The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures | 
 enlarge | Author: Dan Roam
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $9.99
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Rating:  61 reviews
Sales Rank: 505
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 7.2 x 7.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 1591841992
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.403
EAN: 9781591841999
ASIN: 1591841992
Publication Date: March 13, 2008
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
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 twenty 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 56 more reviews...
 Stick figures can't quite sell it (insert sad face here) November 25, 2008
David R. Harper (Los Angeles, CA USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
It's a cute book with a heart. Its novelty is eschewing computer-generated graphs in favor of good old fashioned stick figures. At one point, this nostalgia goes too far: the multivariate plot of the accounting software landscape needs visualization software. In fact, often. The book's case study unwittingly makes the anti-case for pictures; for several business challenges, a simple picture belies a situation that, in real life, would demand a deeper analysis.
Does the book give "a new, better way to solve problems and sell ideas?" Nope, sad to say. Few usable takeways. Instead, a painstaking parsing of the *very* familiar. The anchor is the journalistic six ways of seeing: who and what, where, why, when, how, and how much. I did enjoy being reminded, but still felt empty at the end.
There are a couple of highlights, including the discussion of simple versus elaborate (i.e., the opposite of simple is not complex). As the author says, "the real goal of visual thinking is to make the complex understandable by making it visible, not by making it simple." Then he proves the point with a story about Jeff Hawkins, who uses two versions of a diagram to show how the brain works, a simple and a complex. He typically shows both versions of the brain to both newbie and scientific audiences, but what's cool is that the order of presentation matters, depending on the audience!
The case study at the end, to pull everything together, falls flat. If client problem were addressed this way, precious time would be wasted, er, doodling. It looks fun, don't get me wrong. Each challenge is reflexively met with the question, what picture can we draw? This turns out to be its own kind of error. With most examples, the case tends to either (i) over-reach in almost comical proportions; e.g., using a single bubble chart to set an entire strategy or (ii) pictorally trite; e.g., building an org chart is unnecessary graphical overkill to remind ourselves that we sell to different buyers within the client.
Perversely, then, the case study, by insisting that every step (even the obvious) be met with a picture, manages to undermine the valid premise of the book. It proves: not all problems should be, or need to be, met with pictures. The book does not succeed because it really never gets much beyond a "see Jane run" sort of metaphor; it never uses pictures for an adult challenge. It is much nearer to an introductory tutorial on basic chart types than insight into information design. One irony of the book is that it is filled with Tufte's chartjunk: visual elements that do not add information.
Two stars because (i) the degree of difficulty is really high (solving problems with pictures is a big hairy audacious goal, a goal with solutions far beyond this book) and (ii) one star feels impolite to the fun vibe of the happy face stick people.
 Good if you are new to this thinking November 19, 2008
Neal Lenarcic (Seattle, WA USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Being a visual learner, this was preaching to the choir with little new to offer. A few good points. Not enough to purchase an entire book on. Although, if visual expression and explanation style is not your forte, it is a book that could be useful.
Ergo, the rating of 3 falls between. A higher rank if you are new or relatively inexperienced. A lower rank if you are regular utilizers of visual mapping.
The book should have been napkin sized November 11, 2008
Jeffrey J. Kaney (Rockford, IL United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
OK, I'll admit it. I use the white board a lot. I thought this book would be a quick hit group of hints to make my life/verbiage/ideas more simple and clear. I found the book full of lists, like I'm going to be doing some free flowing idea presenting at a whiteboard and still remember some arcane 12 point list. I'd actually would have given it a 1 star rating, but I know there are some people this would be good for, someone possibly who isn't already jumping out of there chair and fighting for the whiteboard. If this describes you, my suggestion is skip this book.
Inspiracion y metodo de comunicacion con dibujos November 11, 2008
Rodrigo Martin Campo (Chile)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Debo reconocer que lo revise en 3 horas (rapido) pues no quiero atarme a una metodologia precisa de como transmitir mis ideas con esquemas y dibujos. Prefiero crear la mia para mis necesidades. Sin embargo le diria al autor que no intente dar tantos animos a quienes dudan de su capacidad de dibujar. Ellos no compraran su libro en primer lugar! Le apostaria que quienes compran su libro lo hacen por que sienten que si pueden. No pierda el tiempo y para una siguiente edicion ( por favor siga en esta nueva linea de comunicacion!!)incluya mas ejemplos que son iluminadores y mas motivadores que las palabras.
A mi me sera util en mis clases con universitarios (aunque se rien de los intentos de dibujo de su profesor, lo que no es malo del todo)y para presentar proyectos a personas mas creativas, mas sentimentales y menos conservadores que los habituales gerentes de empresa.
Vale la pena. Es novedoso y agradable de revisar, pero puede ser muy mejorado.
Gracias DAN ROAM por atreverse.
Great book for Process Modelers... November 10, 2008
Mitchel Martin
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Business diagrams are too often complex, difficult to understand and even harder to explain. The Back of the Napkin contains instruction and useful examples of how to get your message across simply and effectively.
As a Business Process and Management Reporting Consultant, I have been recommending this book this year to the business modelers that I train. Business people love to "show their stuff" by displaying complicated process models and business diagrams, sometimes spending as long as an hour explaining what it means.
BIG MISTAKE!!! If you can't get people to understand your model or picture in the first glance or two, your point will lose impact and you could miss getting your message across.
Almost every page contains simple diagrams to bring each and every point across to the reader. I would have given this book 5 stars, except the author tried to create a methodology and acronym SQVID that missed the mark by being too complex. Also, the "how to" example could have been better - and given the author an opportunity to really showcase his methodology's effectiveness.
Read this book - and after you finish, read "Make it Stick." These two books together will help you become more effective with business communications.
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