‘We Hope that the Master’s Students from this Programme Will Set a New Professional Standard in the Market’

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Why 90% of startups fail, what key conditions are essential for launching a product, and how to implement convenient corporate services — these and other important issues were discussed at an open day for the online master’s programme in ‘Digital Product Management’.

Master's Programme: Teachers and Tracks

‘Digital Product Management’ is a joint online master’s programme between HSE University and Netology. The first intake of 129 students was the largest among all the online master's programmes in Russia. Despite the online format, this is a full-time accredited and licensed programme, and the teachers on the course are leading lights of the academic community (professors, doctors of sciences, researchers and experts with experience in leading companies in the industry), including Artem Chistyakov, leading product analyst at Tinkoff, Stanislav Petrov, head of user experience and interfaces at MegaFon, Vladimir Saveliev, author of the book ‘Statistics and Cats’, Stanislav Minasov, Lead Product Manager at Instories, Alexey Levanov, executive director at Sberbank, product owner.

Over a total of 4560 academic hours, the students acquire comprehensive knowledge, with the programme offering an outstanding learning environment, teaching methods, and university culture, as well as business and management practices using real cases from the platform's partners.

Pavel Voloshchuk, the programme Academic Supervisor

‘We really want our graduates to become expert product managers, deeply immersed in all details of the product life cycle. We hope that graduates from this programme will set a new professional standard in the market.’  

Graduates of this programme will build their career in one of the three tracks of digital product management. Some of them go on to design new products within a company, implementing and supporting them. This needs skills such as analytical thinking, the ability to work with data, conducting research, generating ideas and creating an MVP (minimum viable product).

Others manage the company's existing profit-making products. To do this, it is necessary to understand what is happening inside the product, track cause-and-effect relationships and make decisions based on data. This group of digital managers need leadership and teamwork skills in order to help manage a project and its development process.

According to hh.ru, a master's degree gives a salary increase of 30% compared to continuing education or a bachelor's degree.

In addition, programme graduates can launch a startup and work as technology entrepreneurs. In this case, product managers work with their own or a corporate startup and look for business growth opportunities, test hypotheses and develop the product. In this role, the most important competencies are the ability to work with the product economics, promote it and effectively apply soft skills.

Rules of Survival

The following experts took part in the programme open day on the topic ‘How to launch new products?’: Pavel Voloshchuk, Academic Supervisor of the programme, Associate Professor at HSE University, Sergey Artyukhov, Head of the agile competence centre at M.Video, Olga Kursaeva, Russia's third PhD in Management, Head of the NLMK case centre, and Alexander Pligin, Project Manager of the Laboratory for Design Thinking at the HSE Graduate School of Business.

According to Sergey Artyukhov, the idea that the market desperately needs your product should be questioned every time: ‘Globally, we live in an era of abundance, when there is plenty of everything: services, applications, products. Nothing sells by itself, you need to know how to sell it. For this reason, you need to distance the product from its competitors, and engage in positioning. Each product manager must answer the following questions: is it necessary to launch this particular product?, is it necessary to launch it in this particular market?

The reason for the failure of 90% of startups is that they have not found their niche. It seems that everything is ready, all the methods are in your hands: both design thinking and IDEO experience. But no, it's easier to create a product and then try to launch it somewhere without analyzing the needs of the market.’

 ‘Testing key hypotheses and finding a niche are necessary for launching a product,’ said Alexander Pligin. ‘There one more important question: who will pay for your product? Monetization is a story about who will be its end user,’ notes Olga Kursaeva. In this case, according to Alexander Pligin, it is important to assess the market and understand how many users we can attract in a particular niche. The creation and testing of rapid prototypes on end users is a life hack for launching viable startups.

Internal Products

During the discussion the experts discussed not only external products, but also internal services. Product standards for B2B and B2C customers are gradually coming to internal services. Olga Kursaeva noted that internal corporate resources are becoming increasingly important for companies today: ‘Such products may differ from external ones: they are less convenient, beautiful and pleasant. But communication channels such as a corporate website are becoming the dominant sources of information for company employees.

The improvement of such products will turn them into effective media, including communicating with external audience. Client-centricity, and a focus on employee needs will play an important role.’ Sergey Artyukhov stressed that all communication services at a company work as tools of internal marketing: chats, meetups, mailing lists, etc. At the same time, even a small element of marketing rsuch as an email to employees is a product that has a target audience and a task. Its quality and feedback can improve the attitude of employees to their company.

To Each according to Their Needs

‘I know inventors who have whole garages full of wonderful ideas, but unfortunately, no one needs them. We teach students to find the best way to apply technologies and solutions according to the current needs of people. We explain to them how to conduct a cycle of rapid generation and testing of hypotheses about customer needs and satisfaction based on contemporary approaches to research and design. We are raising innovators who create digital products that can be applied in real life and easily sold,’ says Alexander Pligin. ‘After testing the value hypothesis, we move to the growth hypothesis to assess our ability to scale, reduce costs, etc.,’ says Sergey Artyukhov. ‘Having received a qualitative insight, we study it using quantitative data. Our task is to find out if the problem we have identified resonates in the minds and hearts of consumers. The combination of these techniques is extremely effective. While sociologists offer us new knowledge about customer behavior and public relations, marketeers are looking for solutions to specific business problems,’ says Olga Kursaeva.

The Master's programme in Digital Product Management helps participants to understand all the nuances of product work: knowing the product economics, conducting customer experience research, quickly testing product hypotheses, mastering programming, managing data and making decisions based on metrics, understanding marketing and design principles, the ability to organise teamwork, and find balance when interacting with the project stakeholders. In the first semester, students learn about basic product management competencies, and at the end of the semester they prepare their first product concept. In the second semester, students will take offline or online internships with the programme’s industry partners.

In addition to career development in product management, the programme opens the way to science: graduates will be able to continue their career at the university as a teacher, apply for a doctoral school or study for a PhD at an international university — in the UK or the EU. A master's degree is required for this, while in the USA or Canada it is preferable.