Learning Launch in New Product Development

Challenge:

I work as an R&D Project manager in a company that develops products for Food and Beverage

industry. In order to ensure that after the new product I develop is introduced to a market, the company  could make a revenue that initially was planned at the project kick-off and further stages. And the  difficulties could appear not because of the product itself does not meet customer’s expectations, but  because it is wrongly positioned on the market. In order to position it properly it should be properly  tested, so the properties that specific kind of customers (e.g. brewer or winemaker) require could be  included into the test report. As the product was still in early development stage, our product’s customer  was the sales team because if R&D couldn’t sell the product to sales it couldn’t also sell it to the  customer as the sales will be reluctant to offer customer the product which they are still not sure of.

Selection:

In order to prove that the developed product is really what the market needs, was decided to use the

Learning Launch tool and to conduct the launch by introducing the product under development like  selling the existing one, so that the sales team members could check if the product has all the properties  which our customers require

Application and insight:

For conducting the Learning Launch several sales team members from different business areas

(selling to different product producers, beer or wine) and different sales regions were invited. The  Learning Launch took place as a two days event when the sales team, representing different types of  customers from different regions formulated the image of the potential customer from their  region/business area, his needs, concerns, key sales drivers and limitation.

In the event two typical customer images, one for brewer and one for winemaker were formulated.

The images included what are the main customer’s concerts, which product properties and claims are  cruicial for them, which ones are nice to have and which claims are complete no-goes for the specific  market. The most valuable outcome from the event and the first thing we learned was that we can’t  position the same product in different markets under the same brand as the product claims for one  market are definetly no-go for the other market. That had nothing to do with the product properties itself,  but with how the product is being tested for the different applications. And the different application require  different scope of testing and some tests, which are valuable for the brewer are completely inappropriate  for the winemakers.

As the result of the two-days event we ended up with finding a show stopper - claim, which would

definetly ruine all the sales plans in one of the markets if the product were introduced with this claim. We  also formulated a scope of tests, which should result in a list of claims for each market segment and  identified the potential customers for the field test of out product, which should create confidence in  product for sales and end customer when they offer this new product.

By applying the tool I learned that although we were still developing one product, from one side, the

scope of tests for the product which should be carried on in order to verify the products design should be  significantly extended and alghouth it will take more time to prepare a real launch, it gave us additional  degree of confidence in our product and help to mitigate a serious risk which could have affected a big  part of our company’s sales plans. The experience I gained during that Learning Launch event convinced  me that instead of introducing the one product to the whole F&B market we will need to launch two  different brands - each for one segment and through that insure our future sales.

Approach:

As we conducted learning launch I felt that we could have gained even more of that, than we got if I

ensured that instead of two sales for each market I involved at least three or four of them, especially from  various sales regions. That could have helped us to reveal region specific requirements, which could also  push sales and product development as well in the future.

Besides that next events for the other R&D projects should be conducted even earlier,shortly after the

project kick off, that could help us avoid excessive work and to concentrate on what does really matter for  our customer.

