There is no shortage of companies adding AI to their products. There is a significant shortage of companies doing it well. At Gathering #7, Hannes Van de Velde, Chief Product Officer at In The Pocket, made a compelling case for why most AI implementations disappoint, and why the fix is not better models but better product thinking.
In The Pocket is a digital product studio that has built AI-powered features for clients across healthcare, finance, mobility, and media. This breadth of experience gives Hannes an unusual vantage point: he has seen AI succeed and fail across very different domains, and the patterns that emerge are remarkably consistent.
The central thesis was that AI creates a new category of product decisions that traditional product management frameworks do not adequately address. These decisions are not about technology. They are about user experience, expectation management, and the ethics of automation.
Original Presentation Slides
Download the slides from this talk as presented at the gathering.
