Learning Launch:

Challenge

After long years of working as an employee, I’ve decided to take and leap of faith and start my own  business. Now, bear in mind that I have long diverse track record in different industries and diverse set of  roles/functions. My primary passion and skill was always about talking possibilities and wonders of  technology. Once I get to talking about a subject that I’m passionate about, the crowd will buy into my  narrative and my gift was always in persuading people in things that are important to me.

With that as a context to the challenge my initial Hypothesis was based on idea of introducing “Innovation  as-a-Service” model for SME’s across Scandinavia. This would be a type of a mix between Management  Buy-In and/or Consulting for Equity. Would that Idea work?  Or would be forced to pivot our core service  offering towards more traditional Management Consulting practice or probably even launching Venture  Capital fund.

After carefully assembling a team of partners with diverse sets of backgrounds, skills and personality types  we began testing our Hypothesis whether or not it could be confirmed.

Selection

After rigorous selection process to assemble a team we landed on testing the Learning Launch and called  the process for “Rapid Fire testing” to get assessment about our service offerings for matured Scandinavian  business environment, dominated by legacy technology and slow passed innovation.

Application

We started our “Rapid Fire test” by gathering piles of data from public registrars. Scandinavian countries  are quite transparent and all of the companies both private and public, small and large, have to disclose  and post their yearly income statements, CEO salaries, assets on books etc. All of the data is open for  mining through public organizations API, which enabled us to track and segment huge piles of data. In  combination with Industry Index tracking we were able to track individual performance of Small and  Medium sized companies across wide arrays of sectors. Data was plentiful and as qualitative as it comes.  This resulted in profile which we would cross examine to determine pace of Innovative Development with  EU’s Innovation Index chart. The assumption is to compare companies with EU’s standard as a Final Metric.

Our team will be following Learning Launch process outlined by mr. Hess in lecture dated from week 4:

1) Idea  2) A specific persons(s)  3) Has a specific problem

4) The Idea meets that need  5) Better than Current Alternatives

So far we had all of the process completed except for the last one. Our team is currently compiling a list of  “competitors” to assess viability of our offering.

We have successfully executed almost 2 sprints/cycles of “Rapid Fires” under 2 months with a team of 4  people.

Insight

By applying the Learning Launch model we have a set framework and structure that gives us more  structured approach towards testing the hypothesis cheaply and fast.

We have successfully executed almost 2 sprints/cycles of “Rapid Fires” under 2 months with a team of 4  people.

And we are constantly adjusting our service offerings since the initial hypothesis was PARTLY confirmed.  Yes, there are huge needs for Innovation catalysts among SME’s community in Scandinavia and No, there  are quite reluctant to get along for innovation.

Approach

Our approach towards to validating the Idea/Hypothesis resulted in careful pre-work and fundamentally  clear set of process needed to execute the “Rapid Fires”. We were careful and selective with our team as  we utilized Personality Tests in order to assess personality types among the team. We surely made it clear  to find a “sceptic” and recruit him. Our team had crash course in Design Thinking to get them in the right  mindset and patter in thinking. And given the limited resources we were forced to follow each steps as rigid  as possible and fail with small and rapid launches. So far the Learning Launch resulted in “2 pivotal”  assumptions/ideas that we adjusted along the learning curve.

Design thinking and “Learning Launch” model is essential core our value proposition for our clients.

