Design Thinking for Innovation

Final Assignment

Made by: Mario Markovic

Learning Launch

Challenge:   I am working I data analytic company as product manager. Due to the fact that we are  monetizing datasets we are always trying to find new ways of monetizing existing assets.  However, the main plan is to develop something that can be scalable internally as a products/  service but also a solution that can be scalable externally. One of our services is lead list/ b2b  selection services that provide our clients an exact list of potential clients to contact. In a  default way these lists are provided as hard copy lists in excel or some other legacy format.   We wanted to make one step further in our offer and provide to our clients not only list of  potential clients but also offer them a full-service product with capabilities to contact their  potential clients, online, contact them at social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn.     Selections:  We decided to focus on that project for 4 weeks. We gathered a small team of people coming  from different departments (sales, IT, tech, product, customer care finance). We decided to  go with learning launch in order to get quick responses from the market/ clients. We wanted  to ran this project as agile process knowing that our main hypothesis -“Clients want to have  capability for micro targeting of their niche potential clients at social networks“ need to be  verified. We wanted to prove each step in our product delivery process in order to spent time  and resources in a good and meaningful way.    Application:   We divided our launch process into several iterations that are following Agile Manifesto. Each  iteration was limited to 1-week period of time.

In 1st iteration we described in details existing situation in the market, needs from our

potential clients and options in front of them. To confirm these conclusions our sales team  member organized several meetings with clients and gathered their insights and feedbacks.

In the 2nd iteration we focused on insights that we got from clients and we started

detailing our concrete offer and added value that we will provide by our solution.  Team  members from tech and IT departments were keeping us inside possible framework while  sales once more took our final work and bring it in front of clients. That second approach  toward potential clients result in getting concrete feedback about solution, adjustments that  are needed, about also by doing that we got some test customers who were willing to try our  solution in practice.   During 3th iteration we prepared 1st prototype of our solution that was ready for using by our  test customers. For feedback gathering tool we used online survey and 1:1 questionnaire at

the end of test period while public recommendation and renewal of the service was some  kind of final “test” for providing added value to our customer.     Insights:   By applying Learning Launch tool, we managed to divide our project into small and testable  segments and each of these segments was crucial for deciding if we will proceed with our  product development process. Feedbacks and insights that were gathered in continuous way  helped us to be Agile and adjust our hypothesis to serve our clients in best way.   Although we confirmed our starting hypothesis, we faced many small but very important  adaptation how our solution is executing and how our clients are using it.     Approach:  This approach is very useful in product development processes because it puts clients as a  main stakeholder from the scratch. Having team members with different backgrounds in the  same team provides a good variety of understanding and thinking about same solution. Each  of team members brought useful knowledge into the team. Lack of prior knowledge is also  very important element because it brings you back to discuss some starting points that re  maybe already wrong.     Organization:  The team was organized as task force in which all team members were having same level  position. We established channels for convenient and easy communication between us while  all materials were shared inside team. Each day we had an online meeting (scrum) to check if  we are all at track or we should support some parts of the process in better, stronger way.   This project was out of focus for the rest of the company and during the whole period of time  no reporting toward high management was needed or executed.

