I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own. 

Author Yoel Frischoff shares the relationship between hardware and software and the ways AI is changing the game in the book “Tangibles.”

The Synopsis

Most connected products don’t fail because the technology breaks. They fail because the strategy does.

With a foreword by Sanjay Sarma — MIT professor of mechanical engineering and co-founder of the MIT Auto-ID Center, where the Electronic Product Code was developed.

A watch, a coffee maker, a tractor — the moment software lets a physical product keep learning after it ships, the business behind it changes. One-time sales become long relationships. Fixed feature sets become evolving systems. Margin defense becomes compounding advantage.

Yoel Frischoff calls these products tangibles, and this is the playbook for building them.

Drawing on 35 years in design, engineering, and product strategy, Tangibles walks the full life of a connected product — conceived, validated, launched, secured, regulated, monetized, and managed long after it reaches the customer. Across six arcs and twenty-five chapters, you’ll get:

Frameworks you can apply to your own product — the Lean Hardware Funnel, the Decoupled MVP, the Three Axes of Disruption, the Positioning Audit, and the seven-layer Tangible Stack.

The financial tools a hardware PM actually needs — contribution margin, cost of capital, and NPV, with worked examples.

Hard lessons from real companies — SharkNinja, Dyson, Swatch vs. Apple Watch, Rabbit and Humane, Nespresso, Tesla, iRobot, John Deere, and Oura.

A clear-eyed look at the new obligations connected products create — security across the whole attack surface, the global regulatory baseline, repairability, and data that turns from asset into liability.

It closes with the second watershed — AI — and the practitioner this book has been building toward: the tangibles product manager, who holds atoms and bits together across incompatible clocks and owns decisions that can’t be undone with a deploy.

Paired with a live companion site at tangibles-book.com, where the book’s frameworks run as interactive tools you can use on your own product.

For founders, product managers, and innovation leaders building hardware that has to compete in a software world.

THE REVIEW

This book was compelling and engaging. The author writes clearly and concisely, letting readers engage with the material while learning how software can extend a physical product’s lifespan. The insights and knowledge the author pairs with figures and case studies make this book feel balanced and thought-provoking, and keep the reader invested in the idea of tangibles overall.

One fascinating case the author uses early on that feels pertinent to this blog is e-readers. The way the author breaks down why Amazon was able to succeed with their e-readers versus companies like Sony and Barnes & Noble was astonishing, not only showcasing why these hardware products last as long as they do but also the specific software process that both legally and monetarily cornered the market on electronic book sales, and highlighting the author’s core thesis in the process.

THE VERDICT

Memorable, thought-provoking, and compelling, author Yosef Frischoff’s “Tangibles” is a must-read nonfiction book on technology and business. The insightful, honest, and engaging way the author writes, and the way the author is able to bring expertise and case studies to help build up this idea of tangibles, will resonate with readers and help drive forward the concept of making future products able to handle long-term software; it was incredible. If you haven’t yet, be sure to grab your copy today!

Rating: 10/10

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Yoel Frischoff is a product strategist and practitioner with more than 35 years of experience building durable goods and software systems across consumer electronics, professional equipment, medical devices, and security systems. Trained as an industrial designer, he began his career in 1991 in hands-on design and engineering roles before moving into technology management, entrepreneurship, and consulting.

As principal and smart-product strategist at TheRoad, the Tel Aviv consultancy he leads, Yoel helps hardware companies turn physical products into connected, software-driven businesses. His work spans product thesis, architecture, business models, unit economics, and go-to-market execution – the practical disciplines required to move from promising hardware to viable smart platforms.

That trajectory shapes *Tangibles: How Software Turns Hardware into Platforms*. The book grows out of decades of practice with companies facing the hard transition from durable goods to connected products: what to connect, where software should live, how the economics work, and how physical products become platforms customers continue to use after the first sale. He has helped bring more than ten connected products to market.

https://www.iotforall.com/community/writers/yoel-frischoff