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  • 2020
  • Other Teaching and Training Material

Leading the Charge: A Podcase about Product Management at Opower

By: Jeffrey Rayport and John J. Lafkas
  • Format:Audio
  • | Language:English
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Abstract

The Opower podcase materials contain audio from professor Jeffrey Rayport's interview with Ben Foster, the former vice president of product management at Opower, and more recently the co-founder of Prodify. In the podcase, Ben discusses how product management works in a rapidly-scaling technology company. He considers the challenges of staying true to a product roadmap while also remaining responsive to customization requests from customers, as well as how maintaining this balance creates tensions between engineering and sales. He also discusses the token system he developed to make this tension more manageable, and how one request from a prospective customer "broke the token system." In a supplemental podcase, noted in the Teaching Guide, Ben then discusses how Opower resolved this request.

Keywords

Product; Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Customization and Personalization; Conflict Management; Software

Citation

Rayport, Jeffrey, and John J. Lafkas. "Leading the Charge: A Podcase about Product Management at Opower." Harvard Business Publishing Podcase, HBS No. 7223, 2020. Audio.
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About The Author

Jeffrey F. Rayport

Entrepreneurial Management
→More Publications

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    • January 2023 (Revised April 2023)
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    OhmConnect: Energizing the Future

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    The Overlooked Key to a Successful Scale-Up

    By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Davide Sola and Martin Kupp
More from the Authors
  • Cobalt Robotics: Scaling Workplace Robotics By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Nicole Tempest Keller and Kyung Keun Park
  • OhmConnect: Energizing the Future By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Jennifer Fonstad and Nicole Tempest Keller
  • The Overlooked Key to a Successful Scale-Up By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Davide Sola and Martin Kupp
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