Dan Roam - Unfolding the Napkin: The Hands-On Method for Solving Complex Problems with Simple Pictures

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Table of Contents

PORTFOLIO UNFOLDING THE NAPKIN

Dan Roam is the bestselling author of The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures . Hailed by Fast Company magazine as the best innovation book of 2008 and by the London Times as the business creativity book of the year. The Back of the Napkin has been translated into eighteen languages. As the president of Digital Roam Inc., Dan has helped leaders at Microsoft, Google, Wal-Mart, the Federal Bank of Reserve, Boeing, and the United States Senate solve complex problems through visual thinking. Dan and his whiteboard have appeared on CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, Fox News, and NPR. Dan lives in San Francisco.

To attend one of Dans back of the napkin workshops, please register at www.thebackofthenapkin.com.

PORTFOLIO
Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U. S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in 2009 by Portfolio, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright Dan Roam, 2009 All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Roam, Dan.

Unfolding the napkin : the hands-on method for solving complex problems with simple pictures / Dan Roam.

p. cm.

Includes index.

eISBN : 978-1-101-16314-6

1. Problem solvingAudio-visual aids. 2. ManagementAudio-visual aids. I. Title.
HD30.29.R6258 2009
658.403dc22 2009032657

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

http://us.penguingroup.com

For Sophie and Celeste,
the real masters of the magic wand.

INTRODUCTION :

THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN, HANDS-ON

Why a hands-on Back of the Napkin method?

Twenty-five years of helping business leaders around the world develop ideas has taught me three things:

1. There is no more powerful way to discover a new idea than to draw a simple picture.

2. There is no faster way to develop and test an idea than to draw a simple picture.

3. There is no more effective way to share an idea with other people than to draw a simple picture.

This book contains many tools, rules, and concepts, but in the end its about just one thing: how you can draw that simple picture.

A guidebook for creating problem-solving pictures

This book is as a follow-up to The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures . In that book I talked about using simple pictures as a way to solve business problems and introduced a set of tools and rules to help anyone create problem-solving pictures.

I created this second book, Unfolding the Napkin , to help you see exactly how the visual problem-solving process works in the real world of business. Every tool and rule I introduced in The Back of the Napkin is here, only this time well work through them together, step-by-step, putting visual problem solving into everyday practice.

Think of The Back of the Napkin as an introduction to visual problem solving; think of Unfolding the Napkin as the hands-on guidebook.

The Back of the Napkin is the introduction to visual problem solving; this is the hands-on guidebook.

A self-contained four-day course

This book is set up as a four-day course on visual problem solving: my entire approach is spelled out picture by picture, taking us from I cant draw to Heres the picture I drew that I think can save the world.

Why four days? Two reasons: First, experience tells me thats how long it takes to get through all the lessons in a meaningful way. Second, as well soon see, the visual thinking process naturally breaks into four steps, and addressing them one at a time helps the whole approach make sense.

But four days is a long time for businesspeople to stop what they normally do and learn something new. This workshop addresses that valid concern with two approaches: the carrot and the stick.

The stick says weve got a lot to cover; the carrot says we can make it part of our actual work.

The stick says, Yes, there is a lot of material here, and, yes, its all important. It simply takes four days to get through it all and make sure that its going to stick. So buckle down and pick up your pens.

The happier approach, the carrot, says, If we do this right, we wont have to stop what we normally do at all. This book is set up so you can bring your real-world work with you. Rather than look only at hypothetical case studies, Id like you to work on a few real problems from your officethat way you can see how visual thinking works and start to fix things at the same time.

Quick review: The Back of the Napkin on the back of a napkin

If youve read The Back of the Napkin , this book will need little introduction: it covers the same material in a more detailed and interactive way. If you havent read The Back of the Napkin , here is a brief summary.

The Back of the Napkin on the back of a napkin: we can solve our problems with pictures.

I believe we can solve our business problems, whatever those problems might be, by creating simple pictures. The Back of the Napkin breaks that statement down into three essential questions: what problems can be solved with pictures, what pictures do the solving, and what people do the drawing.

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