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.