Product Agility

Davide Colla: Talk in Ten: Surviving Creativity When AI Feels Like Competition - Productized 2025 TalkInTen

• Ben Maynard, Gábor Suhajda, Davide Colla

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We're recording live from Lisbon at the exceptional Productized conference — an inspiring, high-calibre gathering for product people. We're honoured to partner with Productized for the third year running and grateful for their commitment to building a thoughtful, practical community in Europe and beyond.

In this Talk in Ten, we sit down with Davide Colla (Creative Director, Milan) as he explores the hard, human feelings that come when AI starts doing the creative work you love. This short, candid conversation moves from novelty and threat to adaptation and partnership with AI.


Key topics discussed

  • Personal vulnerability onstage: why sharing the emotional journey matters
  • Early novelty of AI image tools and the moment it stopped being ‘just fun’
  • How AI replaced parts of creative workflows — and what that felt like
  • Practical ways creatives can work with AI rather than against it
  • Commercial implications: pricing, client expectations and agency workflows


Guest bio: 

Davide Colla — Creative Director based in Milan, leading campaigns for top fashion and design brands worldwide. His work explores the intersection of art, technology and emotion, blending creative direction with digital innovation.

Co-host:
Gábor Suhajda — Lead Designer at Bobcats Coding. Based between Budapest and Lisbon, Gabor leads creative work across branding, content and interactive experiences for fashion and design clients worldwide.


Thanks to our sponsor: Bobcats Coding — a Budapest-based digital product studio specialising in AI engineering and end-to-end digital product development. Download their latest AI Economics guidebook at bobcatscoding.com.

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 talk in 10. Productized 2025 talks in 10. We have had a phenomenal day talking to some phenomenal people and wondered why there was someone standing behind me. But he's a photographer so that's what it is. That's fine, that's fine. Davide, you are talking tomorrow and in a second we'll ask you to share a little bit about your talk. But I want to say I'm joined by Gabor, lead designer from Bobcat's coding. Once again, lovely to have you back next to me. Hi, good afternoon. How formal. Oh, I was excited. Yeah, you wait. Hey Davide, you're Useless is the name of your talk tomorrow. What a title. Tell us more about it. It's actually like a topic about a feeling. A feeling that right now with the AI and all of this tool, you are pretty useless. Like you feel that in some point it's replacing your job or replacing you and what you love to do. So it's like a talk about surviving in this era and feelings. Is that something that you felt personally? I felt really personally. Actually. It's really like a journey of like how I deal with AI. Since the very first there was fun till I realized I was actually stealing some of my jobs, that it's war. And then there is the final part that we get back together and work together for best, let's say. Well, must be, I don't know, it's quite an exposing thing for you to do to go on stage and talk about your own personal journey and be honest about how you felt threatened and it sounds like there's a happy ending there. Is this an easy story for you to tell, or is there a little bit of apprehension for you to get up on stage and share something quite so personal? It's actually the only thing I could do in my life. So sharing personal stuff, I'm not really great in, like, talking about, like, philosophy or someone told me, or once I read a book or something, it's like I always try to share, like, my personal life, and I'm really curious and really focused on what happened around me. So I try, like to live, analyze and then get it back on the stage. And how do you. How do people accept this kind of vulnerability on stage? Because, like, in these settings, like, it's more like a professional setting, sometimes it's. It's a difficult topic. It is. And sometimes I get a lot of people that can relate to or like, or at one part of what I'm saying, sometimes I really been in conference that the people were looking at the stage and say, oh, this guy is really weird. You know what I mean? Like, either you come along with this in this journey, either you can say, okay, but it's your business, man. So you know what I mean? So just go back to the start of your story. Well, you used AI and it was fun. There's a novelty factor. And I think for lots of people, that novelty factor is people are still in that phase, and that has its own issues. But then you felt threatened and you thought, hold on, this is doing my job for me. Can you share a little example of how you felt that then AI was taking over some of your job? And also share for the listeners what is it that you do which might help. That's the first. I'm not only sharing my personal business or yes, I do, but because I'm a creative director of an agency in Milano, and we work with the best fashion and design brands worldwide, and we do content, rebranding, interactive experiences. So, like, we work a lot with technology, arts, and of course, like, the devil part, the commercial. And so, like, I met this guy at one conference, like three years and a half ago, and he was the first one told me about AI and how to use it to produce images. I mean, in my daily life, I just produce images. So the visual output, it's my life. And so I start to play along and was actually producing terrible images. Was really at the starting, like six fingers, like three legs, and something like this. But was still exciting because it was the first time that I could create images without combining Them, but from scratch. But then actually one customer one day prefer AI job made by a person working in his office that has no competence in design. Then my presentation. And that was like the tipping point. That actually made me think, oh, God, this guy, this AI thing is something that. It's really not artistic things or not fun anymore because it's actually doing what I love, what I love to do, and basically give me to eat every day. So, like, starting together in my way properly because, like the moment the output of AI and mine were aligned, that was something that actually made me think a lot. Yeah, this. It's scary. Sounds like a bit of a crisis. It is, it is. And then I'm teaching in university and also, like dealing with, like, students and AI. It's tricky. Anyway, so how have you found a way to live in harmony with AI? I changed a little bit the perspective. And for the first time I thought, like, if there is something that actually can picture what I have in my mind and the result, it's really professional, probably I will not need so many layers and person to create something that I have in mind. And so this one was like the tipping point because, like, we had some problem in a project, there was like a shooting and actually not a big problem, but the final outcome didn't make me so excited as I was before the day. And so I tried to get it with AI and the result was exactly what was in my mind with no filters. That's it. Like, I'm not sure if this is what you meant by that, but I find it really interesting that if you're trying to take a photo, there's so many. It's so difficult to kind of get what you need in there. And you can look back and be like, oh, I wish that, wish that was there, wish that was there. And you look at what Google has on some phones where it will take a few photos and then it will change the faces so that everyone's smiling. But there is a case when, after the event, which, as a creative person, you've got something in your head you can't then make in the photo. But actually having something which then helps you bridge that gap is really fascinating. It is. And the problem around all of this, it's once you do it as a hobby, it's a story. Once you do it professionally and for selling what you do, it's another, you know, like, for having fun, it's perfect. And for artistry, it's perfect as well. But then we see, like, a lot of, like, people that never Took a campaign in his life now selling AI content, you know what I mean? Like in a lot of like technology and innovation part, if you don't feel the struggle that there were before, you cannot get like what's the new coming and what's the technology it's bringing. And do you see any challenges with clients selling AI, AI generated content or anything done with AI? We are actually selling a lot of AI campaigns right now. And I mean yes. Not be really poetry poetic here budget wise. It's really, really challenging because like you are shifting from production people, 10 people moving like studio lights and everything to something that it's. People stay in front of a computer. So suddenly see, seems like the people stay in front of a computer. It's for free for the company, you know what I mean? But it's basically like graphic designer or like people who basically does these jobs in server. So pricing, it's really sensitive. And on the other hand, also in terms of creativity, it's kind of difficult because like in one way you want to make the customer understand that you can do really everything so you don't have to stick with the reality, you know what I mean? And so you can really fly with creativity and mind. On the other way, you have to make them understand that anyway reworking, reworking and like it's not limitless that things. So like can you shift this one? I mean we did a campaign for a fashion brand and they take like picture of a sofa and they say can you place this sofa in the scene? Come on. I'm not like a magician, you know, horrible picture, I don't know which. So I don't know. I mean it's for a bag. Let's focus on that. Definitely. We're at time, but I found this genuinely intellectually stimulating. It's so nice to have something so different. I think we've had lots of people on but this is. You'll come up from such a different angle and yeah, Gaba, your question was great. I thought. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's yeah. Fascinating. I wish I could come along but unfortunately I didn't get to do such things. But thank you for coming along and yeah, I think that if people are interested in learning more about this in particular, I guess they can go to you on LinkedIn or how can they. LinkedIn, it's perfect. Yeah, I have a fresh new substack since like two weeks with three article, not one. No way. Three articles. Well, if you can share the link with us, we'll make sure that goes in the show notes. So if people look in the show notes for this episode, they can find your substack because I think there'll be some interesting stuff there to read. Excellent. Hopefully. Let's see if our show notes automatically pop that in. Thank you very much for coming on Gabor. Thank you again for being such an awesome co host and everyone, thank you for listening. We are seeing towards the end now of our run of interviews for today. We've gone through a phenomenal amount. We've got some great people coming up, so do stay tuned for another talking 10.

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Ben Maynard

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