CDO Matters Podcast CDO Matters Ep. 95 | Product Thinking, Platform Strategy, and the Future of AI Governance
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Feb 21, 2026 Karthik Ravindran, GM for go-to-market for Data and AI at Microsoft with decades in data platform and governance. He discusses treating data as durable products, melding ontologies and knowledge graphs for context, and stitching work graphs to activate AI in the flow of work. He also covers platform strategy like OneLake, scaling GenAI beyond POCs, and reskilling roles for human-plus-AI workflows.
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Treat Data As Durable Products
- Data should be treated as durable products, not time-bound projects, with SLAs and persona-focused design.
- Karthik says product thinking makes data discoverable, usable, and composable across value chains.
Prioritize People Over Tech
- Do prioritize people, culture, and operating model changes over pure technology when driving a data program.
- Karthik advises shifting COEs from doing everything to enabling domain teams with guardrails.
Metadata Unlocks Multimodal Context
- Knowledge graphs and rich metadata link structured and unstructured modalities to create actionable context.
- Karthik highlights that combining work graph and data graph activates AI in the flow of work.