Top 21 Product Management Thought Leaders To Follow In 2026

The product management thought leaders worth following aren't the loudest voices—they're the ones shaping how you think about strategy, discovery, and delivery. I've curated the voices that offer real, field-tested perspectives. Whether you're navigating stakeholder chaos or rethinking your roadmap, these are the people whose ideas will sharpen your product thinking.

Top 21 Product Management Thought Leaders

Below are the profiles of the top product management thought leaders, covering who they are and the impact they’ve made in this space.

Marty Cagan

Partner at Silicon Valley Product Group

San Francisco Bay Area, United States

Focus area:

#Product strategy#Product operating model#Empowered teams#Product leadership

Marty Cagan is a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group and author who previously held executive product roles at eBay, Netscape, Continuus, and HP throughout his long technology career. Through Inspired, Empowered, and Transformed, Cagan has shaped how product organizations approach discovery, empowered teams, leadership, and the product operating model. His work at SVPG draws on executive experience to help companies build products customers value and strengthen how product teams operate.

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Teresa Torres

Product Discovery Author & Coach

Bend, United States

Focus area:

#Continuous discovery#Customer research#Product discovery#Experimentation

Teresa Torres is a product discovery coach, author, and speaker who leads Product Talk and teaches product teams a structured approach to continuous discovery and customer-informed decisions. Torres wrote Continuous Discovery Habits and developed practical methods such as opportunity solution trees and continuous interviewing. Her work helps product teams make discovery an ongoing habit rather than a phase, grounding decisions in customer evidence and frequent learning.

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Melissa Perri

Founder & Lead Instructor at Product Institute

United States

Focus area:

#Product strategy#Product leadership#Product operations#Product operating models

Melissa Perri is founder and lead instructor at Product Institute, a product advisor and former Harvard Business School instructor, and author of Escaping the Build Trap and Product Operations. Perri’s work centers on moving organizations from output to outcomes. Through advising, education, and writing, she addresses product strategy, operating models, product operations, and executive leadership, giving product leaders practical ways to build organizations that create customer and business value.

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Martin Eriksson

Product Leader, Author & Advisor

London, United Kingdom

Focus area:

#Product strategy#Product leadership#Decision-making#Product communities

Martin Eriksson founded ProductTank, co-founded Mind the Product, and co-authored Product Leadership. His product career spans operating roles, investing, advising, and community building. Eriksson helped build one of product management’s largest professional communities and has spent decades examining how product leaders make decisions. His work on product strategy, leadership, and decision-making connects community-building experience with hands-on operating and advisory perspectives.

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Petra Wille

Product Leadership Coach & Author

Hamburg, Germany

Focus area:

#Product leadership#People development#Product culture#Coaching

Petra Wille is an independent product leadership coach and author of Strong Product People and Strong Product Communities, with a career spanning product management, coaching, and leadership. Wille created the Product Leadership Wheel and other tools for developing product managers and leaders. Her coaching and writing focus on people development, empowered teams, product culture, and leadership craft, making talent development a central part of strong product organizations.

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Dan Olsen

Product Management and AI Trainer & Consultant

Silicon Valley, United States

Focus area:

#Product-market fit#Lean product#AI workflows#Product strategy

Dan Olsen is a product management and AI trainer, consultant, and author of The Lean Product Playbook, with earlier product leadership experience at Intuit and several technology startups. Olsen’s Lean Product Process gives teams a structured path toward product-market fit. His newer AI training applies tools such as AI prototyping and task automation to product workflows, while keeping strategy, prioritization, customer discovery, and judgment at the center of strong product work.

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Ken Norton

Executive Coach for Product Leaders

San Francisco, United States

Focus area:

#Product leadership#Executive coaching#Leadership development#Product strategy

Ken Norton is an executive coach for product leaders and a former Google product leader and GV partner, with experience spanning Google Docs, Calendar, Mobile Maps, startups, and venture.

Norton combines product operating experience with executive coaching for CPOs, founders, and technology leaders. His writing and coaching explore product leadership, organizational complexity, emotional intelligence, and strategic thinking as leaders scale themselves and their teams.

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Roman Pichler

Product Management Author & Coach

Wendover, United Kingdom

Focus area:

#Product strategy#Product leadership#Product roadmaps#Agile product management

Roman Pichler is a product management expert, author, coach, and advisor whose work spans product strategy, leadership, agility, and nearly two decades of advising product organizations.

Pichler created widely used tools including the Product Vision Board, GO Product Roadmap, and Strategy Stack. His books, articles, videos, and coaching give product leaders practical methods for connecting vision, strategy, roadmaps, outcomes, and leadership.

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Radhika Dutt

Product Strategy Author & Consultant

Boston, United States

Focus area:

#Product strategy#Vision-driven innovation#Product ethics#Organizational change

Radhika Dutt is an author, entrepreneur, and product leader whose career spans startups and industries from media and telecom to robotics, government, consumer products, and consulting. In Radical Product Thinking, Dutt presents a vision-driven methodology for moving beyond reactive iteration and short-term metrics. Her work links vision, strategy, prioritization, measurement, and culture, offering product leaders a systematic way to build for meaningful long-term impact.

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Itamar Gilad

Product Management Coach & Author

Barcelona, Spain

Focus area:

#Evidence-guided product#Product strategy#Prioritization#Product discovery

Itamar Gilad is a product management coach, author, and speaker with more than two decades of product and engineering experience, including senior roles at Google, Microsoft, and startups. Gilad created the GIST framework and Confidence Meter and wrote Evidence-Guided. He helps teams replace opinion-driven product development with goals, evidence, rapid learning, and adaptive planning, bringing product strategy and discovery into a coherent decision system.

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Janna Bastow

Product Leadership Coach & Co-founder of ProdPad and Mind the Product

Brighton, United Kingdom

Focus area:

#Product roadmaps#Product strategy#Product discovery#Product leadership

Janna Bastow is a product leadership coach and entrepreneur who co-founded ProdPad and Mind the Product, helped build a global product community, and created the Now-Next-Later roadmap format.

Bastow’s work challenges feature-heavy, date-driven roadmaps in favor of outcome-oriented product planning. Through coaching, community building, and writing, she has helped popularize lean roadmapping, product discovery, and more flexible ways to communicate product direction.

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Ravi Mehta

Product Strategy Advisor & Investor

Los Angeles, United States

Focus area:

#Product strategy#Product leadership#Consumer technology#AI strategy

Ravi Mehta is a product leader, advisor, and investor who held senior product roles at Tinder, Facebook, and Tripadvisor and now advises consumer and AI companies on strategy and growth.

Mehta co-created the Product Strategy Stack, a framework connecting company mission and strategy to product strategy, roadmaps, and goals. His advisory work and teaching focus on strategic clarity, product leadership, growth, and building stronger product organizations.

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Rich Mironov

CEO/Interim Product Management Executive

United States

Focus area:

#Product leadership#B2B product strategy#Executive coaching#Organizational design

Rich Mironov is CEO of Mironov Consulting and an interim product management executive whose career includes repeated interim VP Product and CPO roles, startups, consulting, and coaching.

Mironov parachutes into software companies as an interim product executive and coaches senior product leaders, particularly in B2B and enterprise software. His writing and advisory work explore organizational design, executive alignment, revenue pressures, and the “language of money” product leaders need to navigate.

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Gibson Biddle

Product Leadership Coach & Educator

Bend, United States

Focus area:

#Product strategy#Product leadership#Consumer products#Company culture

Gibson Biddle is a product leadership coach, teacher, speaker, and advisor. He previously served as VP of Product at Netflix and Chief Product Officer at Chegg, after earlier product roles.

Biddle teaches product strategy through practical models, case studies, and workshops shaped by his operating experience. His work explores consumer science, product leadership, company culture, and how teams connect strategy to measurable product choices.

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David Pereira

Product Coach, Advisor & Author

Germany

Focus area:

#Product strategy#Product discovery#Outcome-driven teams#Product operating models

David Pereira is a product coach, advisor, speaker, and author of Untrapping Product Teams, with a career spanning software engineering, product management, executive leadership, and teaching. Pereira focuses on the systems that trap teams in roadmaps, output, and stakeholder-driven delivery. His writing, workshops, and advisory work emphasize product strategy, discovery, outcomes, and operating models that help teams make value creation intentional.

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Tim Herbig

Product Management Coach, Author, and Speaker

Hamburg, Germany

Focus area:

#Product strategy#Product discovery#Product OKRs#Evidence-based decisions

Tim Herbig is a product management coach, author, and speaker who helps product teams connect strategy, goals, and discovery to make evidence-based decisions and meaningful progress at work. Herbig’s work connects product strategy, OKRs, and discovery rather than treating them as separate practices. Through Real Progress, coaching, courses, and speaking, he helps teams translate strategy into goals, reduce decision risk, and use discovery to make measurable progress toward outcomes.

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Lenny Rachitsky

Product Writer, Host & Investor

United States

Focus area:

#Product management#Growth#Product leadership#Career development

Lenny Rachitsky is a writer, podcast host, and angel investor who publishes Lenny’s Newsletter and hosts Lenny’s Podcast, drawing on his earlier product management experience at Airbnb. Rachitsky turns interviews, research, and operator experience into practical guidance on product management, growth, careers, and leadership. His newsletter and podcast give product professionals access to tactics and decision frameworks from experienced builders across the technology industry.

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Aakash Gupta

Product & Growth Writer

Los Angeles, United States

Focus area:

#Product management#AI product management#Growth strategy#Product careers

Aakash Gupta is a product and growth writer, podcast host, and former product executive. He led growth and product work at thredUP, Affirm, Apollo.io, and other fast-growing technology firms. Through Product Growth, AI-focused writing, and The Growth Podcast, Gupta publishes tactical analysis on product management, growth, careers, and AI. His work combines operator experience with practitioner interviews to translate changing product practices into concrete guidance.

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Leah Tharin

Growth Executive & Advisor

Switzerland

Focus area:

#Product-led growth#Growth strategy#Go-to-market#Organizational scaling

Leah Tharin is a growth executive, board member, advisor, and writer with decades of technology experience spanning B2B SaaS, product-led growth, go-to-market strategy, and organizational scaling. Tharin writes Leah’s ProducTea and advises leadership teams on product-led growth, go-to-market, product-market fit, and scaling. Her work connects product decisions to acquisition, retention, monetization, and organizational design, with a strong emphasis on commercial outcomes.

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Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia

CEO at Product School

San Francisco Bay Area, United States

Focus area:

#Product leadership#Product education#AI product management#Product community

Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia is CEO of Product School, an entrepreneur and educator. He built a global product learning community, produces ProductCon, and hosts The Product Podcast. Through Product School, ProductCon, and The Product Podcast, Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia convenes product executives and practitioners around modern product management. His work increasingly explores AI-enabled product building while continuing to focus on product leadership, education, and community.

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Ant Murphy

Product Coach & Founder

Sydney, Australia

Focus area:

#Product strategy#Product discovery#Product leadership#Product coaching

Ant Murphy is a product coach, founder, and educator who created Product Pathways after a career leading product groups, building companies, and coaching product professionals across technology.

Murphy coaches product managers, leaders, and founders on product strategy, discovery, and leadership. His work emphasizes practical tools that hold up outside idealized product-led environments, drawing on operating, coaching, and company-building experience.

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Selection Methodology

I selected the leaders on this list based on their relevance, demonstrated expertise and impact, professional credibility, and ongoing contributions to product management.

I look for evidence such as leading meaningful initiatives, delivering notable organizational results, developing influential ideas or practices, publishing research or educational resources, speaking, teaching, and contributing to the broader field.

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Top 21 Product Management Thought Leaders To Follow In 2026