Chapter 1
Foundations of Product and Portfolio Management
Graduate Program in Brand Management
Product & Portfolio Management
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Graduate
Foundations of Product and Portfolio Management
Introduction
Product and portfolio management are central disciplines in contemporary brand-led organizations. They connect customer needs, market opportunities, organizational capabilities, commercial objectives, technology, and brand meaning. Although the term product is often used to describe a physical object, professional product management addresses a much broader set of market offerings: services, software, subscriptions, platforms, bundles, solutions, and experiences.
The discipline has become more important as markets have become faster, more digital, more regulated, and more interconnected. A product manager may be responsible for a single software feature, a consumer product line, a service ecosystem, or a portfolio containing multiple brands and business models. Effective management therefore requires conceptual precision. Confusing a product with a brand, a category with a product line, or a project with product management can produce poor decisions, duplicated investment, weak positioning, and fragmented customer experiences.
This chapter establishes the vocabulary and strategic foundations required for advanced study. It explains what products and related offerings are, distinguishes neighboring management disciplines, examines the product manager’s responsibilities, and shows how product management interfaces with marketing, branding, engineering, operations, finance, sales, service, and executive leadership.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, students should be able to:
Define and distinguish products, services, solutions, platforms, product lines, and portfolios.
Explain the difference between product, brand, category, project, and portfolio management.
Describe the strategic role and major responsibilities of product management.
Analyze the interfaces between product management and other organizational functions.
Apply product and portfolio concepts to a practical managerial situation.
Identify governance, ethical, technological, and organizational challenges affecting product decisions.
1. The Offering as a Unit of Value
A market offering is the organized combination of benefits, attributes, access mechanisms, supporting activities, and economic terms through which an organization creates value for a defined user or customer. It is not simply an object delivered to a buyer. Value emerges when the offering helps a customer accomplish a goal, solve a problem, reduce a cost, experience an emotion, or create a desired identity.
A useful conceptual expression is:
Customer value = Perceived benefits − Perceived sacrifices
Perceived benefits may include functional performance, convenience, status, enjoyment, risk reduction, and social or environmental benefits. Perceived sacrifices may include price, time, effort, learning costs, switching costs, privacy loss, uncertainty, and psychological risk. This is a conceptual relationship rather than a universally measurable accounting equation. The terms do not necessarily share a common physical unit, and managers should not assume that value can always be reduced to a precise numerical calculation.
Product management is concerned with improving this value proposition over time while maintaining organizational feasibility and economic viability. A strong offering must therefore satisfy at least three conditions:
Desirability: a meaningful customer or user problem is addressed.
Feasibility: the organization can produce, deliver, support, and govern the offering.
Viability: the offering can support strategic and financial objectives.
In regulated or socially sensitive contexts, a fourth condition is essential: responsibility. The offering should not create unacceptable harm, discrimination, deception, or unmanaged societal risk.
2. Core Definitions
2.1 Product
A product is a managed market offering designed to deliver a set of benefits to a target user or customer. It includes the core job or outcome, the tangible or digital components that enable that outcome, and the surrounding attributes required for adoption and continued use.
A product may be:
physical, such as a vehicle or packaged food;
digital, such as an application or online game;
hybrid, such as connected medical equipment;
continuously updated, such as cloud software; or
embedded in a broader service system.
A product is defined by the value it delivers, not merely by its material form. A banking application, for example, includes software, data, security controls, customer support, payment infrastructure, and the experience of completing financial tasks.
2.2 Service
A service is an activity, process, or performance that creates value for a customer, often through interaction rather than transfer of ownership. Services are commonly characterized by intangibility, variability, inseparability between production and consumption, and perishability of capacity. These characteristics are useful generalizations, not absolute laws.
Modern services frequently contain tangible and digital components. A hotel stay includes a physical room, booking technology, employee interactions, security, and the customer’s total experience. Service product management must therefore address processes, capacity, employee behavior, service recovery, and consistency across touchpoints.
2.3 Solution
A solution is an integrated combination of products, services, processes, expertise, and support designed to address a customer’s broader problem or desired outcome. Whereas a product may focus on a defined offering, a solution often coordinates several components across the customer’s operating environment.
For example, an enterprise cybersecurity solution may combine software, consulting, monitoring, training, incident response, and regulatory reporting. The customer may evaluate the supplier not by the performance of one component but by the reduction of organizational risk.
Solutions create coordination challenges. They require clear ownership of the total customer outcome, agreement on interfaces among components, and mechanisms for measuring performance at system level.
2.4 Platform
A platform is a foundational product, technology, infrastructure, or market arrangement that supports complementary offerings, participants, or transactions. The term has two related meanings.
A technological platform provides common capabilities on which other products or applications are built. An ecosystem or multisided platform connects distinct participant groups, such as buyers and sellers, drivers and passengers, or developers and users.
Platforms generate network effects when the value for one group changes as participation by another group changes. Network effects may be direct, as when users benefit from being connected to more users, or indirect, as when developers attract users and users attract developers. Network effects are not guaranteed: poor quality, congestion, privacy concerns, or abusive conduct may reduce platform value.
Platform management involves architecture, standards, governance, access rules, incentives, interoperability, trust, and the management of complementors. It is consequently broader than managing a single standalone product.
2.5 Product Line
A product line is a group of closely related products managed together because they serve similar needs, customers, technologies, channels, or strategic purposes. A product line may contain versions, models, sizes, feature tiers, or configurations.
For example, a laptop product line may include entry-level, professional, gaming, and premium models. Product-line decisions include assortment breadth, feature differentiation, pricing architecture, naming, retirement, and the prevention of unnecessary internal competition.
2.6 Portfolio
A portfolio is the coordinated set of products, product lines, services, brands, platforms, or strategic initiatives managed as a whole. Portfolio management addresses resource allocation, strategic fit, risk balance, growth, profitability, and the relationship among offerings.
A portfolio may contain:
core products that generate stable cash flow;
growth products in expanding markets;
experimental or emerging offerings;
enabling platforms and technologies; and
products scheduled for migration or retirement.
Portfolio logic is not identical to simply listing all offerings. It requires deliberate choices about investment and interaction. A portfolio can create value through shared capabilities, cross-selling, common data, brand credibility, or economies of scale. It can also destroy value through cannibalization, complexity, inconsistent positioning, and managerial overload.
Hierarchy from product components to portfolio
Figure: Hierarchy from product components to portfolio
Figure: Increasing scope from an individual offering to a coordinated portfolio.
Product management determines what is offered, for whom, how it should work, how it should evolve, and how it should create sustainable value. Brand management shapes the meanings, associations, identity, reputation, and distinctive market position attached to the offering or organization.
The disciplines overlap but are not interchangeable. Product decisions provide evidence for brand promises; brand strategy provides direction for product experience and differentiation. A brand may promise simplicity, for example, but a complicated product interface can contradict that promise. Conversely, a well-designed product without recognizable meaning may struggle to build preference or loyalty.
Product Management and Category Management
A category is a group of offerings perceived by customers or channel participants as substitutable or related. Category management examines demand, competition, assortment, shopper behavior, and the performance of a broader market category. It is especially important in retail and consumer goods.
Product management usually has direct responsibility for one offering or a defined group of offerings. Category management considers the total category, often from the perspective of a retailer or market system. A product manager asks, “How should our product win?” A category manager may ask, “How should the category grow, and what assortment best serves shoppers?”
Product Management and Project Management
A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique result, with defined objectives, resources, and a beginning and end. Project management coordinates scope, schedule, cost, risk, quality, and stakeholders to deliver that result.
A product has a lifecycle and may continue indefinitely. Product management is accountable for product value, direction, market fit, outcomes, and evolution. A project may build or change a product, but it is not the product itself. Several projects can contribute to one product, and one project can affect multiple products.
The distinction is essential. A project can be delivered on time and within budget while producing a product that customers do not want. Product management therefore evaluates whether the work is strategically and commercially worthwhile, not only whether execution is efficient.
Product Management and Portfolio Management
Product management optimizes the performance and direction of an individual product or product family. Portfolio management allocates attention and resources across multiple offerings. Portfolio decisions include funding, sequencing, risk exposure, strategic coherence, overlap, and retirement.
Portfolio governance should prevent local optimization. A product manager may reasonably seek more investment for a product, while portfolio leadership must compare that request with alternatives across the enterprise.
4. The Strategic Role of Product Management
Product management is often described as the “voice of the customer,” but this description is incomplete. Product managers must integrate multiple voices: customers, users, employees, regulators, commercial partners, engineers, finance leaders, and the organization’s strategic purpose.
The strategic role can be expressed through five connected responsibilities:
Opportunity selection: identifying important problems and attractive market spaces.
Value proposition design: defining the benefits, target users, differentiation, and reasons to believe.
Resource prioritization: deciding which opportunities deserve scarce organizational capacity.
Learning and adaptation: using evidence to revise assumptions and improve decisions.
Product managers do not always have formal authority over every function involved in delivery. Their effectiveness depends on influence, evidence, negotiation, communication, and decision clarity. They are often integrators rather than command-and-control executives.
5. Product Management Across the Lifecycle
A product lifecycle is not a perfectly predictable sequence, but it provides a useful organizing framework.
Discovery and Opportunity Framing
Discovery investigates customer problems, unmet needs, market structure, competitive alternatives, technological possibilities, and organizational capabilities. It should distinguish between what customers say, what they do, and what evidence demonstrates.
A problem statement should specify the affected user, context, difficulty, consequences, and desired outcome. A solution should not be assumed before the problem is adequately understood.
Definition and Design
The product concept converts an opportunity into a coherent proposition. Decisions include target segment, core job, minimum viable capability, experience principles, business model, channel, service model, and brand relationship.
A minimum viable product is not necessarily a low-quality product. It is the smallest responsibly deliverable configuration that can test important assumptions and provide meaningful value. In regulated or safety-critical contexts, “minimum” cannot mean omitting essential safeguards.
Development and Validation
Development translates product intent into an operational offering. Product managers clarify requirements, resolve trade-offs, define acceptance criteria, and coordinate validation. Validation may involve usability research, prototypes, pilots, technical testing, pricing research, or controlled market experiments.
Launch and Adoption
Launch includes readiness of supply, distribution, communication, sales enablement, onboarding, support, measurement, and governance. A launch is not merely a promotional event. It is the beginning of a learning and adoption process.
Growth, Optimization, and Renewal
After launch, product managers monitor adoption, retention, satisfaction, reliability, economics, complaints, and competitive response. Improvements may involve new features, packaging, pricing, service design, partnerships, or repositioning.
Retirement and Migration
Retirement decisions should consider customer dependency, contractual commitments, safety, data portability, replacement options, employee effects, environmental impact, and brand trust. A product should not be withdrawn solely because it is no longer fashionable if customers remain dependent on it without an adequate transition path.
6. Cross-Functional Interfaces
Product management operates at the intersection of several functions. The exact structure varies by organization, but the interfaces below are broadly significant.
Function
Primary contribution
Typical product-management interface
Brand and marketing
Meaning, positioning, demand creation, communication
Translate product truth into credible promise and experience
Align proposition, packaging, incentives, and enablement
Customer service
Adoption support, complaints, recovery, retention
Convert frontline evidence into product improvement
Finance
Economics, investment analysis, controls
Evaluate contribution, cash needs, and resource trade-offs
Legal, risk, and compliance
Rights, safety, privacy, regulation, contracts
Identify constraints and design responsible safeguards
Human resources
Capability, incentives, organizational design
Support skills and decision rights
The most common failure is not lack of functional expertise but poor integration. For example, marketing may communicate a feature before operations can support it, or engineering may optimize technical performance without resolving the customer problem. Cross-functional governance should clarify who recommends, who decides, who executes, and who must be consulted.
7. Portfolio Logic and Strategic Choices
Portfolio management requires explicit criteria. Common criteria include strategic fit, customer value, market attractiveness, competitive advantage, financial potential, capability requirements, risk, sustainability, and interdependence with other offerings.
A portfolio review may classify offerings by role rather than by age alone:
Defend: protect a profitable and strategically important position.
Grow: invest to expand adoption, share, or customer value.
Transform: reposition or redesign in response to structural change.
Experiment: test uncertain opportunities with bounded investment.
Harvest: maintain while extracting remaining value.
Retire: withdraw responsibly and reallocate resources.
These categories are managerial choices, not universal laws. A product with modest short-term profit may be strategically essential because it provides data, ecosystem access, or credibility. Conversely, a profitable offering may be harmful to the portfolio if it creates regulatory exposure or prevents migration to a more sustainable model.
Portfolio complexity should be actively managed. Complexity costs may arise from too many variants, duplicated technologies, inconsistent pricing, separate service processes, and excessive internal coordination. Variety is valuable when it serves distinct needs; it is wasteful when it merely reflects internal politics.
8. Metrics and Evidence
Product decisions should combine quantitative and qualitative evidence. Useful measures include adoption, activation, usage frequency, retention, churn, customer effort, satisfaction, complaint rates, reliability, conversion, contribution margin, and time to value.
No single metric represents product success. A product can have high usage but poor profitability, high sales but low retention, or high satisfaction among a narrow group but little strategic relevance. Metrics must be interpreted in relation to the product’s objective and lifecycle stage.
For example, a simple retention rate over a defined period can be expressed as:
Retention rate = (Customers at end of period − New customers acquired during period) ÷ Customers at start of period × 100%
Here, all customer counts must refer to the same defined population and period. The formula assumes that customers acquired during the period are separately identifiable. If customers can reactivate, transfer between segments, or be counted under changing definitions, the measure requires additional methodological controls.
Evidence also includes judgment. Historical data may be unavailable for a new product, and observed behavior may reflect a poorly designed experience rather than low underlying demand. Product managers should make assumptions explicit, state confidence levels, and design learning activities that can change the decision.
9. Ethical, Governance, and Regulatory Considerations
Product decisions distribute benefits and risks. Ethical product management therefore extends beyond legal compliance. Important questions include:
Who may be excluded or disadvantaged by the product?
Are claims truthful, comprehensible, and supported by evidence?
Is consent meaningful, especially when data is collected?
Can users understand important risks and choices?
Are accessibility needs included in design and testing?
Does the product encourage harmful dependence or manipulation?
Can the organization monitor unintended consequences?
Data-intensive and AI-enabled products create additional responsibilities. Product teams should define legitimate purposes for data use, minimize unnecessary collection, protect sensitive information, test for discriminatory outcomes, document model limitations, and provide appropriate human oversight. An AI feature should not be treated as automatically valuable merely because it is technically possible.
Governance should specify decision rights, escalation paths, review gates, documentation standards, incident response, and post-launch monitoring. In highly regulated fields, compliance should be integrated from discovery rather than added immediately before launch.
10. Contemporary Developments
Several developments are reshaping product and portfolio management:
Subscription and outcome models: Organizations increasingly sell access, usage, or results rather than one-time ownership.
Ecosystem competition: Value is often created through networks of partners and complements.
Continuous delivery: Digital products may evolve through frequent releases rather than periodic versions.
Sustainability and circularity: Product decisions increasingly address repair, reuse, material efficiency, emissions, and end-of-life responsibility.
Personalization: Data and analytics enable tailored experiences but increase privacy and fairness obligations.
Servitization: Manufacturers add services, monitoring, financing, and support to physical products.
Portfolio convergence: Boundaries among products, services, media, software, and platforms are becoming less distinct.
These developments do not eliminate foundational principles. They increase the need for clear ownership, disciplined prioritization, customer understanding, lifecycle thinking, and responsible governance.
Aurora Mobility, a fictional mid-sized manufacturer, sells commuter bicycles through retailers. Its original portfolio contains three conventional models: City, Sport, and Touring. The company’s brand is associated with reliability and practical urban mobility. Competitors increasingly offer connected bicycles with theft tracking, navigation, maintenance alerts, and subscription services.
Problem
Aurora’s executive team proposes launching a connected premium bicycle immediately. Engineering favors integrating extensive sensors, marketing favors a highly visible technology story, and retailers worry that subscriptions will confuse customers. The portfolio already contains overlapping models, and service staff lack digital-support capabilities.
Analysis
Product management conducts customer interviews, retailer workshops, field observation, technical assessment, and portfolio analysis. The evidence suggests that customers value theft recovery and maintenance alerts more consistently than entertainment features. A large technology bundle would raise price and operational complexity. The analysis also identifies a brand risk: an unreliable digital service would contradict Aurora’s reliability position.
At portfolio level, the team maps four choices:
Upgrade all existing bicycles, creating cost and complexity.
Launch one connected model as a premium experiment.
Create a modular connected platform usable across selected models.
Acquire a technology supplier and outsource most service responsibility.
The third option offers long-term leverage but requires architectural investment. The second option provides faster learning but risks creating an isolated product. The team recommends a staged approach: launch one connected model using a modular platform, while designing interfaces that could later support other models.
Approach and Solution
The product manager defines the initial proposition as “reliable connected protection and care for urban commuters.” The minimum responsible scope includes theft alerts, location sharing with explicit consent, battery monitoring, maintenance reminders, accessible privacy controls, and human customer support. Entertainment features are excluded.
Brand management develops communication around confidence and practical mobility rather than technological novelty. Engineering defines reliability and cybersecurity requirements. Operations establishes battery and replacement processes. Legal reviews data consent and location retention. Sales receives a clear explanation of the subscription and a non-digital alternative for customers who do not want connected services.
A pilot is conducted in two cities. Success is assessed using adoption, activation, support burden, alert reliability, renewal intent, customer trust, and contribution economics—not merely first-month sales.
Outcome
The pilot reveals strong interest in theft recovery but low use of navigation. Several customers misunderstand location-sharing permissions, leading to redesigned onboarding and clearer controls. Support costs are initially higher than forecast, but the modular architecture reduces later development cost. Aurora postpones a broad rollout until service reliability and privacy communication improve.
Learning Points
Product strategy must connect customer value with brand credibility.
Portfolio decisions should consider platforms and capabilities, not only individual launches.
A minimum viable product must still include essential safety, privacy, and support features.
Product management integrates evidence from customers, technology, operations, finance, and law.
Early pilots are valuable when they test explicit assumptions and allow decisions to change.
Challenges and Limitations
Product management frameworks can create false confidence if treated mechanically. Market categories are socially constructed and may change rapidly. Customer research can overrepresent vocal users. Metrics can reward short-term behavior at the expense of long-term trust. Portfolio matrices may simplify uncertainty and conceal political judgments about resource allocation.
Organizational structure also matters. A product manager with unclear authority may become a coordinator without decision power. Excessive centralization may slow local learning, while excessive autonomy may fragment the brand and technology base. Effective organizations therefore adapt governance to product complexity, risk, and strategic importance.
Finally, not every customer problem should be solved by a new product. Sometimes the appropriate response is a process change, policy intervention, service improvement, education, or deliberate decision not to enter a market. Professional product management includes the discipline to reject attractive but weakly supported ideas.
Chapter Summary
Products are managed market offerings that create value through benefits, experiences, access, and supporting systems. Services emphasize activities and interactions; solutions integrate multiple components around a broader customer outcome; platforms provide foundations or connect participants; product lines contain related offerings; and portfolios coordinate multiple offerings and investments.
Product management differs from brand, category, project, and portfolio management, although the disciplines must collaborate. Product management integrates customer understanding, opportunity selection, proposition design, prioritization, development, launch, lifecycle stewardship, measurement, and learning. Its strategic role is to balance desirability, feasibility, viability, and responsibility.
Cross-functional interfaces are fundamental. Product managers work with brand, research, design, engineering, operations, sales, service, finance, legal, risk, and leadership. Portfolio management extends the view from one product to resource allocation, strategic fit, risk, complexity, and responsible retirement. Contemporary practice increasingly involves platforms, subscriptions, ecosystems, data, AI, sustainability, and continuous delivery, but these developments reinforce rather than replace the foundational need for clear value and disciplined governance.
Key Terms
Product: A managed market offering designed to deliver benefits to a target user or customer.
Service: An activity, process, or performance that creates value through interaction or delivery.
Solution: An integrated combination of products, services, expertise, and support addressing a broader customer outcome.
Platform: A foundation or arrangement that supports complementary offerings, participants, or transactions.
Product line: A group of closely related products managed together.
Portfolio: A coordinated set of products, services, brands, platforms, or initiatives.
Product management: The discipline of guiding product value, direction, development, and lifecycle performance.
Brand management: The management of identity, meaning, associations, reputation, and market position.
Category management: The management of a broader group of substitutable or related offerings.
Project management: The temporary coordination of work to deliver a defined result.
Value proposition: The stated combination of customer benefits, target users, differentiation, and supporting reasons to believe.
Lifecycle: The evolving stages through which an offering is discovered, developed, launched, managed, and retired.
Minimum viable product: The smallest responsibly deliverable configuration that tests important assumptions while providing meaningful value.
Network effect: A change in an offering’s value resulting from changes in participation by users or participant groups.
Product-market fit: The condition in which an offering addresses a meaningful need strongly enough to achieve sustained market adoption.
Cannibalization: The reduction of one offering’s demand or value caused by another offering in the same organization.
Technical debt: The future cost created by expedient technical choices that increase complexity or reduce maintainability.
Servitization: The addition or transformation of services around a physical product or manufacturing business.
Portfolio complexity: The cost and difficulty created by excessive variety, duplication, or interdependence among offerings.
Review Questions
Short Answer Questions
What is meant by a product as a managed market offering?
Distinguish a product line from a portfolio.
What are the three commonly used conditions for a viable offering?
How does product management differ from project management?
Why must product managers work across organizational functions?
Long Answer Questions
Explain the differences among products, services, solutions, and platforms, using examples.
Compare product management with brand management and category management.
Describe the major responsibilities of product management across the product lifecycle.
Explain how portfolio management can create value while also introducing complexity.
Discuss the ethical and governance responsibilities of product managers in data-intensive products.
Analytical / Application Questions
A firm has eight products with overlapping features and inconsistent pricing. Develop a portfolio review approach and identify the evidence required for investment, consolidation, or retirement decisions.
A company wants to add an AI assistant to an established service. Analyze the desirability, feasibility, viability, and responsibility questions that should be answered before launch.
Using the Aurora Mobility case, evaluate whether a staged platform strategy is preferable to immediately upgrading the entire product portfolio. State the assumptions behind your recommendation.
Multiple Choice Questions with Answers
Question 1
Which statement best defines a product in product management?
A. A physical object transferred to a buyer
B. A managed market offering designed to deliver benefits to a target user or customer
C. A temporary project with a fixed completion date
D. A brand name used in advertising
Correct Answer: B. A managed market offering designed to deliver benefits to a target user or customer
Question 2
What distinguishes a solution from a standalone product?
A. A solution must be entirely digital
B. A solution is always sold through a subscription
C. A solution integrates products, services, expertise, or support around a broader customer outcome
D. A solution cannot include physical components
Correct Answer: C. A solution integrates products, services, expertise, or support around a broader customer outcome
Question 3
Which activity is most characteristic of portfolio management?
A. Writing interface requirements for one feature
B. Allocating resources across multiple offerings according to strategic fit and risk
C. Designing a logo for a product
D. Scheduling one development team’s daily tasks
Correct Answer: B. Allocating resources across multiple offerings according to strategic fit and risk
Question 4
A project can be completed on time and within budget but still fail commercially because:
A. Project management never involves deadlines
B. A delivered result may not solve a meaningful customer problem
C. Products do not have lifecycles
D. Engineering cannot contribute to product work
Correct Answer: B. A delivered result may not solve a meaningful customer problem
Question 5
Which discipline primarily manages brand meaning, associations, reputation, and market position?
A. Brand management
B. Project management
C. Operations management
D. Category procurement
Correct Answer: A. Brand management
Question 6
Which is an example of an indirect network effect?
A. A user benefits from a larger number of users on the same messaging service
B. Developers attract users to an application platform, while users attract developers
C. A product becomes cheaper because its packaging is smaller
D. A service employee becomes more experienced over time
Correct Answer: B. Developers attract users to an application platform, while users attract developers
Question 7
In the chapter’s conceptual value relationship, perceived sacrifices may include:
A. Only the monetary price
B. Price, time, effort, uncertainty, and switching costs
C. Only manufacturing costs
D. Brand associations but never privacy loss
Correct Answer: B. Price, time, effort, uncertainty, and switching costs
Question 8
Which responsibility is especially important when retiring a product on which customers depend?
A. Removing all support immediately
B. Ignoring contractual and data obligations
C. Providing a responsible transition or migration path
D. Increasing complexity in the replacement product
Correct Answer: C. Providing a responsible transition or migration path
Question 9
What is the principal purpose of a minimum viable product?
A. To release an intentionally unsafe product
B. To deliver the smallest responsible configuration that tests important assumptions
C. To include every requested feature at launch
D. To avoid collecting any evidence from users
Correct Answer: B. To deliver the smallest responsible configuration that tests important assumptions
Question 10
Which function typically contributes expertise on privacy, safety, regulation, and contracts?