Ideas that challenge how product companies compete

The outside-in view makes it into the offsite. It makes it into the slides. It just doesn't make it through the planning cycle. Not because anyone disagrees with it, but because nobody owns it.

Your strategy deck says innovation is critical. Your bonus structure says efficiency is king. Innovation gets 45 minutes of discussion. Efficiency concerns kill it in 5.

Most companies agree that strategy should start with customers and markets. It gets said at the offsite. It appears in the slides. And then the planning cycle begins — with a financial target.

Senior engineers are retiring. Younger ones aren't replacing them. So leadership teams hire harder, raise compensation, sharpen the employer brand. It should work. But it doesn't.

Your sustainability agenda is probably busy right now. CSRD deadlines are closing in. Reporting structures are being built. Data gaps are being chased.

You know the pattern. A product you were certain would land… doesn't. A customer you thought was solid suddenly drifts. A competitor makes a move you should have seen coming.

When margins tighten, most leadership teams do something predictable: they add more. More initiatives. More strategic projects. More parallel transformations.

The moment is massive. Automation, AI, nearshoring - manufacturing's biggest opportunity in decades. Yet margins keep shrinking. The next advantage isn't what you make. It's how fast you learn.

Your distributor just launched a customer portal. Looks great. Except now they own the relationship you built. Manufacturers keeping direct customer access grow 2-3x faster.

Manufacturers spent many, many years mastering efficiency. The results? Impressive. Waste is down, productivity is up, product portfolios are leaner, development cycles are faster.