How product management in medium-sized businesses brings clarity to the capital question Over the past few months, I've had many conversations with interim managing directors and CFOs in the mechanical engineering sector. The tone is remarkably similar. Capacity utilization isn't dramatically bad, but it's not good either. Orders are being postponed, and costs remain high. At some point, this sentence comes up: "We work hard. But where in the portfolio do we actually make our

1. Complexity eats up returns Each additional product or variant increases: Manufacturing and storage costs Forecasting effort and risk Training needs for sales and service Coordination effort across silos When margin targets are missed, the cause is often less due to "excessive costs" than to too many products with too little contribution. 2. Transformation requires focus products Transformation goals such as "more service," "more software," or "new business models" require

Innovation meets reality: Why a colored T-nut wins – and a $100 million AI system fails. Two LinkedIn posts, two innovations, one crucial lesson about Jobs-to-be-Done Prologue: Two posts that tell more than their hashtags suggest Two posts recently appeared in my LinkedIn feed that I immediately saved – not because of their reach, but because of their impact as a contrasting pair. (Disclaimer: I was not involved in either development; all information used for this comparison