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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS76

potential of this standardisation process and saw the opportunity for
plenty of new milkshake machine orders, if only the brothers would
open more restaurants. Kroc volunteered to run them. In 1955, Kroc
opened his first restaurant under franchise. He bought out the
McDonald brothers for $2.7 million in 1961.56 57

The ‘5 ws plus h’ technique The ‘5Ws plus H’ technique

provides a useful framework to generate new perspectives and gather
new information about your initial business opportunity. Borrowed
from the world of journalism, the technique asks ‘Who?, What?,
Where?, When?, Why? and How?’ in order systematically to explore
what you know, what you don’t know and what you had not perhaps
considered about your business idea. It effectively deconstructs the
initial opportunity into a multiplicity of smaller elements, which can
then be reassembled in a variety of different formulations.

You start by phrasing your business idea in the format ‘In what ways
might (IWWM … ?)’.

Imagine that you are Michael Bloomberg, considering the online financial
information industry in the early 1980s. Reuters and Telerate dominated
the market, providing news and prices in real time to the investment and
analyst communities. You might frame an initial business opportunity as:
‘In what ways might I improve the provision of financial information?’

You should then generate separate lists of questions relevant to the
general problem against each of the ‘5Ws plus H’ questions. You then
examine your answers to each question, interrogating the answers for
stimuli to help you redefine the opportunity.

Against ‘Who?’, for example, your list might include:

G Who uses the systems?
G Who purchases the systems?
G Who judges whether the systems are effective?
G Who says there’s anything wrong with current systems?
G Who might want something different?

Against ‘What?’, for example, your list might include:

G What are the biggest drawbacks to users of the current system?
G What offline processes could be replaced by online functionality?