Boston University Archives

About this course

Strong product management drives successful business model implementation. Learn about the key decisions, underlying tradeoffs, and implementation decisions needed for each phase of the product life and master business and organizational logic to ensure product success in the marketplace.

In this course, part of the Digital Product Management MicroMasters program, you will be introduced to key frameworks for decision-making based on both economic and organizational considerations. These frameworks inform a rising product manager on how to:

use customer co-creation and understanding of their needs to become a “champion” for user-centric development in digital technology.
set up and manage specific work flows (e.g. either lean, agile or stage gate development tasks) that result in timely launch and upgrades of products.
use a data-and metrics-driven approach to make product life cycle decisions including pricing, versioning, maintenance, helpdesks and end of life.
shape the direction of the product based on experimentation and system design thinking by learning from product roadmaps, competitive considerations, and allied evolution of demand in digital markets.

Caveat: This is not a course on software development, architecture or product marketing. The role of a product manager is to work with these functions effectively, such that the interests of a product (e.g., its profitability) and its customers are best served. Thus, the perspectives and skills covered in this course are integrative and allied with decision-making in their orientation.

What you’ll learn

Product line planning and road mapping alternatives
Idea generation, customer need assessment, co-creation, definition and validation of minimal viable product (MVP) and allied set up of requirement documents
Alternative approaches for lean, agile and waterfall development, along with the tools for assessing task, project and business risks (and risk mitigation strategies) at scrums or at stage gates.
How to launch a product and create a go-to-market strategy to champion your product.
Performance Management: how to take ownership of product related profit (or loss) over various life cycle stages; how to track and optimize system performance metrics while organizing social media and third party data towards performance optimization

Secondary school (high school) algebra; basic mathematics concepts
Backgroundin three areas:
- Project and process (operations) management concepts
- Marketing concepts
- Software engineering concepts

Learners may develop background in these three areas either through on the job exposure or by auditing 3rd or 4th year university level or online courses before taking DI503.

Meet Your Instructors

Nitin R. Joglekar

Associate Professor of Operations and Technology Management at Boston University

Nitin R. Joglekar is on the faculty at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. His interests involve Digital Product Management Thinking (DPMT), deployment of analytics and machine learning techniques in innovation processes, and digitization & public policy issues in global supply chains. In addition to his academic career, he has overseen product management and supply chain implantations at established firms, and founded a software startup. He holds degrees in engineering from IIT, Memorial University, and MIT. He also holds a doctorate in management science from the MIT Sloan School. Professor Joglekar is the department editor for Technology, Innovation Management, and Entrepreneurship at IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. He is also a department editor for industry studies and public policy at Production and Operations Management.

Varun Nagaraj

Questrom Digital Learning and Innovation Fellow at Boston University

Varun Nagaraj is a Digital Learning and Innovation Fellow at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, and a PhD candidate and Design and Innovation Fellow at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. Varun has been a product manager, consulted to product managers on strategy and cycle time excellence while at PRTM management consulting (now PwC), and hired and mentored product managers in his roles as VP of Product Management and CEO in the fields of networking, security, data center virtualization, medical instrumentation, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Varun holds degrees in electrical and computer engineering from IIT Bombay and North Carolina State University in Raleigh, and an MBA from Boston University.

About this course

Virtually all managerial and leadership positions in the digital economy increasingly rely on data-driven decision making. Recent studies have shown companies who adopt “Data-Driven Decision Management” achieve significant productivity gains over other firms.

Having a solid grasp of the end-to-end process of making effective decisions with data will give you an edge, both in performing such analyses yourself, as well as in effectively managing teams of business analysts and data scientists.

In this course, part of both the Digital Leadership and Digital Product Management MicroMasters® programs, you will learn the tools and techniques to become a data-driven or “evidence-based” manager.

You will learn the process of reframing a business question as a data question, reasoning about what data might be of assistance and how to obtain it, integrating and cleaning the data, performing the analysis, deriving and communicating insights from the analysis, and building the managerial culture to operate in this way and create competitive advantages from enterprise data.

This course is unique in the sense that it aims squarely at the needs of a manager in an analytically focused enterprise by providing both a hands-on introduction to the concepts, methods and processes of business analytics as well as an introduction to the use of analytics as the basis for creating a competitive advantage.

Software Requirements

Completion of this course requires the use of Microsoft Power BI Desktop. Unfortunately, there is currently no version of Power BI Desktop for macOS or Linux operating systems. We encourage learners to secure access to a Windows environment, but if that is not possible, macOS and Linux users can run Power BI Desktop in a virtual Windows environment. The course provides steps for installing such an environment.

What you’ll learn

Key analytic technologies and techniques, e.g. predictive modeling and machine learning, and how these can play a role in managerial decision making
How to effectively manage the analytical processes and use the results of these processes as the basis for making informed, evidence-based decisions
How companies can use analytics as the basis for creating value

Prerequisites

Secondary school (high school) algebra; basic mathematics concepts
A willingness to explore economics

Who can take this course?

Unfortunately, learners from one or more of the following countries or regions will not be able to register for this course: Iran, Cuba and the Crimea region of Ukraine. While edX has sought licenses from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to offer our courses to learners in these countries and regions, the licenses we have received are not broad enough to allow us to offer this course in all locations. EdX truly regrets that U.S. sanctions prevent us from offering all of our courses to everyone, no matter where they live.

Meet Your Instructors

John W. Byers

Professor of Computer Science at Boston University

John is Professor of Computer Science at Boston University and Founding Chief Scientist of Cogo Labs, founded in 2005. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 1997 and his B.A. from Cornell University in 1991.

Chris Dellarocas

Richard C. Shipley Professor of Information Systems at Boston University

Chris is Richard C. Shipley Professor of Information Systems at the Questrom School of Business and Associate Provost for Digital Learning & Innovation at Boston University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT in 1996 and his Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece in 1989.

About this course

The Digital Age is here. It is enabling the most comprehensive transformation of our work and personal life in history. The Digital Age promises a more prosperous and fulfilling life for everyone globally. But that promise is only as good as the capability of leaders at all levels of the organization to lead their units to success in a challenging and uncertain future.

Leading in the Digital Age develops a new mindset and five Skill Sets needed for success in the Digital Age:

Leading Beyond the Edges of the leader’s unit, organization, geography, and formal authority, enabled by Digital Age tools, to provide innovative solutions to customers and other stakeholders.
Building Deep Trust Relationships: In the Digital Age, trust replaces formal authority as the basis for leadership.
Forming and Leading Virtual Teams: The Digital Age relentlessly shrinks time space. Properly formed and led, virtual teams turn this challenge into an advantage over traditional teams.
Collaborating and Co-Creating the Future with customers and other stakeholders. Multi-organizational value networks formed from a portfolio of relationships are replacing single-company-owned, linear value chains. Leading in this new business model requires a “co-creation skill set.”
Learning Dynamically: The only sustainable competitive advantage in the Digital Age is the capability to learn, adapt, implement, and learn as you go, faster and better than your competitors.

Leading in the Digital Age uses interactive tools to help you apply in real time what you learn from the content, other participants, and your own experience, to dynamically lead continuous innovation and change.

What you’ll learn

Learning to be an excellent digital age leader is a never-ending journey. Our goal is to help you immediately apply what you learn in this program regardless of where you are in your journey to the digital age or of your level or position in your organization. Using your current workplace challenges, self-assessments, video vignettes, and through discussions with fellow learners and your coach you will learn how to:

Shift to a Digital Age Mindset
Work and lead across the edges of your organization
Build and maintain deep trust relationships
Form and leverage a co-creation network for rapid, responsive, and continuous innovation
Form and lead virtual teams
Lead transformation through experimentation and dynamic learning
Develop a personal development plan

Who can take this course?

Unfortunately, learners from one or more of the following countries or regions will not be able to register for this course: Iran, Cuba and the Crimea region of Ukraine. While edX has sought licenses from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to offer our courses to learners in these countries and regions, the licenses we have received are not broad enough to allow us to offer this course in all locations. EdX truly regrets that U.S. sanctions prevent us from offering all of our courses to everyone, no matter where they live.

Meet Your Instructors

Darrell Griffin

CEO and President at PerformancEdge Darrell Griffin is CEO and President of PerformancEdge, a firm dedicated to developing impactful learning platforms for organizations. He has over 30 years of experience in adult organizational learning and transformational change. His focus is helping organizations build customer-centric capability to perform effectively with customers, colleagues, suppliesr and partners at the “edge” of their organization where value exchange happens. He has designed and delivered global learning and change interventions in such organziations as Bayer, Merck, Pharmacia, Schering-Plough and DSI. In addition he has written and published articles about dynamic learning and organization change.

Matthew J. Reis

Lecturer at Boston University

Matthew J. Reis is an organizational psychologist and organization development practitioner. He holds a doctorate in Organizational Behavior from the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. He has over 20 years of combined experience in business, management and consulting in organization development. Dr. Reis has extensive experience in the design, delivery, and evaluation of organizational development initiatives in a variety of corporate and nonprofit environments. Dr. Reis currently serves as a Lecturer at Boston University and has taught at the university level for over 12 years. He teaches courses in the areas of Leadership, Organizational Behavior, Change Management, Business Ethics, and Social Psychology. He is the facilitator of the Leading in the Digital Age course.

Sandra Deacon Carr

Master Lecturer in the Organizational Behavior Department at Boston University

Sandra Deacon Carr is a Master Lecturer in the Organizational Behavior Department at Boston University's Questrom School of Business where she has been teaching courses in organizational behavior, leadership, career development, and team learning for more than 25 years. She has also served as the Faculty Director of Questrom Team Learning Services for more than a decade. She specializes in curriculum design, course materials development, faculty training and mentoring, and leading large, multiple-section courses. She has extensive coaching, counseling, and team mediation experience. She earned her Ph.D. at Northeastern University and is a licensed psychologist in the state of Massachusetts. She received her M.Ed. from Boston University and B.A. from Amherst College.

Lloyd Baird

Professor of Management at Boston University

Dr. Lloyd Baird is Professor of Management at Boston University. He was Executive Director of the Leadership Institute for numerous years and currently serves on the steering committee of the Executive Development Roundtable and in the Human Resources Policy Institute; both consortiums of leading organizations devoted to improving leadership capability in their organizations. He received his BS degree from Utah State University and his MBA and PhD from Michigan State University.

Kristen J. McCormack

Master Lecturer and Executive in Residence, Organizational Behavior at Boston University

Kristen J. McCormack is a Master Lecturer and Executive in Residence in the Organizational Behavior Department at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business where she teaches Organizational Behavior and Management Consulting. She enjoys teaching and coaching adult learners in the practice of leadership and management. Ms. McCormack is also the Faculty Director of the executive Non-profit Management and Leadership Certificate Program. Ms. McCormack has more than thirty years of experience leading and managing organizations in the public, nonprofit and private sectors. Additionally she is as an advisor, board member and volunteer to dozens of non-profit organizations in and around Boston.

About this course

Firms such as Apple, Alibaba, Facebook, SalesForce, Uber and Yelp operate platform ecosystems that match buyers and sellers, gain value and market share from network effects, and harness their users to innovate.

This course teaches you how to convert products to platforms and how to innovate in a platform environment. You will learn how to negotiate platform startup, convert existing products to platforms, and make vital decisions on issues of openness, cannibalization, and competition.

Learners in this course will solve real-life problems using concepts from two sided networks, information asymmetry, pricing, intellectual property, and game theory.

The instructor for this course literally wrote the book on the topic: “Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy—and How to Make Them Work for You.”

This course is part of both the Digital Leadership and Product Management MicroMasters® programs.

What you’ll learn

How to successfully launch and design a business platform
Why platform firms beat product firms and how the structure of platform firms is fundamentally different
Why traditional platform pricing models fail and how to choose a successful pricing model
How to compete in winner-take-all network markets.

Prerequisites

Secondary school (high school) algebra; basic mathematics concepts
A willingness to explore economics

Who can take this course?

Unfortunately, learners from one or more of the following countries or regions will not be able to register for this course: Iran, Cuba and the Crimea region of Ukraine. While edX has sought licenses from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to offer our courses to learners in these countries and regions, the licenses we have received are not broad enough to allow us to offer this course in all locations. EdX truly regrets that U.S. sanctions prevent us from offering all of our courses to everyone, no matter where they live.

Meet Your Instructors

Marshall Van Alstyne

Professor and Chair of Information Systems at Boston University

Marshall Van Alstyne (@InfoEcon) is coauthor of Platform Revolution, an international bestseller. He is one of the world's foremost experts on information business models and is Everett Lord Distinguished Scholar at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. He is a frequent speaker, board level advisor, and consultant to both startups and global firms.

More than 10,000 professionals have completed this course

“At Fidelity Investments, Digital Innovation is a core proficiency needed to continue to exceed our customers’ expectations…and we are excited that Boston University is launching Digital Innovation MicroMasters® programs, focused on leadership and product management themes, to help develop these types of skills.”

Richard Blunk, EVP, Digital Channels, Fidelity Investments

“Tech Mahindra is guaranteeing interviews at its India locations for edX learners who successfully complete this MicroMasters® program and meet other hiring criteria. Today’s disruptive business landscape demands for our talents to be future ready…

CP Gumanii, CEO, Tech Mahindra

“At Fidelity Investments, Digital Innovation is a core proficiency needed to continue to exceed our customers’ expectations…and we are excited that Boston University is launching Digital Innovation MicroMasters® programs, focused on leadership and product management themes, to help develop these types of skills.”

Richard Blunk, EVP, Digital Channels, Fidelity Investments

“Tech Mahindra is guaranteeing interviews at its India locations for edX learners who successfully complete this MicroMasters® program and meet other hiring criteria. Today’s disruptive business landscape demands for our talents to be future ready…

CP Gumanii, CEO, Tech Mahindra

About this course

Want to be the leader with the winning business strategy for the digital future?

Ambitious digital-driven startups are creating and cornering new markets in every sector. And yet, most legacy businesses continue to operate by old playbooks. Most are not keeping pace with the changes in their industry, let alone leading the way―what are you and your company doing?

In this course, part of the Digital Leadership MicroMasters® program, you will understand the three types of players that are shaping the new business landscape; the three phases of transformation that every firm will encounter on its journey to business reinvention; and the three winning moves that will ensure your business success along the way.

With current case studies and practical experience-based advice, learn how to rethink traditional business models from the outside in, assemble the right team for the journey ahead, and make bold strategic choices along the three phases of digital transformation.

Taught by a professor with expertise at the intersection of business and digital strategies, this course will equip managers to step up to play important roles during the digital transformation processes within companies. Chances are that the company where you work now is engaging in some digital transformation activities and this course will provide you with skills and perspectives to play pivotal roles and guide your company.

What you’ll learn

Learn to navigate the world of digital ecosystems.
Understand the collision between traditional and digital business models and how to reinvent your business for future success.
Discover ways of competing and collaborating with other companies to create and capture value.
Realize how powerful machines can amplify your company’s human talent.
Learn to assemble the team to experiment with new ideas, re-examine your core beliefs, and reinvent your business rulebook for the digital future.

MicroMasters® Program in Digital Leadership

Learn the skills and perspectives of digital leaders

Digital Transformation Strategy

Platform Strategy for Business

Leading in the Digital Age

Driving Digital Innovation through Experimentation

Business Analytics for Data-Driven Decision Making

5 Courses 8 months 4 - 7 Hours per week

Complete Program $1,995.00

Program Details

Prerequisites

Undergraduate business education
Exposure to business strategy concepts

Who can take this course?

Unfortunately, learners from one or more of the following countries or regions will not be able to register for this course: Iran, Cuba and the Crimea region of Ukraine. While edX has sought licenses from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to offer our courses to learners in these countries and regions, the licenses we have received are not broad enough to allow us to offer this course in all locations. EdX truly regrets that U.S. sanctions prevent us from offering all of our courses to everyone, no matter where they live.

Meet Your Instructor

N. Venkat Venkatraman

David J. McGrath Jr. Professor in Management at Boston University

Venkat is the David J. McGrath Jr. professor in Management at Boston University Questrom School of Business. He holds joint appointment in the Information Systems and Strategy & Innovation Departments. He has previously taught at MIT Sloan School of Management and at London Business School. He has undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India and MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (India) and PhD in Strategic Management from the University of Pittsburgh. His doctoral thesis was awarded the Best Dissertation from the Academy of Management and he is one of the most highly cited researchers in management according to Google Scholar.