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

Hardcover, 288pp
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Pub. Date: March 2008
ISBN-13: 9781591841999

B&N online price: $19.96
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SYNOPSIS
A bold new way to tackle tough business problems — even if you draw like a second grader

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 crystallize ideas, think outside the box, and communicate in a way that people simply "get." In this book Dan Roam argues that everyone is born with a talent for visual thinking, even those who swear they can't draw.

Drawing on 20 years of visual problem solving combined with the recent discoveries of vision science, this book shows anyone how to clarify a problem or sell an idea by visually breaking it down using a simple set of visual thinking tools — tools that 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 anyone discover and develop new ideas, solve problems in unexpected ways, and dramatically improve their ability to share their insights. This book will help readers literally see the world in a new way.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Roam is the founder and president of Digital Roam Inc., a management-consulting firm that helps business executives solve complex problems through visual thinking. He has brought his unique approach to clients such as General Electric, Wal-Mart, Wells Fargo Bank, the U.S. Navy, HBO, News Corporation and Sun Microsystems, among many others. He lectures around the country for clients and at business conferences.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Management consultant and lecturer Roam begins with a "watershed moment": asked, at the last minute, to give a talk to top government officials, he sketched a diagram on a napkin. The clarity and power of that image allowed him to communicate directly with his audience. From this starting point, Roam has developed a remarkably comprehensive system of ideas.

Everything in the book is broken down into steps, providing the reader with "tools and rules" to facilitate picture making. There are the four steps of visual thinking, the six ways of seeing and the "SQVID" — a clumsy acronym for a "full brain visual work out" designed to focus ideas. Roam occasionally over-complicates; an extended case study takes up a full third of the book and contains an overload of images that belie the book's central message of simplicity. Nonetheless, for forward-thinking management types, there is enough content in these pages to drive many a brainstorming session. Illus. (Mar 13) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

"Inspiring! It teaches you a new way of thinking in a few hours — what more could you ask from a book?" -Dan Heath, author of Made to Stick