Leading the Charge: A Podcase about Product Management at Opower

By: Jeffrey Rayport and John J. Lafkas

Format:Audio
| Language:English

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.