Thriving in the unknown future

As a product leader in the AI and market research space, adapting to the pace is at the essence of my role. On a practical level, one of my biggest challenges (and also one of my greatest joys) is accurately predicting what my customers may need in their ever shifting markets. By extension, this means I am constantly building a long term roadmap in a technological reality that changes every two months. 

To navigate this successfully, we understood that our first challenge was one of mindset. How could we maintain agility of thinking and resilience, while also meeting our customers anticipated needs of a specific defined product on target deadlines? Since a core of our offering is technological excellence, which ensures unmatched data accuracy, depth of insight and business predictions, how could we insist on this high level of authority, with the swirling changes all around us? We approach our work from a new point of view, and with a great deal of curiosity and imagination.  

Embracing a mindset of perpetual beta 

The term “perpetual beta’ sounds catchy, but it carries a huge weight. A banner that proclaims ”Always. Be. Innovating.”  

Once we embraced this mindset, though, the challenge became exciting. My team and I learned to be comfortable with ambiguity and view everything, even (or maybe especially) our own understanding, as constantly evolving. This resilience gives our team elasticity to think in many directions simultaneously, as we imagine what the future could bring and how our tools can help us help our customers. We think not only of our customers’ challenges today, but the issues and needs they are likely to encounter in the future, so we can provide the tools and features that can eliminate the problem before it develops. This is how we can continue to be of true service.   

A key aspect of this mindset is championing a culture of continuous learning. We remain abreast of the most current industry developments. Our team avails itself of structured opportunities for upskilling and reskilling where needed. This could manifest as: 

• Dedicated learning days: Setting aside regular time for our teams to teach each other, introduce new technologies and tools and experiment where needed. 

• Internal AI communities: Establishing a forum where employees can share discoveries, best practices, and collaborate on AI-related challenges. It also enables non-technical employees to learn more about the tools behind our product.  

• Iterative experimentation: We experiment. A lot. And fast. Our “fail fast, learn faster” approach allows us to institute small-scale experiments to validate ideas and gather data before committing to large-scale projects. 

• Self-education: It’s a high priority for our team and our organization to remain current on industry developments, current events, competitor technology and more. We see this as a prerequisite for maintaining technological leadership.  

But all that is great for keeping us fresh and accountable. How do we mesh this with delivering products today?  

Serving our customers using educated imagination 

This is where it comes together.  

Their needs are always our north star. Our core question is always: how do we help our customers navigate their future? How do we help them achieve goals they may not even be able to articulate yet? How do we design a tool that will be so useful to them, it will save them hours of time, not only today, but for years to come?  

To achieve this we harness our decades of professional experience and use that to dream for them. We clarify what is possible to achieve now or in the short term and what dreams might have to wait a bit longer to implement. Sometimes the issue is simply customer priorities, but sometimes (often) we are called to create something that is yet to exist. In those cases, we define what we can deliver now and what remains on the roadmap for later. We discover a new technology that can allow us to deliver a game changing feature more quickly than anticipated? Amazing. We shift priorities and communicate clearly with the customer. Clear and open communication amongst ourselves and with our customers is a big part of our success. 

Managing AI expectations 

With all the hype around AI, it is easy for our customers and our organizations to expect it to achieve… everything. But, as professionals building these tools, we know this is not the case.   Many internal stakeholders and customers might not understand the difference between predictive analytics, machine learning, and generative AI, leading to misaligned expectations.
I’ve found that, just like I noted above, clear communication is a key tool in managing expectations. Instead of simply saying “AI will automate X,” I explain how it works, what data it needs, and what limitations it might encounter. I also celebrate small, iterative successes with my team, and show how AI solves specific, defined problems, even if minor. Bringing stakeholders into the process clarifies what is possible.  

Building an adaptive organization, with clear strategic goals 

Although our product, R&D, data science, project management and customer success teams are each independent, we work cross functionally to foster the ability for swift action and change, when needed. Engineers, data scientists and product managers work together for holistic problem-solving. These collaborations are less formalized, instituted per project or issue, so colleagues feel free to turn to each other for assistance and still can remain focused on individual projects.  

But above all, we are all aligned on where we are going, the value we insist on bringing our customers. This vision guides us and brings us together. As cheesy as it may sound, it really helps inspire us and keep us excited about coming to work every day to create value. 

Omer Kehat 

VP Product, Revuze 

About Revuze:  

Revuze is an AI-powered marketing intelligence platform that unifies customer feedback from sources at every stage of the customer journey, such as  reviews, surveys, social media, forums, customer care and sales to create a strategic action plan for brands.  

Product development, eCommerce, social and customer insights teams each have a practical, easy-to-use workspace to support their unique tasks and enhance their decision-making with a clear understanding of their customer’s voice. Fortified by category-wide competitive information that is detailed to each SKU, trend detection, and competitive benchmarking, along with task specific action plans for each, brands have a clear path to quickly increasing ROI, while building customer experience and loyalty.