Francesca Cortesi: Together, how? On collaboration, trust, and the mess in between
Product is a team sport. But even with talent, practice, and great knowledge of the game, you sometimes lose.
In this talk, Francesca Cortesi reflects on 15+ years of product leadership across startups, scale-ups, and enterprise to explore why effective collaboration remains one of the hardest things to get right, even when you know exactly what it takes.
Across wins, losses, and everything in between, she has come to the same conclusion every time: collaboration lives or dies on trust and aligned goals. Not as a framework, but as living, messy, deeply human dynamics that no blueprint can fully capture.
This is not a talk about theory. It's an honest exploration of what collaboration actually looks like in the real world — when it works, when it doesn't, and what you can do when it falls apart. Because it is in overcoming the friction that we find the greatest impact.