Designing Learning Launches

Abstract

This note lays out in detail a technique, the learning launch, for generating increased revenues through conducting small experiments in the marketplace. A learning launch is a process for testing and improving (or abandoning) a new business idea quickly and inexpensively. Although the process involves selling a new product or service to a customer or group of customers, a learning launch is not a traditional new-product rollout. Instead, it is an experiment designed to generate insights and actual market feedback that can then be used to refine or entirely redefine the business idea and to determine whether it deserves a larger commitment of time, people, and other resources.