Dave Killeen, Field CPO At Pendo On AI-Native Product Leadership And Rebuilding The System Of Work

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Overview

Rebuilding Product Leadership In An AI-Native Era

In this episode of TechDogs Discover Dialogues, Vikramsinh Ghatge, speaks with Dave Killeen, Field CPO EMEA at Pendo, about how AI is transforming product management, enterprise decision-making, and team design.

Drawing on 25 years across media, startups, and enterprise SaaS, Dave shares grounded perspectives on AI maturity and leadership discipline.

From Media Innovation to Enterprise AI Strategy

Dave’s journey spans early digital media at MailOnline and BBC iPlayer, data-driven scale at Badoo, enterprise transformation at Elsevier, and AI-centric repositioning at Productboard before joining Pendo.

Early experimentation in digital media
Scaling product decisions with data across 150M users
Bringing startup thinking into enterprise environments
Leading AI-focused product transformation

Why Executive Alignment Determines Product Survival

Dave explains why the Chief Product Officer role has one of the shortest average tenures in the C-suite.

Product leaders must anchor decisions in market evidence
Customer-centric data builds executive trust
Opinion-driven product strategy leads to instability
AI acceleration increases the need for disciplined storytelling

AI Acceleration, Vibe Coding, and Discipline

AI dramatically speeds development, but speed without restraint creates noise.

Vibe coding reduces development cycles
Feature bloat increases without product judgment
Leaders must apply qualitative taste alongside quantitative data
AI outputs require structured red-team evaluation

Enterprise AI Reality Check

While internal AI tools deliver productivity gains, enterprise-scale AI systems still face structural challenges.

Context and tacit knowledge remain difficult to encode
Systems of record require long-term architectural evolution
Progressive companies experiment across frontier AI models
AI fluency must spread across the organization

Redesigning the System of Work

AI will not simply optimize tasks. It will reshape roles.

Roles are collections of tasks that can shift to AI
Organizational design must evolve
Leaders must empower cross-functional AI access
Alignment around customer value remains central.

About Dave Killeen

Dave Killeen is Field CPO, EMEA at Pendo. He works with enterprise customers to help them adopt AI-native product management practices and align product strategy with measurable business outcomes. He also hosts the Vibe PM Podcast, focused on practical AI fluency for product teams.

Tue, Feb 17, 2026

Vikramsinh Ghatge

Senior Director, Marketing And Editor-In-Chief TechDogs

Vikramsinh Ghatge is an accomplished marketing leader with over a decade of experience leading B2B marketing growth, digital consulting, and creative technology initiatives. He has built and scaled high-performance marketing engines across industries like SaaS, industrial automation, AR/VR, and pharma. His expertise lies in aligning storytelling with business strategy, enabling brands to drive meaningful engagement and measurable outcomes. He is the creator of Vik’s M.I.X., a thought leadership newsletter exploring AI-powered marketing, creative strategy, and emerging technology. His work has been featured on TechGloss, TDWI, and Namaste UI. With an MBA in Marketing and an MS in Bioinformatics from the University of Manchester, Vikram combines data fluency with narrative instinct—operating at the intersection of innovation, analytics, and content impact.

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Tags:

AI In Product Management Enterprise AI Strategy AI-Native Workflows Vibe Coding Product Leadership Executive Alignment AI Maturity Claude Code Organizational Design AI Transformation

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