A great post by Brad Feld:

I’ve come to appreciate the important of a single person in the company owning the UX with this person being the arbiter of discussion around how to implement the UX. There’s nothing wrong with lots of different perspectives, but a single mind has to own it, synthesize it, and dictate the philosophy. But first, they have to understand the difference between UI and UX, and – more importantly – the product-oriented execs who approach things from an engineering perspective need to understand this.

Product Management (or Product Ownership, in Agile terms) has historically been the domain of Marketing. These days, more than ever, the Product often is the marketing and the stewardship for product development needs to be in the hands of someone completely obsessed with the experience of the user. Anyone who disagrees apparently missed about 15 years of Apple becoming the biggest company in the world.