Product Ideation, Design, and Management

Product management is one of the fastest growing and most lucrative jobs available today. Companies have awoken to the desperate need for product managers to create products that customers love, that integrate design, functionality, and business solutions. In our course, we define the fundamentals of product management and why this role is so coveted as a launch pad for future CEOs and startup founders. To be effective, product managers need a clear understanding of their jobs and duties. They also need a clear understanding of the required skills and competencies. An appreciation of these roles, responsibilities, skills, and capabilities is also beneficial for stakeholders and team members who collaborate with product managers. This course investigates the framework for success in product management by defining the product manager’s position in an organization and the key responsibilities. We will examine the skills and competencies most critical to carrying out those responsibilities. To further improve your understanding of product management, we will discuss how product managers engage with the product team and stakeholders to create and manage successful products. Product managers must also know how to establish, organize, and lead a team. They must know the typical product development life cycle and be able to select the right development methodology for the product and the target market. To meet these challenges to product team leadership, we will consider the phases of product development and the roles that product managers play in each step. We’ll examine a variety of team structures and product development methodologies, and the importance of establishing a team charter. Lastly, we will also explore the opportunities and challenges of market development and commercialization. We’ll provide an orientation to key marketing concepts critical to developing and commercializing innovative products and services.

For product leaders, creating new new products and improving existing products are imperatives for success. Maturing technologies and aging product portfolios are requiring companies to discover, develop, and deliver products that customers love. This course is focused on the first step of this journey, identifying and evaluating new product opportunities. This course is primarily aimed at professionals who are inspired, or tasked, to develop and lead products. This include aspiring and active product managers, product designers, product developers, and others in the product arena. This course is also valuable to anyone interested in how to developing innovative ideas for new products. We will focus on four important areas to develop and enhance your capabilities as a product leader: • Introducing the skills for identifying and analyzing entrepreneurial ideas for new or improved products; • Examining entrepreneurial thinking within yourself and your colleagues with an awareness of entrepreneurial mindset, entrepreneurial motivations, and entrepreneurial behaviors; • Cultivating seeing entrepreneurially within yourself and your colleagues with attention to industry conditions, industry status, macroeconomic change, and competition; and • Championing acting entrepreneurially within the corporate environment with an understanding of value innovation and opportunity identification.

This course is for aspiring or active product leaders who wants to understand how to secure and manage funding for their activities. We will demystify key accounting and financing concepts to give product leaders a guide to developing the business case for their ideas, and securing funding to translate ideas into reality. This course focuses on four key areas: • Learning the fundamentals and how to create financial statements for new ventures within the corporate environment; • Examining valuation techniques for understanding how to assess and grow the value of the corporate venture; • Exploring the different sources of internal and external financing for the corporate venture; and • Applying lessons learned in the course to structure a funding deal and pitch the corporate venture.

Designing the customer and user experience is essential to creating great products today. Gone is the old paradigm of “form follows function” model of design. The process must be iterative and follow the best product design and development processes. While designing a great user experience can be a lengthy and expensive process, there are approaches to doing it faster and smarter, without compromising results. This essential product management course explains key design thinking principles around personas, story mapping, and prototyping. Product managers need to know and appreciate product designer tools and processes. By combining these principles with good scrum processes, you’ll learn to create great products that don’t sacrifice design for functionality or feasibility. This course enables students to transition from ideas to prototyping and concept testing of their products and services. Students learn how best to effectively translate ideas into marketable offerings so that the best product and service ideas are harnessed and create real value for customers and the organization. Emphasis is placed on an integrated and interdisciplinary approach to engineering design, concurrent engineering, design for manufacturing, industrial design, and the business of new product development. Topics include design methods, modeling and simulation, material and manufacturing process selection, platform and modular design, mass customization, planning and scheduling.