AI allows us to do so many new things, both as individuals and within our products.

It is mind-blowing how things that seemed impossible before are now simply our reality.

With this huge potential, it sometimes looks like AI is the obvious answer to everything.

But it isn’t always so, and even when it is, you are now competing with other AI solutions everywhere.

This is the third article in a series on product strategy in the AI era. The first focused on why strategy matters now more than ever. The second looked at how AI reshapes the problem space. Now it’s time to talk about the solution and the new strategic bar for choosing yours.

Let’s dive in.

The Solution Is Not Your Product

Before we talk about how AI changes the solution space, we need to get clear on what “solution” actually means. It’s not your product. It’s not your features. It’s not the tech stack you’re using.

Your solution is your approach to solving the problem and the principles that would make it a success.

For example, if the problem is “help your customers get faster from point A to point B,” there are many possible solutions you could come up with: a car, a scooter, a plane, or even a navigation app. Each of these reflects a different approach to the same overall need (although each solves a specific variant of the bigger problem). Each potential solution comes with its own logic, constraints, trade-offs, and worldview.

The product is how that solution comes to life. In our example, let’s say that our solution is a car. Specific cars (and there are many!) are the products that implement that solution as an approach.

This distinction matters because when you introduce AI into the mix, it’s not just another layer of functionality. It can fundamentally change the type of solution you offer. Or it can tempt you to default to a trendy but misaligned one.

AI Isn’t Always the Solution

Just because you can do something with AI doesn’t mean you should. The fact that AI is powerful or trending isn’t enough. Your job as a product leader is to make a clear case for why AI is the right approach for this particular problem, in this particular context.

This is one of the strengths of the Product Circuit Model – that it allows you to think and justify the solution separately from the problem and the product. This thinking creates clarity and highlights the value you really bring to the table. 

With AI in the game, it’s no different.

To explain why AI is the right approach, you shouldn’t talk about what you do. Instead, you should explain where traditional approaches have failed and why AI should succeed. To capture the value, ask yourself what your customers can achieve with your new approach that they couldn’t have before.

Without good answers to these, it will be very difficult to focus on the right things and prioritize the million things you can do, simply because you don’t know what the right things are.

Many teams fall into the trap of assuming that customers want “AI” in the same way they used to want “mobile” or “cloud.” But customers rarely care about the technology itself. They care about the outcome. If you can explain your approach without saying the word “AI” once, that’s a win.

Why Generic AI Is Not Enough

If you’ve done a good job answering the previous question – why AI is the right solution here, you are now facing a new challenge in the form of existing generic AI solutions.

On the one hand, you must be able to explain why generic AI solutions aren’t enough and won’t do the trick (or they’ll use them instead of your product). 

On the other hand, if your customers weren’t trying to throw generic AI on the problem before they talked to you, it’s also a problem, because it usually means one of two things: 

Either the problem is not painful enough for them, or they don’t see AI as the solution.

Both are problematic.

So you don’t need to be afraid of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other fellows – you want to talk to people who have already tried them and saw they weren’t doing the job. And you must be able to explain, on paper or slides first, why you are different and why your approach wins.

Only then does it come down to your actual product, and there are strategic challenges there too. I’ll write about them next week, so stay tuned.