Reflection – Learning Launch

Challenge    When I was in High school I was a member of a non-profit organization working with a  team of 10 members. At that time, we had the job/task of organizing something to raise  funds for the organization. Because the team was implemented in the school we had  few resources to do that project. We had the idea of doing a marathon of solidarity  concerts, where we asked the artists to perform for free and charged the people who  came to watch the concert. Fortunately, the director of our school got us a list of many  artists that maybe interest in helping and performing for free. The problem was that we  wanted to do a marathon of concerts (not just one) to raise money and the majority of  the artists only performed classical musical, and this type of music could not interest  high school students (teenagers).    Selection    The team really thought our idea was good, but because of the constraints and risks, we  needed to test our hypotheses before we move forward with the marathon of concerts.  With this, the design thinking tool we decided to use was the “Learning Launch Tool”.  With this, we would do one experimental concert, not so elaborate as the ones we were  planning for the marathon, as a prototype to test the idea of the marathon of concerts.    Application    For our first learning launch, we focused mainly on the marketing side. For the concert  itself, we didn’t need that much. We contacted 3 artists for the concert and the 3  accepted and seemed really excited about the idea. We also had a proper auditorium  for concerts with a really good sound system and school officials that offered to help  with the sound system. As I was saying, for the concert itself we had practically  everything done without much effort or resources spent.    The only thing we need now was people to attend the concert. Our main targets were  the students and their closest family. With this, we designed a publicity poster and  pasted in every wall we could (and had permission) in school. We also shared the posters  on our social media and talked with the students in the breaks between classes.    Insight & Approach    Many people attended and we raised a good amount of money. After the concert, we  explained our idea of doing a marathon and asked if people would come to other  concerts. Unfortunately, the majority of people, despite loving the concert, said that  wouldn’t come to the other concerts. Between various reasons, the main one was that  students saw concerts like a thing to go from time to time and not regularly. After this  learning launch, and despite the concert being a success, we understood that a  marathon wasn’t viable and perceived that we maybe should have done a “study” about

doing the marathon by first asking the students about it and then using the learning  launch concert to test it.    At that time some colleagues and I already knew about the “Learning Launch Tool”, the  problem was that we only knew about it theoretically and didn’t know enough to  correctly put it into practice. With this course, I understand that before we were using  the tool in an “ad hoc” way. But as said in this course everything is a learning tool, and  with this experiment and course, I take this project as a learning experience and see  myself better prepared for future similar situations (hopefully it will be different  situations so I can be out of my comfort zone and increase my repertoire).

