Bruce McCarthy – From Product Managers to Product Builders: How AI Is Rewiring Product Development

AI is rewiring product development. Not just changing the tools product teams use; it’s changing what product organizations are. As AI amplifies what small teams can achieve, traditional structures – layers of product, engineering, and design management, endless alignment meetings, and decision gridlock – are starting to look not just expensive but actively obstructive.

As the cost and speed of coding fall, the value of roles focused mainly on feeding work to engineers is diminishing quickly. At the same time, the AI shift is driving a burnout crisis in product leadership, a quiet exodus of the best talent leaving to build on their own.

With execution becoming cheaper and faster, the real constraint moves to strategy, judgment, and leadership. 

In this session, Bruce shows, with real world examples, why and how you can use this moment to hit pause on the old playbook and go faster than you ever thought possible. All it takes is empowering product and technical leaders with clear missions, autonomy, and accountability. 

This talk is for CEOs who need to understand why unfettering these people is their biggest lever for growth.

Bruce McCarthy

Founder, Product Culture

Bruce founded Product Culture to help communicate the key principles underlying consistently successful product-focused organizations.

He and his team help companies like NewStore, Camunda, hyperexponential, Socure, and Toast achieve their product visions through Advising, Accelerator programs, and the Product Culture Community. Bruce is a serial entrepreneur and team leader. He literally wrote the book on roadmapping: Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction While Embracing Uncertainty. His next book, Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders is expected summer 2024.

His previous talks at BoS Conference have been instrumental in helping our attendees unblock some of the significant challenges that all companies face as they grow. You can watch them here.