Reflection – Learning Launch Tool

Challenge     I run an Education-Technology company with the focus of teaching Robotics to children.  Even though learning Robotics from a young age is considered as a great add-on  skillset around the world, our challenge was to figure out whether a monthly subscription  based approach (sending one activity box per month with all the robotic components  and step by step instruction booklet) is the right way to reach out to our customers.     Selection     We started with the brainstorming technique, and bounced off our idea with various  possible stakeholders (parents, children, grandparents, teachers etc). Based on this  exercise, we made some assumptions.     As I had left my corporate career to start this venture, my opportunity cost was huge.   We picked up the Learning launch tool to test our assumptions in the real world. The  intent was to understand, early-on, weather our assumptions of going ahead with a  monthly subscription based robotics learning program was taking us in the right  direction or not.    Application     The first phase of our Learning Launch was to implement a six month subscription  based Robotics learning program through our website.   We used various marketing channels to reach out to potential customers ( Google  adwords, Social media marketing, workshops in schools and corporates).     The next step in our Learning launch phase was data gathering. We were ready for both  the confirming and disconfirming facts to come up. We were ready for the surprizes. We  interacted with all the children as well as the parents who subscribed to the Robotics  program, and tried to understand what they liked and the scope of improvement of the  program.      Insight     We gathered that :

1. While our customers were really happy with the content and a subscription based

model, they wanted to achieve the end goal (basic introduction/knowledge of  robotics) faster. A six-month commitment was perceived to be too long.

2. Learning Robotics is one of the many other things (swimming, music, sports etc)

that the children were engaged in along with their regular school academics.

3. There were children who wanted to explore their interest in Robotics, but were

shying away from a six month long commitment.

4. Once in every four-months children have assessments in schools (exams) and

parents were hesitant to place an order during the overlapping months.

From our learning launch experiment we learnt :  Short-term commitment = More  comfort for Children.    Hence, for our next Learning Launch we pivoted to a 3 month subscription based  Robotics learning program.  We divided our robotics learning program into two programs :

1) Junior Robotics Learning Program  ( Duration 3 months)  2) Senior Robotics Learning Program ( Duration 3 months)

This helped in the following ways :

1. Desired flexibility for  the parents / children to choose a shorter (3 month)

program,

2. To choose the appropriate level (based on child’s existing knowledge of

Robotics),

Approach     As Michael Radermacher said in Week 4 of our course:  ‘A learning launch is not a failure so long as you learn something’  The Learning Launch tool was a perfect mechanism for us as we had to iterate on the  business model at a fast pace.  We gained tremendous insights from our customers after applying the Learning Launch  mechanism.  The future program should continue to gather feedback and incorporate the same.

