🚀 The end of the old Product Management?

🚀 The end of old Product Management?

When Airbnb dissolved the traditional PM function, and the Spotify textbook self-proclaimed "long defunct," the world was completely entering the Product Creator era.

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💥 warning signs from Silicon Valley that Thai organizations still "pretend not to hear"?

Actually, since 2023, at Figma Config - Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky once announced midstage that

"Airbnb completely phases out traditional Product Management."

"This message shakes the global product industry," but look at it now. A small number of Thai organizations still do, such as "How to do Scrum?," "How to work Agile," "How to take off Spotify's work a decade ago?" without looking at the context of how far the world has changed.

We still see...

* Agile Transformation division was re-located whole panel

* Squad / Tribe is set for 2015 homework copy.

* The Scrum process is used ritually rather than comprehensively.

* PO / PM / SM / Agile Coach was imported without knowing that the original has discontinued this concept, etc.

But what Thai people don't know is...

👉, a real Spotify Model publisher like Henrik Kniberg once made it clear that the model that people around the world call Spotify Model is actually just a "one-moment photo" of the working culture on Spotify, not a permanent formula, and the real culture always evolves, not a stereotype that many organizations understand and copy. "

He used to give an example of how many organizations use the "2012-2014 stills" to use the correct copy, without recognizing that the real Spotify has changed its way of working all the time, such as some years reducing the number of squads to increase efficiency, some years including Tribe to solve communication pain, and some years replacing the original ritual with AI-first tools. It is clear that the Spotify Model was never designed to be a "success" from the beginning.

In several LinkedIn / Twitter posts, he reiterated that the model is just Spotify's "one-time snapshot" and not suitable for copying in modern times.

Today, what he says often (check it out on LinkedIn, he) is back to the subject.

* AI-first development

* The team is smaller but creates several times more impact.

* The traditional PM is rapidly losing the need, etc.

Not because the PM is "not good," but because the job of being a "coordinated intermediary" has been replaced by AI for more than half.

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🧩 Brian Chesky didn't kill the PM, but killed the "traditional PM" who stood on the Framework rather than Insight.

What Airbnb is doing is not firing PM, but combining PM + Product Marketing + Narrative Strategy to create a new, even more powerful role.

He said an important sentence:

"You cannot build products if you don't know how to communicate them." Or in Thai, "If you can't tell stories, you can't build products."

The role of the PM must therefore be transformed into someone with three abilities:

1.Business Acumen - Understand model, unit economics, P & L and growth mechanism.

2.Design Literacy - Can make prototypes, think of images, help design experiences

3.Narrative Power - Communicate product vision until the team wants to co-create and the management wants to invest.

This is not the PM who holds the framework or requires 10-20 competencies like Thai organizations do, but the Product Thinker who views the product as a "business," not a "backlog that needs to be arranged."

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🧬 PM's new role → Product Architect / Product Creator?

Let me call it the new role of Product Architect / Product Creator, which is not only the original PM "Writer Requirements" or "Central Coordinator," but the real owner of the product, from the beginning of a small Insight to the expansion of a tangible growth in business.

So how is Product Architect / Product Creator different from traditional PM?

* To visualize it simply, Product Architect / Product Creator is someone who "thinks like an entrepreneur but works like a designer and looks at numbers like a strategist."

* He not only asks if the customer likes or dislikes it, but goes deeper and deeper to say, is it worth it? Can it be grown? Can it be a business?

Features that Product Architect / Product Creator must have in the AI-first era, such as?

* Deep Research: Not just Customer Interview, but to analyze the economics of that feature, is there a real Market Size and can it grow to be worth investing in?

* Impact Analysis: See profit / cost / risk numbers from the start. Know how a feature will affect P & L. How much will it increase revenue, reduce costs, or create measurable value?

* Tech-informed: No need to write code, but need to know what AI / Automation can help the team build today, such as AI, help prototype in seconds, help write 80% of code, or help detect real-time errors, making decisions many times faster and more accurate than previous PM.

* Methodology Agnostic: Do not adhere to Scrum / Kanban textbooks, but choose the most problematic method, for example, if the problem is clear, rapid prototyping may be used, if the uncertainty is high, Discovery-first may be used, or if the speed is emphasized, AI may be simulated to reduce the experimental cycle.

* End-to-End Ownership: Own problems and results from upstream to downstream. Not only send requirements to Dev, but must follow up to see actual business results such as conversion improved, retention increased, or CAC decreased, etc.

Why fuse PM, Designer, Marketer into one?

* Because the world can't wait anymore. The division of labor into silo (Squad, Tribe, or Guild) in the past makes the team slow, while the competition of the AI era takes place on a daily basis.

* Product Architect / Product Creator is someone who can see both the "deep picture" and the "big picture" at the same time, such as how a button on the UI page affects funnel and how funnel affects company revenue.

* This is therefore an era when PM, Designer, Marketer will fuse into one person, "a man who thinks systematically, is nimble as a startup, but accurate as an executive."

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🤖 AI makes teams smaller but certainly more powerful like never before.

What Thai companies are undersessive about is these facts that are now done, such as

(1) AI writes 60-80% of Dev code

(2) AI can design UI in 5-10 seconds.

(3) AI analyzes millions of customer data in real-time.

(4) AI fully automated A / B testing etc.

As speed multiplies, the roles that spend time coordinating / manual work are "gradually reduced in importance."

One team in the future may only have 2-3 people left (and the organization must dare to adjust or experiment), namely

* 1 Product Architect Thinking + Design + Decision + Communicate

* 1-2 AI-based Developers as co-pilots

* But can ship products 5-10 times faster than "10-person team in 2020"

This is why PMs who do not upgrade themselves are approaching an impasse, not because they are not good at it, but because the global context changes many times faster than before.

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✨ So don't wait for the world to define you. Organizations have to create value and adapt according to the world.

This will be the biggest turning point in the product industry in 20 years, and to make it clearer, should it explain why the "Spotify Model" that Thai people like to refer to was never a success formula in the first place?

Because even Henrik Kniberg, the owner of the model, emphasized that the model was only a "momentary photo" of the working culture of the era, not the central standard of the world. Tech and real culture had to modify the nature of the organization and the modern context, not a fixed frame to copy.

✔️ The organization that still peeled the 2015 Squad will not survive 2026.

✔️ PM who still acts as a "backlog manager" will gradually be replaced.

✔️ those who survive are those who "think deeply - speak sharply - do quickly."

Because on the day when AI does everything faster every day...

Don't wait for your position to define you, but create value so that your position does not define you.

# Two stories a day

# ProductManagement

# Airbnb

# SpotifyModel

# FutureOfWork

# ProductArchitect

# DigitalTransformation

# AIRevolution