Building Successful Digital Ventures

Modern product management is one of the rising areas in today’s business world and is critical in the process of innovation. Over the last two decades digital products have been disrupting our lives in so many dimensions: from e-commerce to crypto to the Metaverse. What do these game changing products have in common?

Defining the right problem, understanding the target audience, and focusing on building unique experiences that excite, engage, and retain customers – these are issues of great importance not only to startups but also to organizations that wish to remain relevant and compete in today’s world.

This course will cover the entire product management process, and place particular emphasis on user engagement and interactive experience management. Students will engage with Israeli startups and multi-national corporations, providing them with practical, product-focused skills which will make them better product managers, investors, consultants, and leaders in their field. This course will equip students with a cutting-edge skillset, critical for innovation and decision making.

The course will utilize frameworks from tech management, user-experience, strategy and product management, as well as tools from the fields of gamification, storytelling, and community building to address present-day challenges of product strategy.

Students will examine the notion of user engagement and will survey behavioral theories, relevant to digital experiences and increasing users’ satisfaction and retention.

Participants will act as business consultants to leading Israeli ventures. They will analyze current product challenges regarding user engagement, come up with relevant and actionable solutions through intensive workshops and engage in feedback sessions with the start-up to sharpen their ideas.

Course highlights include:

1. Think like a product manager and learn the methodology that drives the development of great products, services, and experiences that consumers want.
2. Master the fundamentals pieces of 1) product strategy 2) the notion of “play” as a user engagement driver and 3) theory of flow
3. Solve business & engagement problems for tech start-ups
4. Cross pollination with the Israeli Tech Ecosystem
5. Improve your storytelling capabilities with narrative design tools and models
6. Identify the most pressing ethical and societal issues in regard to user engagement and online experiences.
7. Engage in practical workshops to develop an investor pitch deck and trial pitch.