Ideas that challenge how product companies compete

Most leadership teams don't lack a prioritisation process. They lack the willingness to commit — to say out loud, clearly, that some things on the list won't happen this year.

The strategy landed well. Leadership aligned. People left the offsite with energy. Six months later, almost nothing changed. The problem was never the strategy.

Most leadership teams aren't short of strategic ideas. What they lack is a clear answer to two harder questions: where should we compete — and why would we win there as the market shifts?

Run an innovation sprint. Smart people, solid process, genuine intent. The output looks almost identical to the last one. The frame is the problem, not the people.

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.

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.

Most leadership teams aren't unfocused. They have priorities, themes, and a clear sense of where they want to grow. The problem is that themes aren't focus.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.