19-NOV TEAM WORKING SESSION Envisioneering

Today’s Agenda Quick review of progress-to-date (5 min) Questions (if any) on value propositions (5 min) Today’s topics (30 min):  Launch Plan  Key Deliverables  Timeline Next Steps (5 min) Q&A (5 min) NGL Envisioneering in Action! (10 min)

Progress-to-Date & Schedule Weekly meetings from 1-Oct to 12-Nov: Identify problem, hypothesis, research plan, target segments, value proposition, and competitive advantage. 19-Nov: Group meeting (product launch plan, key deliverables, and timeline) 26-Nov: No meeting (Happy Thanksgiving!) 3-Dec: Team meeting (product launch plan, key deliverables, and timeline) 10-Dec: Final team meeting 17-Dec: Team presentations

Questions? Are there any outstanding questions on creating value propositions that clarify competitive advantage? Are the key values and benefits of your product clearly articulated?

What is a Product Launch? The product launch is a strategic plan—post ideation and market research—that debuts a product into the market.

Launch activities start from product concept, and live on as a collaborative process between Product Development, Marketing, and Sales. Launches are not an event, nor are they a handoff between departments. They’re a process. Product Launch

Product (or program) launches are distinct from internal launches (e.g., program launch, Editorial launch, Production launch, etc.), and help us answer the following questions… What is it? Who is it for? Why is it needed? Why is it better? When is it needed? How do we continue sales efforts once the product is in the market?

Elements of a Product Launch Pre-Launch  What is it?  Who is it for? Launch  When, where, and how will we talk about it? Post-Launch  How do we continue the conversation?

Launch Preparation Elements needed prior to launching: Personas Market research analysis that demonstrates:  the customer’s desire to buy our product  their willingness to pay for it at the expense of other products  the product release timeline which coincides with purchase decisions and competitive releases Competitive advantage

Launch Preparation Agree on the following: At what price will the product be purchased? What is the desired positioning? (What resonates for customers?) What is the launch timing? (When will customers make these purchases?)

Launch Preparation What is the competition planning and are there channel conflicts? (What may prevent this product from being successful?) How will we sell it to ensure sales reps are successful? Then set realistic goals and mitigate all the issues you uncover in your launch planning.

Marketing Marketing explores ways to maximize the impact of collateral in the marketplace so that our product launch resonates with our customers. They start the conversation with Sales, and work collaboratively to time marketing and sales efforts to meet market demand.

Telekinetic coffee shop prank that shocked customers.

Clever marketing stunt that left bystanders baffled.

Diffusion of Innovations Diffusion of Innovations: A theory (first published in 1962; entered its 5 th edition in 2003) that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures. For technology products, it’s particularly important to “time” our marketing and sales efforts to meet the needs of distinct customers.

Diffusion of Innovations Diffusion of Innovations manifests itself in different ways in various cultures and fields.

Be informed… think critically… then, “Test the testable, but have the courage to launch the untestable.” ~Peter Cho, Inkling

Roadmap The launch plan is a roadmap that identifies milestones and deliverables—a document/process we are familiar with—in the context of time.

Kiawah Roadmap: Example 1

Kiawah Roadmap: Example 2

Milestones Milestones signal the completion of a phase, as well as the completion of the final product (key deliverable). Milestones may also signify the completion of important decisions or the derivation of a critical piece of information, which outlines or affects the future of a project.

Deliverables Deliverable is a term used to describe a product or any building block of an overall project, be it tangible/intangible or internal/external. A deliverable may also be composed of multiple smaller process-related deliverables (e.g., market research, building personas, product vision, creating requirements, value story writing, proof of concept prototyping, iterative development, platform and content QA, roll-out to sales, and so on).

Next Steps Build a launch plan and identify key deliverables and the timeline. Identify pre-launch, launch, and post-launch activities Capture milestones and deliverables Address additional testing for product effectiveness Mitigate any outstanding questions or issues

Questions?

NGL Envisioneering in Action! The next three slides reflect the collaboration between the NGL ESL/ELA product development team and the Cengage UX team, as we prepare market research for the 2017 Texas program.

We identified the elementary customers.

Using the teacher as an example, we narrowed in on their core attributes…

…their motivations… …and their challenges.