Colgate-Palmolive, and Consumer Healthcare divisions of GSK and Reckitt Benckiser. They will have an important role to play in the next several quarters.
The situation worsens with Unilever's Global Markets Executive (GME). GME is the collective leadership of its fifteen regional Performance Management Units (PMUs) and its international arm (Unilever International).
As of Q3 2021, an average member of the GME had been with Unilever continuously for at least 25 years!
Average Unilever Experience in the Unilever Global Markets Executive | Source: Leverage Analysis
Only three of sixteen regional leaders have been with Unilever for less than twenty years (see dark blue textboxes in the portrait above). These three leaders and two other executives with less than twenty-four years with Unilever bring experience from P&G, Coca-cola, Nestlé, Revlon, Chanel, and Colgate-Palmolive.
Has the lack of diverse external experience among the top brass been a factor at Unilever? Maybe, maybe not. But the optics of its leadership are suspect. External observers tend to look at such facts dimly when the going gets tough. Nelson Peltz made it a point to address a similar lack of outsiders at P&G during his 2017 proxy battle. I haven't even begun on the lack of gender diversity in the ULE and the GME.
The organization likely has significant external diversity at other levels of its hierarchy. For example, some very distinguished business leaders in Unilever's Supply Chain organization are rank outsiders. Victoria Cuthbert, the EVP of Beauty and Personal Care Supply Chain, is an example. So is Michelle Grose, the Global VP of Logistics and Fulfillment.
Please note that an outsider, Paul Polman, led Unilever between 2009 and 2019. So there's a history of some diversity at the top in the recent past.
In the coming days, it will be necessary for the company to highlight these external credentials and, more importantly, demonstrate a real commitment to accepting outside perspectives. More on that later.
The third dimension of insularity is when departments and functions in a company become silos instead of interconnected pockets of excellence. Your organization is breeding silos if —
important supply chain projects in strategic markets and product categories take over a year to develop BOSCARDS because the matrix honchos can't come to terms;
several vital restructuring/expansion projects in strategic markets and categories undergo redo because the local teams lacked the rigor but didn't want to use global capabilities;
analysts start and end their careers in your company doing the exact same project, with the exact same brief within a span of five years because nothing's changing;
local adaptation to brand takes forever because the global team overseeing it wouldn't want to tinker with the image but is happy to leave money (and sustainability) on the table;
common sense (and plastic reducing) efforts in packaging don't get traction with local teams because the idea wasn't 'invented there';
global teams have to gain backdoor access to information on project progress because local teams aren't interested in sharing details;
projects take forever because and require dirty escalation because interdepartmental trust is lacking;
I hope things have changed in the nine months since May 2021. Maybe the reorganization from January 25, 2022, will prove fit for the purpose.
Revitalize investor relations by putting in a proactive team that meets with crucial shareholders every quarter or two with or without an agenda. The investor relations strategy has to go beyond quarterly calls, AGMs, and CAGNY conferences.
Nurture champions from among the your largest and smallest stakeholders. Identify the detractors and hear them out. It's less chess and more counseling, both ways.
Do NOT ignore those who are in this for the long term.
Remake the board to bring in Directors who have skin in the game.
One way to do that is to set targets for external hiring at all levels of organization.
Other is to setup alliances with adjacent industries and non-competing peers to foster exchange, both short- and long-term, of professionals.
A third is to encourage business leaders to take sabbaticals to overhaul their thought process using science-based outbound programs.
Ah! So much has been said about this topic all over the world. Let me leave you with two generalizations (hard to comment on a black box otherwise) —
Align incentives with the behaviors you want in the organization.
KILL the matrix, for real. It's time may come in the next cycle but for now it must go. Make the reorganization matter.
A firm the size of Unilever — with more than 150,000 employees and sales of £42 billion a year – is more of an empire than a mere company. Inertia is a natural characteristic of such monoliths – and it is an enemy. It requires someone at the top to insist that this natural tendency to inertia be resisted.
That's The Guardian from February 2000. The Guardian mentions over 250,000 employees and sales of £27 billion a year in the original piece. I have changed the numbers (in bold) to reflect Unilever at the end of 2020.
It tells you how much Unilever has changed and, if the implications of the analysis in this post are correct, how much it hasn't. It is at once a statement of hope and despair. I will save the parallels for the follow-up to this post, where we will focus on the third theme of Unilever's vulnerability — its Direction or Strategy.
However, we have moved the needle in understanding the weak spots even without such considerations. There's enough here to stimulate some serious thinking before someone else does it for the company.
And there's enough to do, even if it is merely about projecting the appropriate strengths. Recent debacles, deep-seated issues, and Nelson Peltz suggest that Unilever must do more than project strength. Terry Smith aptly summarized it in his post mortem of Unilever's failed GSK bid —
We believe the Unilever management – or someone else if they don't want the job – should surely focus on getting the operating performance of the existing business to the level it should be before taking on any more challenges.
For now, I have nothing more to add.
Posted in DIVE IN, open, playbooks, players and tagged business, consumer goods, fmcg, hacking, investor, kraft heinz, management, nestle, shareholder, strategy, the strategist, unilever. Bookmark the permalink.
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American Moms One Year After Newtown: No More Silence About Gun Violence
As the events at Sandy Hook Elementary unfolded last year, I and the other mothers of America were given an ultimatum: Act now to reduce gun violence in America or sit by as these senseless tragedies continue to occur in our communities. We chose to act.
ByShannon Watts, Guest Writer
12/09/2013 10:54am EST | Updated February 8, 2014
Over the past year, I've introduced myself across the country again and again as an Indiana mom of five children who became an accidental activist on December 14, 2012. In just one year, what started out as a Facebook page put up the day after the tragic mass shooting in Newtown has become a national grassroots movement. Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America
Why has our movement been so successful? Because as the events at Sandy Hook Elementary unfolded last year, I and the other mothers of America were given an ultimatum: Act now to reduce gun violence in America or sit by as these senseless tragedies continue to occur in our communities. We chose to act.
And despite what some pundits may say, 2013 was a watershed year for the gun reform movement because it was the year American mothers finally stood up and said, "ENOUGH." Mothers have often been catalysts of social change in our nation, encouraging and fighting for changes to our laws on suffrage, segregation, children's rights, and drunk driving. Reducing gun violence by changing our culture, our laws, and American business policies is the next major movement for American mothers.
Since December, our moms have worked tirelessly to make our legislators and leaders listen to us. We have held hundreds of rallies and marches across the country and at our nation's Capitol. We've held stroller jams, hosted lemonade stands, and told Starbucks to get some gun sense. And -- because of our pressure -- Starbucks, a worldwide business icon, recently reversed its policy and declared that guns are no longer welcome inside their stores.
Despite the Senate's astonishing inability to pass background checks in April, we also had some major wins at the federal level. We endorsed and voted in candidates with gun sense, like Sens. Ed Markey and Cory Booker, and Rep. John Tierney. We pushed for and got a director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives -- the bureau had been without a director for seven years. And, in August, Sen. Reid promised our moms over a glass of lemonade that there would be another vote on background checks before the mid-term elections.
At the state level, we helped pass sweeping gun reform legislation in Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, and New York. We had smaller victories in California and New Jersey. And we blocked bad gun legislation from passing in Missouri. Looking at 2014, we are hopeful that we can push background checks through state legislatures in Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, and other states. And we will fight for new state laws that hold adults accountable for safe storage of their firearms -- currently only 20 states have such laws in place. We want to change the national nomenclature -- there is no such thing as an accidental shooting involving a child who has procured an adult's gun. Such shootings are criminal negligence, plain and simple, and they are shockingly common occurrences in America.
The bottom line is that moms will keep the pressure on until we change America's gun laws and culture. As accidental activists, and as moms, we now realize we have the power to make our communities wake up; we can take ourselves to the offices of our legislators and our local businesses and demand action. We can rally in the streets of our cities and make our voices heard.
And we will make our voices heard again on Sat., Dec. 14 -- the one-year anniversary of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary. Moms across the country will gather in communities from coast to coast at more than 50 events to ring bells in a moment of "No More Silence." Our events across nearly 40 states will honor all victims of gun violence, and show that American mothers will never again be silent about gun violence.
We didn't get to where we are overnight -- it has taken the gun lobby decades to lead us to the edge of this cliff. But we don't have to go over -- we don't have to fulfill the their prophecy of an America where everyone is armed, where our children wear bullet-proof backpacks to schools protected by shields, and where the good guys shoot it out with the bad guys over our kids' heads.
I've heard many of our members say that the Sandy Hook massacre was like a 9/11 for mothers. The murder of 26 innocent first graders and teachers was a wake-up call for mothers -- we now realize how lax our country's gun laws and policies are, and our eyes are open to the human toll of our national gun violence epidemic. I truly believe it's up to the mothers of America to pull our country back from the precipice, and to demand a safer future for our children. The bell cannot be unrung.
newtownnewtown-elementary-school-shootingGun ControlParentsGun Violence
Shannon Watts, Guest Writer
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