How product managers use AI to boost productivity and innovation success

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TLDR

In this episode of Product Mastery Now, Katie Trauth Taylor, PhD, CEO and co-founder of Narratize AI, joins me to discuss how AI is transforming product innovation processes. She shares insights from working with Fortune 500 companies like NASA, Boeing, and Comcast, and dives into research showing that product and R&D teams spend up to 70% of their time on documentation and communication rather than true innovation. Katie outlines four best practices for leveraging AI, including the use of knowledge hubs, AI agents, and robust documentation processes, to unlock productivity, capture tribal knowledge, and speed up time to market by as much as 46%. The conversation also highlights the importance of storytelling in gaining buy-in for new ideas and the potential for AI to revolutionize knowledge management and portfolio intelligence.

Introduction

 Product teams waste a lot of their time doing things that don’t help get to the heart of product innovation. We need to flip the script on that so that we can be more productive with our innovation efforts. In this discussion, you’re going to learn how companies like Boeing, Comcast, and others are accomplishing this. We’re going to talk about four specific approaches for unleashing AI for product innovation.

To help us with that is our guest, Dr. Katie Trauth Taylor. She is the CEO and co-founder of Narratize AI, and she helps R&D transform their scattered knowledge into a competitive advantage. She has worked with NASA, Boeing, and other Fortune 500 companies to cut documentation time and speed products to market. Katie discovered that innovators are spending too much of their time just trying to communicate their ideas, and she built an AI platform to improve this. She holds a PhD from Purdue University and has published peer-reviewed research on innovation storytelling that’s reshaping how teams work.

Find out more about the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) and next year’s innovation conference.

Summary of Concepts Discussed for Product Managers

The Problem with Documentation:
Product teams spend roughly 70% of their time on documentation, reporting, and knowledge lookup instead of direct innovation. This significantly slows time to market.

AI as a Knowledge Capture Tool:
Katie turned to large language models to transform how product teams do documentation. AI can systematically prompt and capture insights, store tribal knowledge, and automate documentation customized to roles and project phases.

The Power of Storytelling:
Successful innovation relies on crafting compelling narratives, not just data. Five drivers for effective storytelling are empathy, engagement, alignment, evidence, and impact.

Best Practices for Leveraging AI in Product Teams:

1. Think Outside the Chatbot: AI tools are a knowledge-capture capability, not just a question-and-answer capability. Use AI to prompt and store deep organizational insights, not just answer questions. Narratize AI provides workflows for product innovation processes like Agile and Jobs-To-Be-Done.
2. Embrace AI Agents: Agents can provide proactive, role-specific updates (like regulatory changes or market intelligence) and work in the background.
3. Documentation or It Didn’t Happen: Accurate, human-reviewed documentation is crucial for knowledge management and competitive advantage.
4. Toward Product Portfolio Intelligence: With AI-enabled product knowledge hubs, organizations can now have real-time insights across portfolios, breaking silos and aiding strategic decisions.

Knowledge Management Revolution:
Capturing lessons learned and even past failures allows organizations to prevent repeating mistakes and leverage prior discoveries, especially as a significant portion of the workforce retires.

Actionable Insights for Product Managers:

• Building cross-functional relationships is vital. Don’t innovate in a silo.
• Portfolio intelligence can transform decision-making beyond traditional management by surfacing insights on demand.
• AI enables better onboarding, reduces redundant efforts, and future-proofs organizations as knowledge is no longer lost with employee turnover.

Useful Links

• Learn more about Narratize
• Check out the Narratize YouTube channel
• Connect with Katie on LinkedIn

Innovation Quote

“If it’s a truly disruptive innovation from a company, you can almost guarantee it wasn’t a straight A-to-B path that delivered the results. So as you recognize the success, recognize also the journey that got you there.” – Joel Schall

Application Questions

1. How much time does your team currently spend on documentation and communication versus actual product innovation?
2. In what ways could AI help you capture and surface tribal knowledge within your organization?
3. Which of the five storytelling drivers—empathy, engagement, alignment, evidence, impact—do you find hardest to implement in your presentations or pitches?
4. What concerns do you have about accuracy and review in using AI-generated documentation, and how might you address these?
5. How could implementing product knowledge hubs or AI agents change the way your team collaborates and makes decisions across your portfolio?

Bio

Katie Trauth Taylor is CEO and Cofounder of Narratize AI, a product intelligence and innovation platform empowering teams to bring products and discoveries to market faster, smarter, and with greater impact by eliminating inefficiencies, aligning teams, and preserving institutional knowledge. Katie is a growth-focused entrepreneur executive with 10+ years experience inspiring teams to design and deliver magnetic products, memorable experiences, and groundbreaking impacts. She has led strategic innovation narratives and served as a senior content strategist within fast-growth tech startups and the Fortune 500, including Boeing, NASA, Hershey, Sunoco, AAA, IFF, Dupont, Edgewell, Cincinnati Children’s, Argonne National Lab, Crossover Health, Parsley Health, Omada, Physera, US Dept of Veterans Affairs, Millennium Challenge Corporation, World Food Forum, and the United Nations. She believes that everyone can be an innovator–when empowered to share their bold ideas.

Thanks!

Thank you for taking the journey to product mastery and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below.

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