Designing Thinking for Innovation – Learning Launch

Challenge

As the marketing lead for my organization, I led the challenge to evolve our live event for an industry  faced with monumental changes as a result of COVID-19 in order to ensure attendance while delivering  ROI for our exhibiting customers.  The project scope included the marketing team comprised of 8  employees, as well as the entire event team across all functions – all who have significant customer  interaction.  The project is limited to internal resources, in small group settings with a marketing team  member on each, with initial evolution ideas presented to the broader group within 15 days.  Each  teams’ focus included the impact of the Corona Virus on the industry we serve, the immediate and  short-term needs in the business owners in this sector, and the need and expectation of the exhibitors  at these live events.

Selection

Our teams have completed the presentation portion of the thinking for innovation and implemented the  attendee research, and the most compelling idea is to broaden the scope of our attendee segments  beyond our traditional core; and the next step to test our learning is the learning launch tool.  (Broadly  speaking, the learning launch is an experiment meant to quickly test an idea and prototype).

Application

For our first learning launch, we focused on the data to extrapolate the educational needs of our  potential attendees across all segments.  In particular, we wanted to see if we could create unique,  meaningful content that appealed across all segments to begin to build a learning library that would  deliver across all needs.  This tested our assumption that education would be a driver for event  attendance, and that all needs were the same.  Our team then conducted research to gauge interest  level by group.  This step was completed in the short time frame of one week - and identified that while  there were common needs across all business types – each had unique challenges that they needed help  addressing.

For our second learning launch, we focused on gaining clarity of needs and priorities of each specific  group to determine commonalities and differences.  Our team then completed quick phone interviews  across all sections, with questions focused on identifying immediate business challenges, business  evolutions taking place currently, expected business evolutions within the next 3-6 months, and  opportunities realized as a result of COVID-19.  Both this survey and the interviews were conducted over  a one week time period.

Finally, we developed and rolled out an interactive learning platform with four pillars of focus, one each  for our core audience and three new prospective attendee groups as a final test of proof of concept.

Insight

By applying the learning launch tool, our team was able to narrow the educational offerings to meet  specific needs – including identifying several common needs, as well as several business-type specific  needs – across the short time frame of less than one month.  We uncovered several unknown  challenges, specific to employee recruitment and retention, that we were unaware of.  Moving forward,  our team will continue both online surveys and attendee interviews to be sure we are delivering the  most relevant educational content for our customers.

Approach

We have uncovered that continual customer research and interviews will help us to deliver the most  relevant educational content for our customers and cement the value of attendance for both our core  and new attendee segments.  Moving forward, keeping a pulse on the needs of the industry will ensure  we are rolling out a program that meets the needs of all of our customers.

