Who this book is for

Business owners, CEOs, and senior leaders responsible for:

• Product development and market entry
• Manufacturing and supply chain performance
• Regulatory compliance across multiple markets
• Managing growth without increasing product, compliance, or operational risk
  

The Smart Risk Playbook

A Five-Step Framework
for Business Leaders to Master Product Risk

As product businesses grow, complexity increases.

New markets, expanding product lines, changing regulations, and evolving global market requirements all introduce new forms of risk. Often quietly at first. Then suddenly, they show up as delays, quality failures, compliance issues, or product recalls.

The challenge is that these issues rarely appear in isolation. They are usually the result of underlying gaps in how risk is understood, managed, and embedded across the organisation.

The Smart Risk Playbook helps business leaders close that gap.

It introduces a practical five-step framework that shows how product, operational and market-entry changes create risk, how small issues escalate over time, and how to build a structured approach to managing those risks before they become costly problems.

Rather than treating risk as a compliance activity or a reactive function, this book shows how to integrate product risk management into the way your business operates, making it a foundation for better decision-making, stronger systems, and more resilient growth across global markets.

Drawing on over 25 years of experience working with industrial, consumer, and consumable product manufacturers across global markets, Fiona van Petegem translates complex product risk, compliance and market-entry challenges into clear, actionable strategies that leaders can apply immediately.

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What readers are saying

"...Most people struggle to visualize what unmanaged risk actually looks like in the real world. This book closes that gap beautifully..."
Pablo Antiñanco, RoHS or Not, Poland

“As someone who has spent decades in organisations navigating the hidden complexities of product risk, I consider The Smart Risk Playbook one of the most practical and strategically insightful guides available today…” 
Dr Peter Baines, Senior Executive, Australia

“I wish I had this book 20 years ago when we started Goodnature…” 
Craig Bond, Founder, New Zealand

“This book beautifully demonstrates that risk mitigation strategies are not a necessary evil, but an opportunity…” 
Prof. Dr. ir. Tim Horeman-Franse, TU Delft, The Netherlands

“Being aware of the full range of risks and allocating appropriate resources is one of the more difficult challenges for businesses. This book provides a great overview of those risks, with practical suggestions for addressing them…” 
John Terry, Recognised in IAM Strategy 300 as a world leading patent strategist