“Productize” by Eisha Armstrong

Happy Friday!

I spend hours putting these takeaways together, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on making them better (and book suggestions too)

Just hit reply - I write back to everyone :)

And before we get into today's book, a quick thanks to our sponsor…

The author 🖋

Eisha Armstrong is a Harvard graduate and the CEO of Vecteris where she helps both startups and Fortune 500 companies with product innovation.

Her 25+ years of experience in senior product leadership positions at Gartner and other companies makes her one of the most sought after experts on productization.

Key takeaways 🎓

1. Shift to a product mindset

Armstrong emphasizes the need for companies to shift their culture from a service-based mindset to a product-based one.

Instead of just doing things for people, we need to think how to make things that people can use themselves.

This involves thinking about how to make services scalable and repeatable instead of highly customized one-offs.

2. Avoid common mistakes

Don't make the same mistakes that others have already made.

The book outlines the most common mistakes companies make when trying to productize their services and provides practical solutions to overcome these pitfalls, ensuring a smoother transition from services to products.

3. Test ideas inexpensively

Before spending a lot of time and money making a product, we need to make sure people want it.

Companies should conduct inexpensive tests to validate product ideas before heavy investments in development.

This allows us to validate demand and avoid committing significant resources to something that may never work.

Closing thoughts 🧠

The book provides a practical playbook for people and businesses to transform their unscalable services-based offerings into scalable product-based offerings.

Theoretically, by launching the book Armstrong is “walking her talk” - she has productized her services into something anyone can pick up and use in their own time.

Hope you also learned something cool!

- Monty

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