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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS74

Night Watch. The experiment revealed that the average length of time
people spent viewing the painting increased from six minutes to over
half an hour. Visitors reported how the questions stimulated them to
create richer ideas about the painting by encouraging them to look
longer, to look closer and to remember more.

Your aim should be to establish a virtuous circle of creating greater
understanding of the market area, which creates a greater propensity to
generate valuable insights which then promote further enquiry. Active
questioning should be used at each and every step of the idea
development process.

Three variants of questioning technique exist – ‘Why?’, ‘5 Whys’ and
‘5Ws plus H’. We describe each in turn.

the power of ‘why?’ The surprising capacity of asking ‘Why?’ to

reveal the unexpected is well illustrated by the story of how the Polaroid
camera was invented. History relates that it was the innocent challenge of
a child which provided the initial stimulus to its invention. On holiday
in Santa Fe in December 1943, Edwin Land suggested to his three-year-
old daughter that they take the camera film which he had just finished to
the shop for processing, adding how much he was looking forward to
seeing the pictures in a week’s time. Her immediate response was: ‘Why
do I have to wait a week to see my picture?’

This instinctive challenge by the child to the status quo, the
devastatingly simple question ‘Why?’, identified a worthwhile problem
to Land which he had never previously considered, namely: ‘How
might I make a camera which yields instantaneous pictures?’ He is
reported to have formulated several possible solutions the very same
day, to the extent that he spent several hours with his patent attorney
that evening. Land commercialised the product within about four years.

In similar vein, Anita Roddick was out shopping with her children and
had been into the grocers and sweetshop before going to the chemists.
She asked herself what seems now to be a blindingly simple question:
‘Why are cosmetics not sold in smaller sizes with the level of choice –
as much or as little as you like – offered by the greengrocer and the
sweetshop?’55 This simple challenge born of everyday experience
provided a significant input to the creation of Body Shop.

Asking ‘Why?’ at every step of the idea development process is sound
sense. It can highlight market opportunities, provided that you maintain