Reflection – Learning Launch

Note: I have not mentioned th actual product I will be working on for sensitivity reasons but I will

most certainly apply the approach suggested below

Challenge:    The challenge in my place of work is that too often launch decisions come down to  the opinion of powerful executives and sometimes results in unsuccessful campaigns  or products in the market that have not had the appropriate level of customer  testing, This can not only be costly for the organisation but it can lead to customer  frustration and some cases it can be more detrimental than not doing anything at all.  In addition, the term pilot is common practice today which results in a pass(go) or fail  (no go) decision and I believe there is a better way to test new ideas with the market.  The product I am working on is a totally new concept for my country and will not only  require different thinking for my company but it will requre education for consumers  and therefore I believe I can apply learnings from this course to iteratively test in an  unknown space.    Selection:    There is an emerging trend in my industry (insurance sector) that the CEO has asked  me to explore and provide a recommendation and plan. I believe that I could  achieve one or multiple learning launches based on the hypothesised approach  which could then be used to help influence both the executives and inform the  business case with real data. Today the business utilises pilots to a subset of the target  customer set to establish a Go or No Go decision. The “Learning Launch” tool really  caught my attention and this is the tool I wish to use for this assignment as it is a fail  fast, fail cheap approach that not only validates early if the hypothesised idea is  valuable but it gives me multiple opportunities to iterate and adapt the idea ensuring  the outcome meets the need of the target costumer better than any other option  out there. I believe the Learning launch has the ability to revolutionaise the way my  business see’s innovation and product delivery.    Appplication:    I already have a hypothesis formed for my product (telematics in motor insurance)  (therefoe please assume the the research and data analytics have been complete,  as has the ideation and mind mapping process. I am at the stage where I wish to  gather feedback from customers on concept design. The first thing I will do is state  what my key assumptions are for the concept(s) and then list out what my success  criteria are for the learning launch but importantly I will also list out my failure criteria  which will help me identify flags (good or bad) that suggest a pivot or adaptation of  the idea might be necessary. In order to test my hypotheses I plan to run a couple of  alternate testing groups which represents different alternative concepts that were  proposed during the mind mapping phase. I will use two sets of customers from the  same target audience but I will use two different testing methodologies; 1. An online  co-creation panel which will enable me to engage customers from across the  country and 2. Ethnographic style research where I can observe how a customer  interacts with the idea/ concept illustrations. I will be looking for both confirming and  disconfirming data in the outputs of the learning launch research to asses whether I  should continue development, pivot the idea or table the idea for future  consideration

Insight:    The key insight for me or the “Aha!” moment was the realisation that a pilot or pre- launch test is not black or white and does not necessarily mean it’s a bad idea, it my  be the perfect idea but presented at the wrong time or maybe the idea was nearly  there but requires some different thinking to turn it into something more compelling  for customers. I have also seen expensive pilots and launches fail, costing the  organisation a lot of money and I believe that the learning launch approach could  have a big impact on both the cost and success of delivery of new products to  market.    Going forward, I would like to look at pre-launch activity as experimentation and  iterative discovery rather than a pass/fail metric.     Approach:    I believe there is a big opportunity to apply the storytelling tool in addition to the  learning launch as my challenge is not just about process, it is also about influencing  stakeholders in my company who have strong opinions and who are critical to the  success of failure of the implementation of my above suggestions. The first thing I will  do is map out my key stakeholders, create a plan for who I will communicate with  and when, and then I will create my story around the personality and the needs of  the person I will be presenting to. For example the finance director might require a  separate storytelling session to the marketing director because their needs are chalk  and cheese and will require a different story approach. I will use the storytelling  technique to educate and influence stakeholders to get support for trialling both  design thinking as a whole but most importantly application to how we launch new  products and services and the definition of success/failure.    I believe that that a combination of all the tools in Design Thinking will be powerful,  but learning launch combined with storytelling I believe will give me the biggest value  and opportunity to succeed

