Why why why why why to innovation

3 min readJan 24, 2017

Asking why five times in succession helps you get to the root of a problem. Eric Ries in his book, The Lean Startup, has brought it into popular culture as a tool to use when startups hit a problem.

5 whys is a Root Cause Analysis technique used in popular methodologies like Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing and Kaizen. Taiichi Ohno, an architect of the Toyota Production System, describes the method as

the basis of Toyota’s scientific approach….by repeating why five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear.

But can we use this technique as a tool for creating new products and services rather than to find root causes for problems with existing products and businesses? Can we use it as a tool for innovation rather than just a tool for quality improvement?

Before I get into that, here is an example of 5 whys in action at UK’s National Health Services(NHS).

The problem: The patient was late to the operation theatre
1. Why? There was a long wait for a trolley
2. Why? A replacement trolley had to be found
3. Why? The original trolley’s safety rail was worn and had eventually broken
4. Why? It had not been regularly checked for wear
5. Why? There is no equipment maintenance schedule (the root cause)
The solution: Setting up a proper maintenance schedule ensures patients are never late again due to faulty equipment. This reduces delays and increases efficiency. Which in turn, reduces cost and improves service. If we simply repair the trolley or do a one-off safety rail check, the problem may happen again sometime in the future.

The same thought process can be applied to building new products. As it is famously said, All problems have a solution but not all solutions have a problem. The starting point of building any product is to find a problem that users have.

Whether you are using the Double Diamond, Lean Startup or Jobs To Be Done method, asking 5 whys during your ideation or research phase will help uncover primal problems instead of manifest ones.

I’ve used it in problem interviews during customer development to discover job/s to be done instead of surface wants. Your users will always tell you what they want. To create sticky products, it is your task to find out their unmet need/s. We all know the faster horse quote attributed to Henry Ford. This technique will let you cut through the noise and get to the root.

As a thought experiment, let us give the faster horse quote the 5 whys treatment.

The problem: I want a faster horse
1. Why? I want to reach my destination quicker
2. Why? I can finish my business at the destination sooner and return
3. Why? I can finish work soon and spend time on personal projects
4. Why? I can improve my knowledge and skills
5. Why? I can build my own company(the root cause)

5 is only a guideline and you can very well continue asking more whys. 5 is generally enough. In our example, it is clear that the user/customer is hard pressed for time and wants to build a business. A solution thats saves time so that the user can invest it in building a business or a tool to help build a business with less time will be valuable for the user.

You get the idea. Don’t jump to a solution right away. Speak to more users and find patterns. Using affinity mapping will help visualise commonalities.

In most cases, deeper needs start emerging after the third why. You don’t always have to provide a solution for the root cause. You can choose to solve a need at any level if it is not already being solved sufficiently already and a lot of people seem to have that need.

In summary, the 5 whys technique can be a useful addition to your user and market research toolkit. It can complement other techniques quite well. It helps bring out inner motivations and deeply personal contexts leading to surprising insights.

Why away to your next innovation!

Why why why why why to innovation

Written by Nav Sangameswaran