Are Product Managers Broken? Digital Athlete, Design Power Plays And The Future Of Product

When design and product teams clash, great ideas stall. Russ Wilson tackled this by co-creating Fidelity’s “Digital Athlete” program with Harvard training product managers to prioritize value, think like storytellers, and collaborate deeply with design.
This talk explores how design leadership can elevate product maturity, reshape team culture, and align massive organizations around customer value.

Challenges:

• Misaligned incentives between design and product
• Product managers focused on output over value
• Embedding learning and experimentation at scale

Key Learnings:

• How to bridge design and product mindsets through shared language and metrics
• Techniques for training product managers in customer-first storytelling
• Why design’s future lies in shaping the product discipline, not just the product