It’s Time to Rethink Product Teams
What 776 professionals taught us about how AI is changing the shape of work.
In March, a research study quietly dropped that every product leader should read.
Procter & Gamble and Wharton School researchers ran one of the largest real-world AI experiments to date - 776 professionals, real world tasks, and GPT-4 in the mix.
The conclusion? Individual + AI matched teams. And teams + AI outperformed everyone else.
And if you’re building products today, it’s time to rethink how you leverage AI.
What the Research Found
The study gave 776 professionals a series of real product challenges - market entry, launch planning, pricing strategy - and tested their performance with and without access to GPT-4.
Here’s what stood out:
Individuals + AI matched full teams. Solo contributors using GPT-4 delivered work on par with two-person teams.
Teams + AI outperformed everyone. The best results didn’t come from humans or AI alone. But from Human AI collaboration.
AI bridged skill gaps. Commercial and R&D folks started producing similar, more balanced results. AI flattened domain silos.
Work got faster and less stressful. Tasks were completed 12–16% faster, with users reporting better emotional experience overall.
The Strategic Implications for Product Organizations
This research signals three critical shifts that will determine which product organizations dominate the next competitive cycle:
1. Organizational Leverage Has Fundamentally Changed
The traditional product scaling model, more people, more budget, more specialists, is being disrupted. Organizations that master Human AI collaboration will outperform larger, traditionally-structured teams.
This creates both an opportunity and a threat. Your smaller, AI-first product organization can now compete with historically better-resourced competitors. But it also means well-funded competitors who move faster on AI fluency will rapidly outpace you.
2. Product Team Architecture Needs Redesign
The study suggests optimal product teams may soon include AI as a permanent team member, not just a tool. This requires rethinking fundamental questions:
How do you augment your existing team with AI? And more importantly, make them fluent on using AI? Drive deeper adoption?
What does the product development process look like, with AI being in front and center? Who owns and drive this transformation?
How do you optimize both human skills and AI capabilities, to build better products?
How do you balance human headcount with AI capability investments?
3. Core Product Capabilities Are Being Redefined
AI isn't just accelerating existing workflows, it's making previously impossible approaches viable:
Idea to prototype in a week
Prototype to live testing in two
Playing war games against your digital competitor
Sparring with a digital twin to make smarter decisions
Soliciting feedback from synthetic users
Organizations that view AI as productivity tooling will miss the bigger transformation: entirely new ways of building products are becoming possible.
The Competitive Window
We're in the early phases of this shift, which creates both opportunity and urgency.
Organizations that establish AI first product development capabilities now will build advantages that will become increasingly difficult to catch up to.
The research is clear: product organizations that don't integrate AI will find themselves at a structural disadvantage.
The question is no longer whether this transformation will happen, it's whether you'll lead it or be disrupted by it.
The window for establishing this advantage is open, but closing rapidly.
AI is Reshaping Product Management. What’s Your Strategy?
CPOs who act now are already seeing:
20%+ productivity gains
Improved time to market
Competitive differentiation
Curious what this might look like for your org.? Let’s chat.