Ian Peterman argues product development is an investment, not a cost. The difference matters: a cost mindset treats spending as loss and breeds stress, while an investment mindset means building the right team and planning strategically for returns.
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Hello, my name is Ian Peterman. I am CEO and founder of Peterman Design Firm, and today we're going to talk about whether product development is a cost or investment. This is a question that I've been asked before, and it's definitely been a topic that I wanted, I wanted to cover for a little while because a lot of people go into product development and all they see is cost. They see expense, they see costs, they see dollars going away, and they aren't looking at it like an investment. And it shouldn't be a cost. The whole point of doing product development is that it is an investment. You are putting money in and you should be getting a return on that investment, whether you put money, time, whatever your effort is, the whole goal is to produce something that is valuable. And by producing something valuable, it should return in as an investment, give you a return that is beneficial. So it should be— product development should be benefiting you and your customers. If it doesn't benefit both your customers and you, then, then it is not a good investment. Now, why is it an investment? It's an investment because it has the ability to give you a return. That is, you know, part of what an investment is. You put money in, you put time in, you put effort in, you put value in, and value is returned. So product development should be treated as such, should be treated as an investment and not just a cost. If it's a cost to you, then it's probably not a good time to the launch because it's— you're not viewing it as an investment and you're not going to treat it as an investment. And treating it as a cost doesn't put the right viewpoint into product development that you need in order to be successful. Now, last thing is, investments are not guarantees. There is no guarantee. There's no investment that can absolutely give you a guaranteed return. There's some really high potential returns. There's some investments that they have given returns for, you know, years, decades, and the chance of it not giving a return is very low, but there's no guarantee. And so you have to look at product development as As an investment with no guarantee, but as an investment that you can help shape and mold and put effort in and build the right team around and work with the right team or agency or individual people and give yourself a better chance at getting a return than just handing money off to someone else and hoping something happens. So viewing it not as a guarantee. Don't let go of it being a guarantee and allow it to be an investment that you can help shape and mold. And by doing so, will help you have a better product development process and end up with a better product. And hopefully it'll give you a little less stress than thinking of it as a cost. You know, a cost is just something that you spend and it doesn't give you something back necessarily. An investment, you should be looking at this to give you a return, and thinking of it that way will help you see how best to invest and how best to have that product go out into the world and benefit the most amount of people so that you can get the best return on your investment.
