In this interview, Prof. Dr. Lutz Göcke, director of the Digital Product Management program at Nordhausen University of Applied Sciences, talks about how Agentic AI is changing the logic of innovation, what this means for leadership responsibility, and which open questions he is pursuing in his research.
Professor Göcke, you say you have read every product management book in the world. What made you write one of your own anyway?
The impetus came from teaching. When I was setting up the Digital Product Management program, it quickly became clear to me: Frameworks like design thinking or lean startup are taught without being anchored in theory, and conversely, sound academic knowledge rarely finds its way into the business world. Together with my co-author Michael Schultheiß, I wanted to create a book that integrates both perspectives. After all, our economy needs people who understand how to build outstanding digital business models and products, as well as strong product organizations, in order to be internationally competitive.
Product management and innovation are established disciplines. To what extent have the AI developments of recent years changed your view on them?
At their core, innovation processes are nothing more than the structured handling of the known and unknown: Which markets exist? Which problems are relevant? Which solutions are attractive? AI is a powerful tool here. Connected AI systems multiply combinatorial innovation, that is, building on what others have already developed. For products, this means that competitive advantages are becoming shorter-lived. At key touchpoints, the number of alternatives is growing, and users are being flooded with features they can hardly absorb anymore. When the way something is built changes so fundamentally, the question of what and why matters more. Because the real challenge remains the same: People have to adopt the product. Adoption doesn’t come from the number of features but from genuine value, cultural embedding, and organizational integration.
Your model describes six dimensions of product management. Where do you feel the influence of AI most clearly?
Our process model is deliberately agnostic, independent of Scrum or other methods. AI can be used across all six dimensions, but its influence varies in strength. In product discovery, synthetic users and rapid prototypes help you home in on a direction, but they don’t replace real customer conversations. In product strategy and product diffusion, new possibilities are emerging, from consistency checks to AI-generated explanatory formats to the analysis of insights. In my opinion, however, the greatest influence right now is in product delivery. Here, AI considerably reduces the programming effort.
How are you currently using AI in your own work? And what would have been unthinkable a year ago?
I work a lot with Claude and Cursor…
Want to read more? You can find the full interview with Lutz Göcke in our white paper, “Owning the Vibe.”