Reflection – Learning Launch

Linda Mthethwa               19 November 2018

1. Challenge

I was contemplating starting my own business. I own some quality optic instruments like binoculars,

rangefinders and spotting scopes. My friends were always borrowing my equipment and it got me

thinking that maybe there is a market for renting out this kind of equipment. I live in Windhoek, the

capital city of Namibia. Namibia is a very popular tourist destination because of the beautiful and

unspoilt nature and wildlife. I made the assumption that tourists that visit Namibia do not necessarily

want to buy and travel with equipment like binoculars, spotting scopes, satellite navigation devices,

e.g. the kind of equipment and gear a tourist will require for a trip to Namibia, and that there would

be a business opportunity for providing a service for renting out this kind of gear.

2. Selection

My “what is” was a desk study on the number and type of tourists that generally visited Namibia. My

“what if” was the idea that there will be a market for renting out certain gear to tourists to Namibia.

Thus, for my “what wows and what works” I needed to test my assumption that tourists will be willing

to rent gear when travelling to Namibia, as opposed to buying and travelling with their own gear.

I did not want to invest too much capital into buying a lot of equipment that I could rent out to tourists

before I knew that my assumptions were actually valid. Thus, I had to do an experiment that was fast

and cheap and I therefore opted for the learning launch – which is in essence the prescribed design

thinking method to test the key underlying value-generating assumptions of a potential new-growth

initiative quickly and inexpensively before going into a detailed investigation with the commitment of

further time, people and resources.

3. Application

My hypotheses was that tourists could make good use of binoculars to get the most value on a trip to

Namibia (i.e. a view of the beautiful fauna and flora) and that tourists would rather rent binoculars

than buy and travel with their own binoculars. The learning launch involves the series of small moves

that will allow you to gather data to test whether or not your assumption/s turn out to be true as you

launch the product or service. Critical here is getting a prototype in the market with prospective

customers as quickly as possible.

Hence, I bought a number of binoculars and I hired a website developer to build a simple website

(http://www.chapman-robinson.com/explorelogin.htm) where tourists could rent and pay for binoculars for a specific time period.

The process was simple, the prospective client could specify the number of binoculars required, the

start and end dates the equipment was required and locations for receiving and dropping of the

binoculars after use. The website also made provision for secure online payment for renting the

equipment.

To promote the business I designed and printed a small brochure to advertise the service and explain

how it works, and I distributed these brochures to a number of travel agents in Windhoek. The

assumption was that travel agents were usually the first and a key points of contact for tourists, and

would therefore be the perfect channel for promoting the business. I also recruited a few temporary

resources to hand out brochures to tourists at key tourist attractions in Windhoek.

4. Insight

Based on the tourist data in the “what is” stage and the feedback from travel agents (most of them

thought it was a great idea) my expectation was that the binoculars would be rented out continuously

and that the business would be highly successful. My actual results were very different from what was

anticipated: very few binoculars were in fact rented by tourists. In my view, the learning launch

provided exactly what was expected, i.e. a fast and cheap way to test my assumptions for this business

idea. I got my answers without investing a lot of capital, I did not buy a lot of binoculars and the

website and brochures also did not cost a lot of money.

5. Approach

Looking back I realized what I could have done differently was to first spend time actually talking to

tourists and getting their opinions on if they would make use of such a service in the first place and

what kind of equipment they would rather rent than buy. Although my experiment (learning launch)

was fast and cheap, by thinking through it and by specifically focusing on how it could be done even

faster and cheaper, I could have validated my assumptions much more efficiently.  Thus, for the

learning launch, I learned that always consider getting prospective customer’s feedback first by talking

to them.

