Digital product passports – expanding what is your product

Your product will no longer be the same – after the introduction of digital product passports. Think of it for a while; the regulations talk about it being REQUIRED for products to be accompanied by a digital product passport to be allowed at all to be sold in the European Union.

In other words; data about the product will be as much a part of the product as the physical item itself. You will be as unable to sell your product without the digital product passport as you would be today to sell a car without wheels or safety belts.

You might compare it with not offering warranties or delivery services, but services like those may only be commercially necessary, not legally, depending on product category.

Once you've adopted the mindset of your product being a combination of physical and data, new perspectives open up: Which other kinds of data could be incorporated into your product? A couple of obvious ones are:

• Service records

• Transaction or ownership history

• Installation and maintenance manuals
  

We see similarities with when Apple introduced the concept of mobile apps. Initially, it was hard to imagine what could possibly be made into a commercially viable app...but take a look now at the plethora of apps available!

Which other kind of data or immaterial assets could be integrated into products do you think?

Which business opportunities might open up?

Where might your next business opportunity be hiding?

Image by imaginima on iStock