Product Management

Translate Opportunities into Profitability

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.

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Key Takeaways

 

Master Business Model Communication

Rapidly communicate, to any audience, a comprehensive business model for your existing business, as well as for product extensions and new lines of business you wish to create.

Optimize Product and Product-Line Profitability

Create pricing tools and systems and learn a systematic methodology to allocate scarce resources among products to optimize product profitability.

Improve Your Management Capabilities

Learn how to effectively manage your team when you lack direct authority and even when it doesn’t feel like a team.

Speak the Language of Senior Management

Effectively communicate with the appropriate decision-makers to get your ideas implemented.

Transcend Day to Day Firefighting and Drive Strategy

Gain effective methods for - driving product decisions without succumbing to the “tyranny of the inbox”.

Go Deeper for More Transformational Ideas

Harness the latest customer-centric frameworks to gain deeper insights and integrate market feedback to drive innovation and build differentiated products and services.

 

Dates


IN-PERSON

SEP. 20, 2021 - SEP. 24, 2021

Location: Berkeley, California (9:00 am - 5:30 pm PST)

 

IN-PERSON

NOV. 15, 2021 - NOV. 19, 2021

Location: Berkeley, California (9:00 am - 5:30 pm PST)

 

IN-PERSON

DEC. 06, 2021 - DEC. 10, 2021

Location: Berkeley, California (9:00 am - 5:30 pm PST)

Faculty

Our faculty include top professors in the fields of innovation and design from UC Berkeley and Stanford.

 
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Sara Beckman

Sara Beckman is an Earl F. Cheit Faculty Fellow at the Haas School of Business where she designs and delivers courses on design, innovation and product management and a Teaching Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department in the College of Engineering. Her 25 years of experience teaching design and innovation-related topics at the Haas School of Business culminated in creating a course, Problem Finding, Problem Solving, which draws from design thinking, critical thinking and systems thinking literature. That course is now offered to all business students at Haas, and prepares them both for their Applied Innovation projects as well as for their work in their own jobs.

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Her recent research focuses on the role of learning diversity on design teams, and on the pedagogy of teaching design. For the past two years, she leveraged her teaching and research experience in serving as the Chief Learning Officer of the recently founded Jacobs Institute of Design Innovation within University of California, Berkeley's College of Engineering. Sara directs the Product Management Program for the Berkeley's Center for Executive Education, serving 350 product managers from around the world each year. Before joining Berkeley-Haas, Sara worked in the Operations Management Services group at Booz, Allen & Hamilton and ran the Change Management Team at Hewlett-Packard. Sara received her BS, MS and PhD degrees from Stanford University in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management.


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Paul Tiffany

Paul Tiffany is a Senior Lecturer at the Berkeley Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He teaches courses competitive strategy, business, and public policy, leadership and management, the global economy, and global strategy and management. He also currently serves as a Visiting Professor at SASIN Graduate Institute of Business in Thailand and several universities in China where he teaches in summer programs. He has taught previously at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, the Wharton School, CEIBS (China-Europe International Business School) in Shanghai, AVT Business School in Denmark, IAB Business School in Kazakhstan, and the University of Geneva in Switzerland. His graduate studies include an M.B.A from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley.

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Paul Tiffany is active in a number of academic organizations and has published his research in various journals. His book The Decline of American Steel was published by Oxford University Press and later offered in a Japanese edition. His book Business Plans for Dummies (John Wiley & Sons), co-authored with Steven Peterson, was a worldwide top-five finalist in the annual Booz Allen/Financial Times "Best Business Book of the Year" award. The book went through fifteen printings in ten languages, prior to the release of a 2nd Edition in 2005. He is currently working on a new book about the “dynamic capabilities” model of strategic management with Professor David Teece of Berkeley. Dr. Tiffany has commented extensively on television, radio, and in the popular press on topics about business and economics.

Prior to entering academia, Paul Tiffany worked as a consultant with several national management consulting firms, as an assistant to the president of a large national financial services firm, and as an organizational analyst for a large public services agency. In addition to his academic work, he heads Paul Tiffany & Associates, a multi-specialty consulting and training organization based in Northern California that offers management services to firms throughout the world. Recent clients have included PTT Exploration & Production (Thailand), Stock Exchange of Thailand, Wells Fargo Financial Advisors, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, U.S. Steel, Raymond James, Johnson & Johnson, Fidelity Investments, Newcom Group Ltd. (Mongolia), Bank of America, GE Oil & Gas, Qualcomm, Cisco Systems, Isuzu (Japan); Deutsche Post DHL, UT Starcom (China), Statoil (Norway), American Chamber of Commerce (Hong Kong), the Government of Dubai, SCG (Thailand), Coca-Cola, PepsiCola of Thailand, Krungsri Bank (Thailand), Zoetis SEA (South East Asia), Mohegan Sun Resort and Casino, Nippon Steel (Japan), Cooper Health System, Delaware Investments, Magellan Health, Siam City Cement Corporation (Thailand), and AXA (France), among many others.

Professor Tiffany is the recipient of awards for both his research and teaching, including the Anvil Award, presented annually to the outstanding professor in Wharton's graduate program, the Lindback Award as the outstanding professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Cheit Award as the outstanding professor in the Executive MBA program at the University of California, Berkeley.

Awards & Honors
  • Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching, Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA program, 2003, 2004
  • Outstanding Instructor Award, University of California, Berkeley Extension Program, 2002
  • Finalist, Booz Allen/Financial Times best business book of year award, 1998 for “Business Plans for Dummies”
  • University of Pennsylvania Lindback Award, 1990
  • Nominee, Academy of Management George R Terry Award for outstanding book on management, 1989

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David Mok

David Mok is the Senior Director of Pricing Strategy & Analytics at DePuy Synthes (a Johnson & Johnson company), leading the pricing function for a $1B business. He is currently working on improving price realization amidst industry health care reform in a recessionary environment.

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At Seagate, he managed the worldwide retail pricing team for Seagate's $1B branded storage solutions business. He helped turned a barely profitable situation into a strong and sustainable gross profit business within a year. During this time, the retail channel business attained the highest profit dollars and profit percentages in Seagate's branded solutions history, and sustaining near this level for his entire tenure.

Prior to Seagate, Mok was at Xilinx where he led transformational pricing efforts, deployed pricing software, architected the company's global pricing model, and developed pricing strategies across a broad spectrum of semiconductor, software, IP, products and services for a $2B business.

Mok has been speaking professionally on the subject of pricing at various conferences throughout the country. Mok began his career as a naval officer aboard a nuclear-power attack submarine where he conducted missions vital to the national security of the United States. He holds MBA, MS, and BS degrees.


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Holly Schroth

Holly Schroth is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Berkeley Haas. She teaches negotiations and Conflict Resolution and Organizational Behavior in the MBA, undergraduate, and Executive Education programs. She has won several awards from MBA and undergraduate students for teaching excellence and was voted “favorite professor” by a Businessweek online poll of undergraduates across the U.S.

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In addition to teaching, she is a trainer, consultant, and keynote speaker on negotiation and leadership issues to a variety of organizations—in sectors such as technology, pharmaceuticals, financial services, health care, aerospace, and law—in the U.S. and abroad.

She has published several articles on negotiation and procedural justice in leading journals and has created several negotiation exercises in collaboration with the Dispute Resolution Research Center at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management. She is one of the leading authors of negotiation exercise materials that are used worldwide by educators and trainers.

Schroth received a MA in psychology and a PhD in social psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has also taught at Santa Clara University, Saint Mary’s College of California, and Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Prior to pursuing her PhD, she worked in a variety of functional areas in both small and large business organizations, as well as in the nonprofit sector. She currently leads the popular Negotiation & Influence program at Berkeley Executive Education.

Holly's focus area of research and expertise is:

  • Emotions and language in negotiations
  • Procedural justice

Holly also co-creates impactful custom programs for our corporate, government, and university partners.

Awards & Honors

  • Top 40 Undergraduate Professors by Poets & Quants, 2017
  • Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2018
  • Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching, Undergraduate Program, 2009
  • Club 6 – Faculty Honor Roll for Teaching Excellence, Haas School of Business, 1992-2016
  • Voted America’s Favorite Professor (Undergraduates); Businessweekonline survey (2006)
  • Leavey Faculty Achievement Award for Exceptional Teaching, Santa Clara University, 2003, 2004, 2005
  • Outstanding Teaching Award, Santa Clara University, Summer Sessions Program, 1998
  • Faculty Honor Roll for Teaching Excellence, Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University
  • Faculty Honor Role for Upholding the Honor Code, Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University
  • Western Psychological Association Best Paper Award Regents Fellowship, UC Santa Barbara
  • Chairman’s Award in Psychology, UC Santa Barbara

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Steven Huff

Steven Huff teaches marketing in the Executive MBA program at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He is also an Associate Professor of Marketing at Utah Valley University where he is co-creator of two novel programs: the first full digital marketing degree offered by a public university in the United States and a new MBA program that weaves the development of thinking, leadership, and interpersonal skills through every course in the curriculum.

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Steven is an expert in and regularly teaches graduate courses on marketing strategy, digital marketing, and creativity and problem solving. He has taught marketing for over fourteen years across four universities comprising over fifty courses and reaching over 2,000 students. He holds one teaching award from UC Berkeley and two university-wide teaching awards from Utah Valley.

In addition to his university teaching, he also actively engages in consulting and corporate education. His work has benefited a variety of companies from start-ups to small and medium-sized firms to multi-billion dollar businesses including 3M, Adobe, Intel, and Cisco. His current and former clients span multiple industries including medicine and healthcare, business intelligence, tax and audit, skin care, baby products, industrial equipment, servers and network equipment, mining, software, consumer services, and beverages.

Before entering the Ph.D. program at Berkeley, he worked as a computer engineer at L-3 Communications Systems-West, a major contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense, and on the marketing team in the Network Equipment Division at Intel.

Awards & Honors
  • 2014 UVU Wolverine Achievement Award: Faculty (Full-Time) of the Year (one award university-wide)
  • 2013 UVU Alumni Association Educator of the Year (one award per school in the university)
  • 2007 Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor, UC Berkeley
  • 2006 AMA-Sheth Doctoral Consortium Fellow, University of Maryland

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Peter Wilton

Dr. Peter C. Wilton teaches strategy, innovation, digital transformation and marketing in the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. He has also served as a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, and on the faculty of Duke and Purdue Universities in the United States, Macquarie Graduate School of Management, the University of Melbourne, and the Australian Graduate School of Management in Australia, as well as the executive programs of the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago and Pennsylvania State University.

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Dr. Wilton has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships for his work in management, including several from the prestigious National Science Foundation, as well as the Marketing Science Institute. He has been the recipient of the Australian Overseas Fellowship in Management and the Market Research Society of Australia Prize. In the US, he has been recognized by Business Week magazine as one of the country’s leading business instructors. In addition, he has been recognized in the "Who's Who" Registry of Leading American Executives. Most recently, Dr. Wilton received recognition from the International Society for Performance Improvement for “outstanding instructional intervention”. Dr. Wilton has published widely, his articles on management appearing in numerous leading journals, including the Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Retailing, the Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, European Research, and elsewhere.

In addition to his teaching activities, through his private consulting company known as ORBIS Associates, Dr. Wilton also provides a range of strategic advising and executive development services to a list of government, private sector, and not-for-profit clients representing diverse industries and regions of the world, including North America, South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East. As a specialist focus, Dr. Wilton actively assists organizations to develop effective sustainable growth strategies through the design and deployment of integrated innovation strategies and customer loyalty architectures often enabled through a comprehensive digital transformation platform.

In his capacity as an educator, Dr. Wilton has collaborated with a variety of international professional bodies to design and deliver executive development initiatives that enrich the organization's membership. Included in this list are The University of Barcelona, The Japan Productivity Center, The National Training Institute of Oman, The Banking Institute of the Republic of China, the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers, The American-Hellenic Chamber of Commerce (Greece), The Asian Institute of Technology (Thailand), The Turkish-American Association, and others.

Dr. Wilton began his professional career with Colgate Palmolive (Australia) Pty Ltd, where over a period of several years he managed a variety of established household products groups and new businesses. He has also served as Chief Operating Officer for Myer Pacific Holdings N.V., a private equity firm holding a portfolio of controlling, pro-active, investments in companies ranging from digital imaging technology, to laser cutting machinery for the heavy engineering industry.

Dr. Wilton is currently a member of “Technology Governance and Innovation Panel” of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, developing opportunities for directors of publicly traded companies to enhance their technology and innovation literacy. He has served as an Officer of the San Francisco professional chapter of the American Marketing Association, responsible for all professional development programs, and as a Director of the Australian-American Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco. Dr. Wilton holds a Bachelor of Commerce (1st Class Honors) from the University of New South Wales in Australia, and a Ph.D. in Management from Purdue University in the United States.

Dr. Wilton has served as a Director of Musica Viva, a leading performing arts organization in Australia. He has also provided strategic assistance to arts performance organizations in the United States, most recently Cal Performances (University of California, Berkeley) and the Major University Presenters collaborative.

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Awards & Honors
  • Recognized: “Leading Business Instructor”, Business Week Magazine
  • Listed: “Who’s Who of Leading American Executives”
  • Listed: “Who’s Who of Outstanding American Professionals”
  • Best Paper Award, Finance & Treasury Association, 2001
  • Excellence for Outstanding Instructional Intervention, International Society for Performance Improvement, 2000
  • Australian Overseas Fellowship in Management, 1975-1979
  • Albert Haring Doctoral Consortium Fellow, Indiana University, 1979
  • Market Research Society of Australia Prize, 1974
  • Beta Gamma Sigma (U.S. National Honor Society for business students)

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David Riemer

David Riemer is an Executive-in-Residence at the Berkeley Haas Business School. He is a former ad agency President and Internet marketing executive who now works with entrepreneurs, artists and students to focus their ideas. In short, he helps them get their story straight. He created Box Out Industries to work with entrepreneurs and Spiral Staircase to collaborate with artists. David is a regular speaker on innovation, entrepreneurship and storytelling throughout the Bay Area and internationally as well.

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David started his career as an Assistant Account Executive at J. Walter Thompson New York and eventually became President of JWT West. In 1998, he left advertising and brought his strategic and marketing leadership to two Internet start-ups – Quokka Sports and the FeedRoom. He later joined Yahoo! in 2002 as VP marketing. In various roles at Yahoo!, David led business-to-business and consumer marketing efforts across virtually all of Yahoo!’s products serving 500 million users globally. David holds an MBA from Columbia and BA from Brown University. He serves on the Board of the American Conservatory Theater and the Destiny Arts Center.

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Questions?

If you have questions about this class, please contact us.