Successful AI Product Creation

Acknowledgments

To the pioneering researchers and industry practitioners whose work laid the foundation for AI product creation. Their contributions have profoundly shaped both the theory and practice discussed in this book.

To the esteemed faculty at the University of Southern California (USC), whose probing inquiries and rigorous scholarship have exposed the frontiers of our understanding. To my inquisitive students, whose thoughtful questions revealed the challenges we face, and to my dedicated team and peers, whose unwavering support and insightful critiques have pushed me to strive for excellence.

A special thanks to Jia Li and Ted Shelton for their forewords, reinforcing the significance of structured AI product creation and its role in transforming industries. I am deeply grateful to industry leaders, AI experts, product executives, and academics—Pascal Bornet, Noah Askin, Jim Berardone, Mac Gainor, Alan Cheslow, Ariel Kedem, Bhushan Suryavanshi, Mary Shao, Charanya “CK” Kannan, Natalie Gil, Niki Khokale, Jai Rawat, and many others—for their belief in this book’s mission and their invaluable insights.

This book emerged from a vision to bring clarity to the complex landscape of AI product creation, drawing inspiration from Steve Blank’s The Four Steps to the Epiphany. A special acknowledgment goes to Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma, whose framework of disruptive innovation provides a critical lens for comparing AI product creation models in one chapter of ...