Product Management
Product Management
About the Program
The Product Management Certificate Program is a five-day, immersive, in-person experience. Before you arrive, we include a six week online component, including customized video lectures and readings, discussions with your new classmates, colleague surveys, exercises, and a simulation game.
The program combines the latest in Design Thinking with the best of the Berkeley Haas MBA program, to prepare you for your role: understanding your customers’ environment, designing customer experiences, boosting your team’s performance, and mobilizing your organization. Dr. Sara Beckman, who has led the program for thirteen years, continually updates the program to reflect the latest research. Along with all program faculty, she maintains a consulting practice, to stay up-to-date on current issues facing companies like yours.
*Note: The May 2019 iteration will be held in Berkeley, California. September 2019 iteration will be held in Palo Alto, California.
Program Dates
The May and November programs are held in Berkeley, California. The September program is held at the Mitchell Park Community Center in Palo Alto, CA.
Program Topics
The Product Management program curriculum covers the following topics:
- Introducing the Berkeley Haas Innovation Model
- Assess and understand your business’s innovation capabilities
- Plan improvements to your innovation capabilities
- Meet, teach, and learn from your classmates
- Create meaningful insights into your business and action plans to implement when you return to work
- Create ongoing mutual coaching relationships
- Learn to use the product management canvas to understand the context for your product and the dynamics of your business over time.
- Clarify your product management canvas with a particular focus on your value proposition and customer segment definitions relative to your competitors
- Learn to resist feature lists and embrace value creation for customers
- Innovating Business Models
- Use the product management canvas
- Tools for generating alternative business models
- Analyze the impact of trends on your business model
- Develop a deeper understanding of customer and user needs through ethnography
- Generate and present customer insights for your product team
- Use insights to create better customer experiences
- Perform or commission research that drives meaningful business decisions
- Appropriate research methods for various questions at hand
- Key performance indicators and effective metrics
- How price communicates value to the customer
- Develop a comprehensive and responsive pricing strategy
- Estimate customers willingness to pay
- Analyze the role of costs, customer price sensitivity, and competition on pricing
- Segmentation techniques and their fundamental differences
- Experiment with new customer segmentation schemes
- Evaluate market segments to ensure they are measurable, accessible, differentiable, substantial, and actionable
- Assess the effects of alternative segmentation schemes on your business model canvas
- Use the Team Dynamics Assessment to discover how your team can work better together
- Approaches to better manage your product team
- Cultivate psychological safety (highly correlated to effectiveness when the work has a high uncertainty and interdependence)
- Techniques for collaborative and competitive negotiations
- Tools to enhance your influence
- Neutralize negotiation gambits and getting the process quickly back on track
- Assess, document, and improve your team’s decision-making process
- The art of self-disruption: preserve your business by embracing disruptive products (that aren’t yours)
- Product adoption curves: identify where your product falls on the curve and what that means for future product decisions
- Product lifecycle management and balancing the needs of new markets against that of serving your existing customers
- The latest research on product roadmaps and adding customer experience design as a grounding element for building roadmaps
- Portfolio Management Challenges
- Uncover and create a compelling customer story
- Storytelling techniques that generate excitement and buy-in
- Evaluating and telling your story
Who It's For
- Product Managers, Directors and Vice Presidents of Product Management
- Project and Program Managers
- Engineers looking to move into or interfacing with Product Management
- General Managers who manage product portfolios and corporate strategy
Cost & Features
- Five-day in-person program at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business campus
- World-renowned Berkeley Haas and Executive Education Faculty
- Training from industry experts in design thinking, customer-focused design & insights, competitive strategy, business model generation, influence without authority, team management, and pricing
- Organization-specific Innovation Capabilities Report
- Hands-on exercises and simulations to ensure that knowledge gets put to work in your organization
- Peer coaching from industry experts that have complementary backgrounds to yours
- Exclusive networking opportunities
- Access to the program alumni community
- Product Management Certificate of Completion
A UC Berkeley Certificate of Business Excellence gives individuals the opportunity to create a personal plan of study structured by our four academic pillars. Participants will earn a mark of distinction with certification from a world-class university, and enjoy the flexibility of completing the program in up to three years.
"An amazing learning experience. I gelled incredibly well with ... my team and made close friends. I feel more prepared than ever for my duties as a Product Manager. I didn't do my MBA at Haas, but this would be the closest thing."
- Product Manager, FileMaker Inc."The program was a fantastic experience that was well worth the investment. This course will make a difference!"
- Product Line Manager, Chevron Corporation"The program logistics were top notch and the instructors were amazing. In just a few days, they covered all the topics relevant to product management, provided foundational principals, technologies, and examples, and introduced academic and industry references.”
- EVP Engineering, ByAllAccounts"The UC Berkeley Product Management Program was a big wake-up call for me. It was the refresher I needed and has been invaluable in my recent jump from a big corporation to a startup. I'm already incorporating everything I learned into my new position."
- VP Operations, Osterhout Design Group"UC Berkeley's Product Management Program completely transformed my ideas for how I will approach our new products."
- Product Manager, The Christian Science MonitorInterested in customizing this program for your organization?
Faculty
Learn More
Brochure
Learn more about the program curriculum and the Product Management learning experience.
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Insights & News
Dr. Sara Beckman teaches new product development and manufacturing and operations management at the University of California’s Haas School of Business. Dr. Beckman is the Program Director for the UC Berkeley Executive Education program, Product Management
InFocus Podcast with Dr. Sara Beckman. Dr. Beckman is the Program Director for the UC Berkeley Executive Education program, Product Management.Dr.
Dr. Sara Beckman discusses design thinking, merging design and product development, creating transformative customer experiences and more in this InFocus Podcast