How can product managers evolve from feature executors to strategic business leaders? In this podcast hosted by Jonathan Ozeran, Walmart Product Lead Ridhima Arora will be speaking on transforming product management with AI and strategic thinking. Ridhima shares her extensive experience scaling digital platforms across Amazon and Walmart, offering insights into customer-obsessed product development, leveraging AI technologies, and driving meaningful business impact.
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Show Notes
- Product Management has evolved from feature execution to strategic business leadership
- Customer obsession is critical – understanding emotional user journeys beyond data points
- Platform-led thinking trumps feature-focused development
- AI is transforming product management by automating insights and reducing mundane work
- Great product managers focus on defining the right problems before solution building
- Storytelling and communication are essential skills for product leadership
- Data-driven decision making must be balanced with strategic intuition
- The “now, next, later” framework helps prioritize product investments
- Cross-functional collaboration is key to successful product scaling
- Voice of Customer research requires multiple qualitative and quantitative approaches
- Avoid over-engineering by validating demand before complex solutions
- Product managers should lead without waiting for a formal leadership title
- Gen AI can help with competitive analysis, PRD drafting, and hypothesis generation
- Strategic thinking involves anticipating industry trends and proactively exploring opportunities
- Mentoring junior team members is crucial for leadership development
- Product success requires understanding both customer needs and business outcomes
- Continuous learning and adaptability are essential in rapidly changing tech landscapes
- Internal storytelling and stakeholder buy-in are as important as external product narratives
- AI tools should augment human decision-making, not replace strategic thinking
- Future product leaders must combine customer obsession, data-driven insights, and AI-powered innovation
About the speaker
Ridhima is a dynamic product management leader with extensive experience in e-commerce, having worked at both Walmart and Amazon. She currently serves as a Product Lead in Discovery at Walmart eCommerce, where she leads a team of Product Managers overseeing strategic products like Page Modernization, Preorder, Lists & Registries, My Items, Sustainability, and Shoppable Content. Ridhima excels at fostering innovation and rapid experimentation, leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as AI to drive growth and optimize customer experiences. Known for her compassionate leadership and customer-obsessed approach, she ensures the customer is always at the center of her team’s decision-making.
About the host
Jonathan is a product and operations leader, company builder, investor and advisor. He has assembled, scaled and led product, design, software engineering, hardware engineering and machine learning teams across numerous financing stages (pre-seed through Series G).