PRODUCT STRATEGY FOR CONNECTED PRODUCTS AND DIGITAL-FIRST BUSINESSES

Deciding what is worth building — and shaping the product direction.

I help companies turn business challenges, emerging technologies and early-stage ideas into focused strategies, prioritised portfolios and viable connected and digital product concepts. My execution and cross-functional leadership experience helps ensure those strategies are ambitious, but realistic enough to move forward.

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The problems I solve

When hardware, software and services meet, ambiguity becomes expensive.

Most connected product organisations are not short of ideas or engineering capability. They are short of clarity about what they are building, for whom, and who decides.

Strategy that stops at the slide deck

A compelling vision exists, but it has never been translated into a portfolio, roadmap and set of decisions teams can act on.

Hardware and software out of step

Long hardware cycles and iterative software delivery collide, and dependencies surface far too late to manage calmly.

Unclear ownership across the product

Device, platform, app and service teams each own a fragment. Nobody is accountable for the experience as a whole.

An operating model that fights the work

Rituals, governance and reporting were designed for a smaller or simpler product, and now slow every decision down.

Product leaders without leverage

Capable leaders are pulled into delivery firefighting and have little time or mandate for strategic work.

Primary services

Deciding what is worth building — and shaping the product direction.

My core work is strategic: clarifying where the opportunity is, which bets deserve investment, and what the product should become.

For executives and founders

Business & Innovation Strategy

Where the business should play next: opportunity spaces, innovation direction and the logic behind the bets you make.

Opportunity and market framing
Innovation and growth direction
Business model and value logic

For product and portfolio leaders

Portfolio Strategy & Prioritisation

A coherent portfolio with explicit trade-offs, so investment goes to the initiatives that actually matter.

Portfolio structure and logic
Prioritisation and trade-off frameworks
Sequencing and investment focus

For connected product teams

IoT & Digital Product Design

Product concepts for connected hardware, IoT and digital services, designed against real technical and market constraints.

Connected product and IoT concepts
Value proposition and product definition
System, service and data design

Secondary services

From concept to coordinated action

Once the strategic direction is clear, I can support the transition into execution—translating the concept into a roadmap, aligning cross-functional stakeholders, clarifying ownership, and helping teams make the decisions required to move forward.

Strategy-to-Execution Support

I translate the selected strategy or product concept into an actionable roadmap, clear requirements, decision points, and an implementation-ready scope.

Typical outputs

Strategic and product roadmap
MVP implementation scope
Business-level requirements
Decision gates and milestones
Partner and supplier scope
Implementation brief

Cross-Functional Product Leadership

I help business, product, hardware, software, operations, and commercial teams align around a shared product direction and move from fragmented perspectives to coordinated action.

Typical support

Strategic workstream leadership
Stakeholder alignment
Ownership and decision clarification
Cross-functional workshops
Product governance
Leadership without formal authority

How I work

Explore → Frame → Design → Decide → Mobilise

Four strategic stages that establish what is worth building, plus an optional fifth stage when you want support moving into implementation.

01
Explore
Understand the market context, the technology, the constraints and the opportunity spaces actually open to you.
02
Frame
Sharpen the problem, the strategic intent and the criteria against which options will be judged.
03
Design
Shape concrete business, portfolio and product options — including connected product and service concepts.
04
Decide
Make the trade-offs explicit and commit to a direction, with the reasoning documented for the organisation.
05
Mobilise
Secondary services
Translate the selected direction into a roadmap, align the required functions, clarify ownership and decisions, and prepare the organisation for implementation.

Insights

Recent thinking on strategy, execution and leadership.

All insights

I have spent my career where product ambition meets technical reality.

I work with companies building connected hardware, IoT, smart-energy and digital-service products — the kind of products where a strategy is only as good as the organisation's ability to execute it.

My work moves between the executive level, where strategy and portfolio decisions are made, and the team level, where those decisions either hold or fall apart. That combination is deliberate: clarity has to survive contact with delivery.

I also coach individual product professionals stepping into strategic leadership, because most product organisations are limited by leadership capability long before they are limited by process.

Credibility

How I work with clients and audiences.

Advisory & consulting: Executive advisory and product strategy engagements
Workshops: Facilitated strategy, portfolio and business-model sessions
Coaching: One-to-one and cohort coaching for product leaders
Speaking: Talks on connected product strategy and product leadership

Work with me

Tell me about the product problem you are trying to solve.

If you are working through strategy, ownership or execution questions in a complex connected product, a short conversation is usually enough to see whether I can help.

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