Kene Anoliefo: How to build context libraries and raise AI fluency | Product in Practice

Atlassian

Oct 22, 2025

Kene Anoliefo has led product and design at Google, Spotify, and Netflix. She founded Heard, an AI-powered user research platform, and is now building tools that help teams capture and structure institutional knowledge so both people and AI can produce consistently high-quality work.

We discuss:

The three Ps of AI adoption: people, process, and platform
Why most companies jump to platform tools whilst ignoring the people problem
Moving from gatekeepers to architects in product organisations
Context enablement: turning implicit knowledge into explicit AI inputs
The coordination tax and how AI changes team collaboration
Why AI is like a brilliant but clueless new team member
Building context libraries to 10x your AI output quality

Key takeaways:
Start with people, not platform tools. Most companies rush to buy AI tools whilst ignoring the deeper questions: Who am I in this AI era? What makes me valuable when AI can do parts of my job? Anxiety about AI is rooted in identity, not technology. Address the people layer first - help your team understand their evolving roles - before investing in new platforms.

Transform from gatekeepers to architects. Don't own user research, product strategy, or design - architect the principles and standards so anyone can do great work in those domains. With AI giving everyone superpowers, your value shifts from creating scarcity to enabling abundance. Make it an explicit team goal to help others do work that used to require specialists.

Context is your competitive advantage, not just data. AI trained on generic internet data produces generic output. Context libraries - structured repositories of your product strategy, design principles, customer segments, and research standards - help AI understand how your company specifically builds products. The investment in documenting this context has a multiplier effect on output quality.

AI is brilliant but clueless without your context. Think of AI as a talented new hire who needs onboarding. It has incredible capabilities but no understanding of your product, customers, or how your team works. Just like you'd explain these things to a new employee, you need to explicitly provide this context to AI tools through documentation optimised for machine reading.

Don't wait for permission to engage with AI. The biggest barrier isn't technical knowledge - it's mindset. You don't need to have worked at ML-first companies or taken AI courses. The cure for AI anxiety isn't trying to learn everything; it's starting with work you already love and asking how AI can make it 10-20% better. Focus on one thing, see results, then expand.

Chapters:
00:00: Introduction to Kene Anoliefo
01:00: Kene's journey from Spotify and Netflix to founding Heard
04:00: Early interest in AI and building AI-powered research tools
07:00: Overcoming AI anxiety and intimidation
10:00: The three Ps framework: people, process, and platform
14:00: Why feelings matter more than tools in AI adoption
15:00: The coordination tax and new team dynamics
18:00: Gatekeeping vs enabling in the AI era
20:00: Context enablement and knowledge architecture
23:00: AI as a brilliant but clueless team member
26:00: Career advice: take more shots on goal
28:00: Making context enablement practical and actionable
30:00: Demo: Building context libraries for AI
33:00: Creating user research context libraries
36:00: Using AI to generate context documentation
39:00: Before and after: brainstorming without context
42:00: The multiplier effect of context investment
45:00: Context engineering as the next frontier
48:00: Design context libraries and component repos
51:00: Prototyping with V0 using pre-built contexts
56:00: Democratising product ideas across the organisation
59:00: Lightning round: staying sharp in the AI era
01:01:00: Desert island books and dishes
01:04:00: Final advice and where to find Kene

Where to find Kene Anoliefo:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kene-anoliefo-68a8b714/
Website: https://kene.ai

Where to find Axel:
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/axelsooriah
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/axelsooriah/

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