Product Agility

David Pereira: Surviving AI: Product Strategy, Critical Thinking and Disruption - Productized 2025 TalkInTen

• Ben Maynard, Barbara Fazeka, David Pereira

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Live from Lisbon, this Talk in Ten returns from the incredible Productized conference — an energising, thoughtful gathering for product leaders. We’re honoured to partner with Productized for the third year running and grateful to Bobcats Coding for making this Lisbon series possible. Productized in Portugal continues to be an outstanding forum for real conversations about product craft, AI and organisational change.

A rapid-fire conversation with David Pereira about his Productized workshop — crafting product strategies that survive AI — joined by Barbara from Bobcats Coding. We dig into means vs ends, disruption analysis, data readiness and change leadership.

Key topics discussed:

  • Why AI is not the goal: using AI to solve real customer problems, not to chase hype.
  • Means vs ends: keep product outcomes central, avoid building for AI’s sake.
  • Disruption analysis: how to assess whether AI can replace your core product functions.
  • Data readiness: the realities of garbage in, garbage out and preparation needed.
  • Change leadership and culture: the people work required to adopt AI responsibly.


Guest bio:

David Pereira — Author, speaker and seasoned product consultant focused on product strategy, discovery and organisational change. David helps leaders define meaningful problems, avoid the feature factory and design strategies that align product, technology and customer value.


Thank you to our sponsor Bobcats Coding — a Budapest-based digital product studio specialising in AI engineering and end-to-end product development. Download their latest AI economics guidebook at bobcatscoding.com. Thank you also to Productized for being an excellent conference partner.

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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Welcome to the Product Agility podcast where we explore the ever changing world of product leadership and org design, helping you navigate complexity and build better outcomes for your people and your customers. This week we're coming to you live from Lisbon for the third year in a row at the Productize conference where I'm grabbing 10 minute conversations with product thinkers, leaders and innovators from around the world. These quick fire chats are all about what's shaping our industry right now. From AI and product strategy to the human side of building great products. Now a huge thank you goes out to Bobcatz Coding for making this Lisbon series possible. Bobcats is a Budapest and Lisbon based digital product studio specializing in AI engineering and end to end digital product development. They're also on a mission to educate the market, exploring a new topic every six months and this fall is no exception. Their latest AI economics guidebook is out now and you can download it for free@bobcatscoding.com now here's your talking 10. We're here with David Pereira, long term friend of the podcast, author, speaker all round. Lovely person. I will stop with the compliments there, David. Welcome back to the podcast. After last time you came on was your book launch actually. Yeah, that's true. It's been some time. Yes, I'm glad to be here. We haven't been strangers, we've stayed in touch. So yeah, sure. Nice to have you here in person as well. And we are joined by Barbara, co host, co host, co host, co founder and CEO of Bobcat's Coding. Hello, Barbara. Yeah, you're right. And I'm very excited about this conversation today because your topic is so close to my heart that I can't wait you to ask the first question. Do you want to ask the first question? I asked the first question. Say, David, why are you at product Product asked productized this year. You did a workshop this morning. What was it about? The workshop this morning was about how to craft product strategies that survive AI. And it's a bit interesting because actually I was invited to give another workshop which is product discovery. But I don't think this is the biggest problem we have right now. So I asked to change that and then we came up with this one. Like a Trojan horse. You went, you got approved for one talk. Actually, no, I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about this. Yeah, that's what I did. Yeah. And how, what do you think? How AI is changing the product strategies? If you could break it down to one core essential message, what would that. Be we are getting lazy, we are not thinking anymore. So that's what I afraid it is happening. So what I see, we have been trying to defeat the feature factory for decades now. And now I am concerned that we are just amplifying the mess that we have created over the last years. I'm not saying that AI is bad, but I'm saying that a poor way of using AI is considerably bad. Well, because you mentioned earlier, Barbara, about maybe software development and features production becoming a commodity. Absolutely. And yesterday, the leadership day, I guess Rich said that we are going to build like useless things quicker and more effective. And like what's your, what's your point in this? Do you see this coming? Yeah, I see this coming. And my point is like we need to understand means and ends. So AI is not the end. Our objective is not to be an AI company, whatever the company is doing, it's to create some value for their customers and collect value in exchange. But some companies are saying, yeah, we are doing AI first in AI everywhere and so on. And that scares me because yes, the barrier to start building something now, it's reduced considerably so we can start building. But the question is, does it make sense what we are building? So we need to answer some questions before then we can build it. The difference I see right now is that in the past I have been struggling with one thing all the time. We would choose one problem that is worth solving. And I always said we should try solving this problem in multiple ways and then understand which is the best way. But then creating software is expensive. But now this is changing. But the important part is defining the problem space correctly and then we can try multiple solutions for the same problem. I've not seen you quite as animated for a long time. I can tell if it's something you really, you care about. Right. And you're tuned into. And so I wonder when you chose the title of your workshop and you chose the word survive AI. Now that feels like it's a reasonably provocative choice of word, like to survive it. Like, you know, you survive awful events in your life. Surviving isn't a great thing. So are you saying that, what did you mean then by the choice of that word survive AI and product strategies. So what I mean is happening right now is many people are afraid about their future and are we going to exist or not? So what I see right now, there's a term that sometimes drives me nuts, like, which is the aipm. And many people are saying that you need to be an aipm. So let's go Back in the past, should you be an agile pm? People tried, didn't work. Yeah. A product manager is a product manager. So your objective is to figure out whatever it is that is worth solving, help teams figure out solutions that make sense and create value. That's the job. And you may well use AI, but your job is not to use AI for the sake of it. And when I put this survive AI, it's going beyond the hype because now what is happening is like if you don't do AI, AI is coming for you. It's going to take your job and get you out of the market. I don't believe that because critical thinking belongs to human. Whatever you ask AI is going to do for you. If you ask AI to create you 300 ppts because executives team want that, it will do that. That's what you want, not what you need. So surviving AI means having a sharp way of developing your critical thinking, strategic thinking. That's why I selected this title. Based on your LinkedIn profile. You do a lot of consulting, right? Yeah. And so I assume you meet like C level people on average regularly who want AI in the product. Do you have like magical question to help them understand what's the difference between using AI as a goal and using AI as a solution for a problem? So like how can, how can you like get them to this enlightenment moment that AI is not for be doing stuff for AI, but it's for solving a problem. So generally I try listening to what is happening in the conversation. Many C level people would tell me like I struggle to get AI features delivered and then I ask them like which is the problem you aim to solve? Then I hear crickets. That scares me. But then I say let's go back to another question. What is something that you could not do in the past that AI enables you to do now? That's a better way of starting with AI because then you start from a problem that was maybe not possible to solve within the technology you had, now you have a different one, then you can go from there. And then another aspect that I tell a lot of C level AI is as good as the data you have. Do you have the data prepared for that? And most companies don't. So they want AI, but they don't want to do the work of preparing the data and then it's garbage in, garbage out. There is another thing here I think of people finding, trying to find problems for solutions. Yes. Yeah, trying to find problems to solutions. And a lot of people want to benefit from the hype. I ran some tests to see what happens. I used to run a training called Product Discovery done right. And after the AI hype, people lost interest in that. Then I put product discovery beyond AI just because of the words AI. More people start trying that out. It's the same cohort, but it's because people now are going after AI and then the same for CEOs. They say, like, if my company is not doing anything with AI, I will be perceived as not an innovative company anymore. I need to do something with AI. I understand the pressure and you should leverage the technology, but should choose where and not doing for the sake of it. And understanding that AI comes with challenge first. It's a leadership. So you need to build a culture where AI can exist and then you need the tooling and then you need people, which requires training. So you need to build some structure. You can decide how you do that in an agile way. So you start trying out, but starting with the feature is the right way of creating something that nobody needs. An example we've been talking about actually the last. Well, today and in various other topics, because there's some threads that are coming through, I think in a lot of the conversations that we're having, but I think many people in organizations, particularly at sea level and maybe throughout, is that they're just not equipped to have the right conversations about how we use this technology and these tools in the ways that are meaningful for us and have an impact. We just have not got the capability to have the right level of critical thinking to actually discern the correct decision as to what is it and how we use it. Okay. I would be the one saying, let's be empathetic with founders and sea levels just for a moment. Yeah, with sea levels. Yeah, sea levels. Sorry for this tragic accent. So like, okay, they have a job. They try to report to a board, like, do their best. Like, maybe they got this AI, I don't know, thing from the board. Like, do you have any methodology how you can help them to understand and get on board with what they can do and what they cannot do with AI? Like as a consultant. Yes. So the first thing is to slow down and understanding what is happening right now. AI is a prominent technology. So if you look in the past, like for example, Netflix could only do streaming because the speed of Internet increased massively. It was not possible before. So that's why they were doing like renting DVD by mail. And now we have another technology which is very prominent. So many things become possible. So what happens when new technologies become Possible like that disruption becomes a real risk. Eminent one. So what I recommend Silevel to do is to run a disruption analysis to understand their business. For example, when you look at your product, how easy is to replace the core functionalities with AI? The easier it is, the more endangered the company is. Then you need to do something about it. Then you look at your customers. How is the customer's thickness? Meaning that if they leave your platform, they will leave a lot behind and they cannot get this in another place. That would be something you can leverage. But for example, if you say that the only cost for customers to leave to another platform is time, that's very risky. And then you start looking at other aspects. For example, how is your product speed transforming an idea to value from idea to value? And once you start looking at this and there are far more aspects, you understand how prepared you are against disruption, then the next thing to do is to look at your business model as is. And then you say, what are we going to do in our business model to protect ourselves and survive disruption? Or maybe we are going to disrupt ourselves before somebody else does. The nice thing about podcasts is that you can change the speed and make notes. So if everyone listening at home, you want to rewind back a minute and just make a note of all of that, there's some gold in there. They've given away too much information. I think our list is a very lucky to have that laid out for them. So thank you for sharing that. And we will be. There'll be a little newsletter coming out for each episode as well. So there were little snippets of that. But thank you for sharing that. It's pretty enlightening. I think it's. Yeah, you did a good job. I wanted to say that a lot of what we're talking about, the one thing which I think is overlooked a little bit is change leadership and change management. And there are ways to help people change their behaviors and to change the culture and mindset of an organization that I don't think yet people having those convert really having the conversations about in the same way that one of the guests raised how will organization designs change as a consequence of AI? How will roles change again? I think that in the next few years we're going to see an increase in people coming to conferences and talking about those topics as well. Because as this bubble gets bigger, people can't make money off of the things they have been making off of and coming to conferences and talking about. So we choose the next order of things. I think we saw it in agile which kind of tapped out at a certain level because they went up all of the levels and then it was like a whole business thing and then it popped and I kind of feel that we're going a similar pathway with AI. I'm not saying that bubbles are bad. I think bubbles are great. If it wasn't for bubbles we wouldn't have the Internet in the shape that it is a huge benefit to be gained from these things. There's a lot of shit we have to put up with along the way and that's why we need people like you David, people like you Barbara to help us see the way through. So thank you very much for coming on the podcast again David and thank you very much Barbara for coming on and being an awesome co host and thank you everyone for listening. We will be back again at some point in the foreseeable future with another amazing talking 10 from productized 25.

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Ben Maynard

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