Learning Launch

Challenge

I am a team member in our New Product Development group and we are often asked to aid with the  innovation process to enhance the customer experience from our broad range of products while adding  a channel of future revenue for the company. We will use our product management group with the help  of their vertical sales channels as our main innovation pool. The team will be working from a general  project budget called off-cycle development which will incurred the teams work hours and material  expenses. The scope and duration for this project is limited, so we will need to pin point quick and low  risk opportunities which could be ready for smaller group product reviews quickly.

Selection

Our internal Engineering team is new to this type of product development tool and will need to think  with an open mind on this innovation process. We will need to explore many smaller ideas in a quicker  amount of time then we had currently done in the pass to hopefully find the one or two that will have  the better chance of going to development.

Application

Working with our product managers and their input form sale teams both internal and external we had  our first formal meeting to discuss the ideas that were filter down from the presentation at the regional  sales meeting.  After reviewing and deliberating the ideas that were presented It was quickly found that  many of the ideas were beyond the reach of this type of project launch. With the few that remained  they were closely examined to determine if they could be completed in the required time and did they  offer a compelling case to meet the customers’ requirements while offing a business case for future  revenue.

The teams were then divided up into three smaller groups with each having only three weeks to develop  the concept and test the pros and cons of each. Once this was completed the teams would then present  each idea in front of a small focus group of internal sales people. After this was completed the groups  would further discuss and share their findings in a more formal meeting that would further refine them.  The final review was done with a small focus group of customers and external sales people as finial  reviewers. one member of each team would present their idea and host questions and answers at the  end of each presentation. Customer comments and small surveys were collected on each presentation  which would be reviewed for the final review meeting before one was chosen for further development.

Insight

With the application of using the learning launch tool our team found that each idea was given a review  process that quickly tested the worthiness of that concept and since it was also presented in a smaller  focus group it gained a quicker impact of customers reposes in less time. Since this was a new concept it  was greeted with some skepticism from the more formal way that our new product development team  used before, but after reviewing the results it was found that the process was more agile and done with  a greater chance at hitting the mark.

Approach

While using this process it became apparent that the team could quickly identify concepts which could  be shelfed sooner while targeting the one’s that would have a needle moving experience for the  customer.  It also decreased our time to development by using smaller groups with multiply ideas to  speed the process along. Going forward our development team should practice these newly learned and  proven ideas into other development programs.

