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773 : STEP ONE – SEEKING AND SHAPING OPPORTUNITIES

G What would make a new system faster?
G What would make a new system more user-friendly?
G What could a new system do to help users achieve their objectives?

breaking free of conventional thinking Just asking these simple
but provocative questions in a phase of divergent thinking can open up
previously unthought-of avenues and issues. It helps avoid the risk that
you become stuck in conventional thinking.

In Michael Bloomberg’s case, he discovered that conventional thinking
in the IT industry focused on selling to the IT managers, for whom
standardisation was a key criterion. The actual needs of the end-users,
the analysts and traders, appeared of secondary importance.

Having decided to explore the end-user angle more fully, Bloomberg
could then have rephrased the question as: ‘IWWM we make the
systems better able to help the actual users achieve their objectives?’ In
reality, Bloomberg did design a system which directly addressed the
traders’ needs and objectives, with multiple monitors to avoid opening
and closing endless windows, easy-to-use terminals and integral
analytic capability to render offline calculations unnecessary. Further
exploration of users’ objectives highlighted that these extended to
personal as well as professional issues. Bloomberg included
information and purchasing services to allow the cash-rich but time-
poor traders to achieve their social goals as well.

Undertaking this deconstruction exercise for each of the ‘5Ws plus H’
down to as many levels as you wish is a powerful tool to generate a
range of further perspectives on your initial opportunity.

challenging received wisdom If you work in a particular market or
industry, the chances are that you consider you know everything about
how the market ticks, why customers buy and how users actually
consume the products and services. But do you?

Industries tend to have particular ways of viewing themselves. Have
you been brain-washed into conventional thinking?

‘yours sincerely, steve’, she wrote When Dame Stephanie Shirley
founded the original software company which was to develop into the
massive Xansa plc, industry convention was that software was
something given away for nothing. In addition, conventional industry