Learning Launch

I choose “Learning Launch” as my favorite discussion topic.  While there are thousands of idea generations  leading in to plenty of “potential opportunities”, but they are Ideas until proven to be  a successful product  or solution. In learning launch, the process of testing the idea through various steps offer insight on the  success of ideas, whether it confirms or disconfirms with the original intent.

What is?

Being a Product Manager, I get inspired by plenty of ideas when customers share their pain points or  industry expectations of products & services. My job is to take those feedbacks, study each one of them,  improvise selected ideas and translate them in to products / services. These products/services must be a  viable business growth possibility and generate enough revenue, profit, as well as customer satisfaction  to sustain.

What if?

My evaluation of ideas includes quantitative and qualitative data analysis, design study, technological  constraints, and production and supply chain challenges. Financial viability and commercial success of  products/services evolving from these ideas draw management scrutiny. So, I do lots of theoretical,  practical, and field tests to fully understand how my prototype product/service performs and fulfills its  original intent. It must be also of superior solution, lower risk, and competitive in cost.

Once we decided to launch a single use Paper Cup product for hot & cold beverages. This to eliminate  plastic cups and make consumers to use environmentally friendly, bio-degradable paper-based cup.

What Wows?

I did a thorough field research on the benefits, cost valuation and technical challenges.  It gave me lots of  insights to establish requirements of such product for consumers. Then I decided to make samples or  dummy cups to test from functionality point of view with diverse teams.

My production team made some samples of paper cup to be tested among with our internal team and  selected customers to get their feedback. I made sure that test teams were diverse to understand the  functionality of paper cups while filling, consuming, handling - both hot and cold beverages for consumers,  until it gets to recycling bins.

What works? Learning launch in action …

We then gathered plenty of feedbacks, insights and confidential surveys that were mixed with pros and  cons of a paper cup to replace plastics. Based on the feedbacks, user analysis, tests, and evaluation. We  made necessary design / functional changes. We also compared our sample paper cups with industry  competition to see how our Paper Cup competed with existing industry acceptance levels, in terms of  being a fully functional and sustainable product.

Applying learning launch concept to test the value generation assumption of a new growth opportunity  gave wider insights about the product expectation without risking bulk production which may have been  rejected if not for the proto type approach.

We did couple of more samples and tested with consumers and improvised to make it a best product  suitable for its purpose. We then scaled it up for mass production for global consumers.

Every product launch helps me to apply Design Thinking principles to cover the whole process chain and  thinking strategies at multiple levels. It also helped me and my team to be innovative and competitive to  understand customer’s expectations empathetically to offer right solution.

