What do we need a product manager for? (Can’t AI do that …)
Thursday, 26 November 2026 · 15:30–16:10
Speaker
About this session
I’ve been asked this to my face, more than once, walking into a new R&D team: “Yet another product manager. What do we need you for?” Usually, it’s the systems architect asking. Fair question, and AI has made it sharper.
Here’s my answer. The architect and I do the same job from two sides. The architect is the technical conscience: What can we build, what holds together, what’s possible? The product manager is the business conscience: What’s worth building, what will the market pay for, what actually ships and sells? AI is brilliant at producing more: more concepts, more options, more half-finished work thrown over the fence. Deciding which of it is worth anything is the part AI can’t do. And that part only works when architect and product manager are aligned.
Expect a provocative, lively session, with stories straight from R&D-driven companies, including the ones where I had to win this argument on the floor.
About the speaker
Xaviera Reynhout
Xaviera Reynhout is a product management leader with over twenty years of hands-on experience across Philips, Canon Production Printing and Legrand. Today, she’s interim product manager at EV charger manufacturer Peblar. She specializes in physical high-tech products and brings them to market. She works where R&D, marketing, sales and product meet and where the hard trade-offs get made. Based in Brainport Eindhoven, she takes on interim missions in R&D-driven companies, sharpening priorities and aligning teams. She founded Koers&Koffie. She’s walked into more than one room that wasn’t sure it needed a product manager. She makes the case anyway.
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