The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

Any problem can be made clearer with a picture, and any picture can be made using the same simple set of tools and rules. When Herb Kelleher was brainstorming about how to beat the traditional hub-and-spoke airlines, he grabbed a bar napkin and a pen. Three dots to represent Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Three arrows to show direct flights. Problem solved, and the picture made it easy to sell Southwest Airlines to investors and customers. Used properly, a simple drawing on a humble napkin is more powerful than Excel or PowerPoint. It can help us crystallize ideas, think outside the box, and communicate it in a way that other people simply 'get.' Dan Roam argues that everyone is born with a talent for visual thinking, even those who swear they can't draw. As a consultant, he's shown Microsoft, eBay, and Wells Fargo how to solve problems with pictures. Now, drawing on twenty years of visual problem solving combined with recent discoveries in vision science, he shows anyone how to clarify a problem or sell an idea by visually breaking it down using a simple set of visual-thinking tools. His strategies take advantage of everyone's innate ability to look, see, imagine, and show. The Back of the Napkin proves that thinking with pictures can help you discover and develop new ideas, solve problems in unexpected ways, and dramatically improve your ability to share your insights. This book will help you literally see the world in a new way. 'Inspiring! It teaches you a new way of thinking in a few hours - what more could you ask from a book?' Dan Health, author of Made to Stick 'As painful as it is for any writer to admit, a picture *is* sometimes worth a thousand words. That's why I learned so much from this book. With style and wit, Dan Roam has provided a smart, practical primer on the power of visual thinking.' Daniel H. Pink, author of A Whole New Mind 'This book is a must-read for managers and business leaders. Visual thinking frees your mind to solve problems in unique and effective ways.' Temple Grandin, author of Thinking in Pictures 'Visual information is much more interesting than verbal information. So if you want to make a point, do it with images, pictures or graphics.' Roger Black, media design leader, author of Websites That Work 'We all dread business meetings with their mountains of documents and the endless bulleted PowerPoints, Roam cuts through all that to demonstrate how simple drawings - executed while the audience watches - communicate infinitely better than those complex presentations.' Bill Yenne, author of Guinness- The 250 Year Quest for the Perfect Pint 'If you want to communicate in the global economy, you need only learn one new language- the language of visual thinking. Even if you have two left brains and no artistic talent, Dan Roam will have you running to the whiteboard, dazzling colleagues with your ability to summarize complicated concepts with simple pictures.' Chelsea Hardaway, author of Why Business People Speak Like Idiots