Product Agility

Krasi Bozhinkova: Navigating the Unknown: Flip, Pivot, Hack - Practical Tactics for Product Teams - Productized 2025 TalkInTen

• Ben Maynard, Gábor Suhajda, Krasi Bozhinkova

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Productized in Lisbon, Portugal, continues to be one of the most inspiring product conferences in Europe — energetic, practical and full of cross-disciplinary ideas. We’re honoured to partner with Productized to bring live conversations from the stage to you.

Recorded live at Productized 2025, this episode explores how product teams can navigate uncertainty by creating clarity, building shared language and using practical tactics to learn faster. Krasi returns to the Talk in Ten series to share a simple, actionable framework: Flip, Pivot, Hack.

Key topics discussed

  • Why clarity must be actively created (not just discovered in data)
  • Cross-functional collaboration and building a shared language
  • Flip, Pivot, Hack: the three practical strategies for navigating unknowns
  • Embedding tactics across the product journey from discovery to retention
  • Maintaining momentum and the cost of restarting initiatives


Guest Bio:

Krasi Bozhinkova is a design and product strategist working at Outcome. She focuses on helping teams frame problems, align stakeholders and create practical tactics for discovery and growth. Creator of the Flip/Pivot/Hack cards, Krasi blends strategic thinking with hands-on methods to help organisations learn faster and move with confidence.


Thanks to our partners at Productized for an exceptional conference experience — we’re proud to collaborate with them — and a big thank you to our sponsor, Bobcats Coding, for supporting this series.

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.

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Productize 2025. We are here with Krazi, who is second time on a talking 10. Correct. Last year, what were you talking about last year? That's a secret test. We were talking about the product value in terms of bringing innovation into more practical realms to actually generate something meaningful for the business. And we also spoke about not just any kind of innovation, but more purposeful innovation that connects to the user needs, connects to the business goals, and actually brings you forward for success in the market. I find that phenomenal that you remember that because it's very impressive because a lot of the time, having done lots of talks and workshops myself, I can't even remember the title of the talk I'm giving this year, let alone what I did last year. So very impressive. And if anybody does want to listen to that, then it's all available on the podcast. You can go back and search for the history, but this time you're here at Productized Navigating the Unknown. And we're going to be exploring that with you with my co host, Gabor, who is lead designer from Bob Cutscoding. Hello, Gabor. Hi. Hi. And let's not waste any time because we are not rich when it comes to the available time that we have. So Navigating the Unknown. Tell us more about this, please. Clausi. Oh, yes, there is a lot packed into this title, Navigating the Unknown. And it can mean different things to people, but actually it comes down to, I think, one simple truth. That as much as we love data and finding meaning in data, sometimes clarity has to be made. And I'll pause for this to land with our listeners. Clarity has to be made. Which is not to say we don't like data. Data is awesome. But you have to do something more than just looking for the available patterns. You really need to become signal reader or signal catcher to think about what is going to happen next and find meaning and find opportunities before it becomes visible to everyone else. Because if that's the case, I would argue it's already late. That's a lot of information in that one opening sentence. I'm kind of unsure, like what. How do you pick away? Because there's a lot in there. That was excellent. Thank you. No, it's impressive because I think that people seek clarity. They don't make clarity often in the way that people talk about and the way they approach things. But I believe with the current advancement and also the impact that AI has progressed, brought to the product world all the way from software development to the product managers and designers, researchers I believe now for the first time, we actually have the luxury to sit with the right problems and think a bit more strategically. You mentioned designers and researchers. So how much you rely on cross collaboration between these disciplines and others, maybe through navigating these voters. I believe cross functional collaboration is actually fundamental and I would say a lot, but a lot doesn't capture it. It's really a must have capability for this time and these days for any modern company to be forward thinking, you do need to mix and match different skills and different capabilities and more importantly, complement your perspective with somebody else's so that you overcome these hidden biases and ideally stretch your comfort zone. Are there any challenges in that collaboration? What do you see? A lot. Where do I start? I think one of the biggest challenges is actually agreeing on a shared language that can help you communicate in the most effective way, where the value, the opportunity and the focus for the moment is. And we've been big proponent at Outcome, the design agency that I work with, finding this clarity and value through new ways of framing the problems and framing the opportunity so that it becomes not just a product language around user needs or value, but actually a language that everyone in the organization takes. I can see that you've got some cards in front of you. I do. They have been hit by the way. Yeah. And they look very nice. Nice. And they're very colorful. And I'm just wondering what are these cards saying? Krasi? Because you've got them here for a reason. Yes, they're here for a reason. Because we thought it's lovely for those that are passionate about the more strategic and big thinking to think about the next and where everything is shifting. But we also have to be really grounded and here and now and have a solid repository of product tactics to address these unknowns that I speak about, but in a concrete term. So what we did with my partners was to think how can we bring it in a very accessible way? And we actually have three in our pocket. Flip, pivot and hack. And they stand for different things. For example, when we say we have to flip, it means that we are thinking the whole and the what of the product. When we think about pivot, pivot is really a big one and it is always connected to the why and the value you deliver. If that's broken, that's where the pivot happens. But also right now, we are desperate for hacking in the context of designing faster and cheaper ways to learn. And those three gives us the full or broad spectrum, more holistic approach of how you can actually do something for this unknown so that it doesn't burn you, but. And you don't resist it. But you come prepared. And I think it all comes down to that. If you are prepared and you have ability to think differently, why not, why not go there? I really like what you've done there. And just for this, for the listeners and also for myself, I'm just going to quickly recap it. You can even turn around for me. I was going to do. I did practicing my upside. So it was a flip, which is rethink the who or the what in your product. So this is when you're faced with situations where you're challenged on maybe the who or the what and you have to then rethink. And that's a flip. You've got the pivot, which is rethinking the why and the value you deliver. That's a pivot. And then the hack is when you design a faster and cheaper way to interestingly to learn. And I like that. I can imagine that these like using these cards during a conversation or a workshop would end up people having big revelations or change of minds. Like maybe the whole goal of the project or the company can shift by using these tactics. Yeah, absolutely. And they also connect very nicely to the product journey. All the way from discovery to having advocates and thinking how you keep retention. So every one of these three strategies is actually broken down into different tactics that you can apply for different parts of the product journey. And it's a matter of priorities, where the company is and the type of resources and capabilities that you have. So you always have an option. But what is nice with this approach is that all of a sudden the whole company can be on the same page. So this doesn't just become a product initiative, let's pivot or strategy initiative. Usually it starts there more bigger things, people, but it's embedded in different processes in the whole organization. So everyone is on board. So talking about alignment, I think how else would you do it? Yeah, it's really exciting because for me, sometimes this shared understanding is the greatest value that we can get out of a workshop or any kind of session. Not anything about the product, but we understand the same thing by the same. Words and not just move forward, align, but actually follow the momentum. And if you lose the momentum, then obviously the consequences could be dire and we don't want that. So we felt that this is an opportunity in the workshop to make it really practical and show to the product managers, designers in the audience that it's not so scary. And this Idea of the unknown is not a gut feel, it's not a black box. You don't need the crystal ball. All you need is to come prepared and keep an open mindset. In thinking physics, the effort to create momentum is far in excess of the effort to maintain it. And I think it's the same in all walks of life is that actually if you've got the momentum then if you can maintain it, it should be less energy than having to restart it again. So I'm 100% with you and what you say about shared language and this has been such an important facet of what we do in products and software for decades and it's gets enough light shone on it. I think going back to look at goiku Adject and specification by example or going back to Eric Gamma and Domain Driven Design, all of these ideas would really say let's just get a way of talking about things. And in England there's definitely this phrase saying let's not get hung up on semantics, which I think is such a shit thing to say because sometimes we need to get hung up on the meanings of words so we can actually have a conversation about things. I love all of this and I love the hack which is a faster and cheaper way to learn. And I think that's such a lovely way of perceiving a hack which for some people isn't learning. It's a bit nasty and a bit dirty and a bit. It's a matter of reframing it and what you believe to be true. And I think when our foundations have been shaken with AI and there is not a single truth out there but it unfolding, we actually do not have the luxury anymore to stay with the simple problem statement. We can no longer think that we understand the customers and they have a problem that we are going to solve and then it leads to an outcome. I believe this is an illusion. If we believe that this simple problem statement actually captures the problem. Unfortunately we're at time. It is I think the first time I had to say to the co host because we could have spoken about this for much longer. It's a brilliant topic and just thank you so much for coming along. I think yeah, like last, last year was a good conversation this year. Thank you, I really appreciate it and I hope you give it a try to play with that and see what you come up with. So it says at the bottom here, boot camp series.com is that where people. Can find learning initiative that we started even though it's part of outcome, but this is specifically made to publicize some of this work. Work. Everyone, thank you for listening. We'll be back again with another talking 10 for productized in the very, very immediate future.

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Ben Maynard

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