On 2
nd April 2016, Vinod Gupta School of Management IIT Kharagpur had the pleasure of hosting Mr. Avik Banarjee, Product Manager – Adobe Digital Marketing Cloud, Adobe for a guest lecture on “Product Management”. Mr. Banarjee holds a Masters in Computational Linguistics from the International Institute of Information Technology and has previously been associated with prestigious organizations such as Cordys, Novartis, Hewlett-Packard and IBM.
Mr. Banarjee started the lecture by introducing the audience to Adobe, as to how they are servicing numerous clients in diverse markets under various functions namely creative, marketing and document cloud. Using interesting videos to compliment his statements, he explained to the audience how each of the function helps solve different problems around the world. As the lecture proceeded, Mr. Banarjee drew examples from his own experience to further elaborate and touch upon the topic of Product Management. Mr. Banarjee would frequently resort to an anecdote or two to get his point across while ensuring that the audience stay engaged in the session. His insights into how the new technologies of today are disrupting markets left, right and centre were a key takeaway from the session. While addressing a number of queries raised by the students about Adobe, Mr Banarjee proceeded with the lecture in a very interactive manner.
As the lecture entered into its second phase, Mr. Banarjee used a video to establish a platform to discuss the core concepts of product management. From product conceptualization to product implementation and marketing, the next 30 minutes or so were spent discussing the complete lifecycle of a product. Mr. Banarjee used live examples to explain concepts such as ideation, white-boarding and prototyping. With the lecture further moving ahead into the customer perspective of a product, Mr. Banarjee constantly stressed on the fact as to how times have changed in such a way that a customer can be lost or gained within a matter of few seconds. With the discussion drawing to an end, Mr. Banarjee answered various questions on attributes of a product, products as a service and the various challenges faced in a product management environment.
We would like to thank Mr. Banarjee for taking time out of his busy schedule to interact with the students and for delivering such an insightful lecture that gave the students a holistic overview of Product Management.