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The Back of the Napkin

The Back of the Napkin
Manufacturer: Portfolio
Category: EBooks

List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $9.99
You Save: $14.96 (60%)



Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars 60 reviews
Sales Rank: 169

Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288

Dewey Decimal Number: 658.403
ASIN: B0013NS6EU

Publication Date: March 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Similar Items:

  • Made to Stick (Chapter 5: Emotional): Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

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 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."


Customer Reviews:   Read 55 more reviews...

3 out of 5 stars Good if you are new to this thinking   November 19, 2008
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.



2 out of 5 stars The book should have been napkin sized   November 11, 2008
 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.


3 out of 5 stars Inspiracion y metodo de comunicacion con dibujos   November 11, 2008
 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.



4 out of 5 stars Great book for Process Modelers...   November 10, 2008
 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.



2 out of 5 stars The Bad of the Napkin   November 9, 2008
 0 out of 1 found this review helpful

The author definitely has some good points, I definitely agree that making things more visual can help a lot of times, but come on, 300 pages for that? it would have been a great book if it only had 100 concrete pages but the fact that it is so long goes directly against what he is preaching... I don't think is worth it's money. Don't buy it.

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