Products, Services, Platforms, and Solutions: What’s the Difference?

Navigating the modern business environment requires a sharp understanding of the fundamental building blocks of your offerings. While the terms products, services, platforms, and solutions are often used interchangeably, each possesses distinct characteristics and strategic implications that can impact product development, market positioning, and business growth.

In this 45-minute webinar, Aidan Dunphy will explore these core concepts, offering a clear and practical framework to differentiate between them. He will delve into the defining features of tangible and intangible products, the value-driven nature of services, the enabling power of platforms and their network effects, and the integrated approach of solutions designed to solve complex customer challenges.

Discussion points:

• Know your offering: clearly differentiate products, services, platforms, and solutions. Understand the importance of product taxonomy.
• Strategic advantage: leverage each model's unique strengths for growth and customer value.
• Optimize for impact: apply these distinctions to improve strategy, go-to-market, and decision-making.

Date and time:

Wednesday 23 July 2025: 12:00 UK / 13:00 CEST / 07:00 EDT / 04:00 PDT

About our speaker:

Aidan has more than 25 years’ experience of product management in software businesses including ERP, data quality, digital transformation, and app development. He has worked with more than fifty tech start-ups.

His previous senior roles include Principal Consultant, Head of Product Strategy, Chief Product Officer and Chief Commercial Officer. As a board advisor and investor in SME and start-up tech businesses, Aidan helps to understand motives, balance priorities and to gain an agile mindset, always with a forensic mindset. Aidan holds a B.Sc. (Hons) Mathematics and an Executive MBA.