5 y's of idea analysis?

Intellectual property is defined by the World Intellectual Property Organization as "creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce."  Ideas are usually a combination of all aspects of intellectual property, even if only certain aspects are protected by law.  In order to adequately protect an idea the analyst must understand the whole idea.  One very important part of the whole idea is it's purpose.  A five y analysis of an idea's purpose helps the analyst to better understand the purpose and therefore better protect the idea.  A five y analysis is done by asking the inventor why they are pursuing the idea, and then asking them four more times why they answered the way they did.

For example, your client has an idea for a new and improved bird feeder.  When you ask her why she wants to work on this idea she says, to make money.  When you ask her why she wants to make money, she tells you that she wants to use that money to develop more interesting and aesthetically pleasing bird feeders.  When you ask her why she wants to do that, she says she is concerned by the lack of certain birds in the area and she thinks that if she made cooler looking bird feeders she might be able to help bring those birds back.  When you ask her why she wants to bring certain birds back to the area, she tells you that those birds are good indicators of ecological health of a certain area and she thinks that by bringing them back she can improve the ecological health of the area.  When you ask her why she wants to improve the ecology where she lives, she tells you because she likes living in a place with a healthy environment.  

In this example you can see that the first question's answer doesn't begin to uncover the purpose of the invention.  If the analyst were to base his analysis and strategy on the answer to the first question he would completely ignore major aspects of the inventors idea.  The analyst would draw artificial boundaries around the idea that weren't there before the interview.  

The other benefit of the five y analysis, is that it gets the inventor thinking about their motivations and all the applications of their idea.  This is important because the idea may be bigger than inventor realizes and the analyst doesn't want to miss that potential and the inventor benefits from it as well.