Unfolding the Napkin: The Hands-On Method for Solving Complex Problems with Simple Pictures [Paperback]

Dan Roam (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 29, 2009

An original workbook companion to the acclaimed business bestseller The Back of the Napkin

Dan Roam's The Back of the Napkin, a BusinessWeek bestseller, taught readers the power of brainstorming and communicating with pictures. It presented a new and exciting way to solve all kinds of problems-from the boardroom to the sales floor to the cubicle jungle.

The companion workbook, Unfolding the Napkin, helps readers put Roam's principles into practice with step-by-step guidelines. It's filled with detailed case studies, guided do-it-yourself exercises, and plenty of blank space for drawing. Roam structured the book as a complete four-day visual-thinking seminar, taking readers step-by-step from "I can't draw" to "Here is the picture I drew that I think will save the world."

The workbook teaches readers how to:
•Improve their three "built-in" visual problem solving tools.

•Apply the four-step visual thinking process (look-see-imagine-show) in any business situation.

•Instantly improve their visual imaginations.

•Learn how to recognize the type of problem to choose the best visual solution.

If The Back of the Napkin was a guide to fine dining, Unfolding the Napkin is the cookbook that will soon be heavily marked up and dogeared.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In 2008, Roam's The Back of the Napkin soaked up some book-of-the-year love from The Financial Times, Businessweek and Amazon.com. Roam's point was that problems can be better solved by drawing simple pictures, regardless of artistic ability. It's easier to see solutions visually, and it's also the revealing process of physically diagramming a problem, the argument goes.

To discover truly breakthrough ideas, intuitively develop those ideas and share those ideas effectively with others, we need pictures," Roam writes.

Since then, the management consultant and his Sharpies have conducted workshops at an impressive list of organizations, including Boeing, Pfizer, Google, Microsoft, Wal-mart and the U.S. Senate. Now, with Unfolding the Napkin, Roam squeezed his four-day workshop into a workbook so everyone can follow along.

It's a simple concept, but when Roam arrives at a solution for last year's economic crisis by drawing intersecting circles representing financial services, the auto industry and declining energy supplies, it's clear that Napkin is nothing to sneeze on.
-USA Today, Jan. 4, 2010

Whoever draws the best picture of a problem is the most likely to solve it.

Dan Roam offers a simple explanation about how to draw a problem/solution picture.

Draw a circle in the upper left corner of a sheet of paper and label it me. Draw a cloud-shaped circle in the lower left; label it my problem. Draw the shape of a closed Swiss army knife on the center of the page. Add and label "blades" (what you see, what to look for, what if..., how, when, where, why, how much, etc.) that deal with me and my problem. Those blades help you think of others that will help identify the problem, alternatives and solution.

What Roam drew on one page took me 90 words to describe, by the way.
-The Dallas Morning News, Dec. 26, 2009

About the Author

Dan Roam is founder and president of Digital Roam Inc., a management consulting firm that helps businesses solve problems through visual thinking. He has brought his unique approach to clients such as Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Wells Fargo, the U.S. Navy, HBO, NewsCorp., and the U.S. Senate. He lectures around the world for clients and at business conferences. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Trade; 1 edition (December 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591843197
• ISBN-13: 978-1591843191
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #64,887 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dan Roam is the author of the international bestsellers "The Back of the Napkin" (Fast Company's Innovation Book of the Year, The London Time's Creativity Book of the Year, and Amazon's Top 5 business book of 2008) and "Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don't Work."

Dan is the founder of The Napkin Academy, the world's first online visual-thinking training program. www.napkinacademy.com

Dan has helped leaders at Microsoft, Boeing, eBay, Kraft, Gap, IBM, the US Navy, the United States Senate, and the White House solve complex problems with simple pictures.

Dan and his whiteboard have appeared on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, and NPR.

Dan's "American Health Care on the Back of a Napkin" was voted by Business Week as the world's best presentation of 2009.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 64 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hands-on winner! January 3, 2010

By D. Philips

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I was very glad to have been able to get this in time for the 2010 New Year holiday.
It took me about 7 hours to work through the book, split over two days.
I found the workshop-in-a-book format very appropriate to the material.
Each "day" of the workshop is split into a morning and afternoon sections and that makes for nice-sized learning chunks.

Although The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures was published first, and I read it first, I would recommend starting with this book. The Back of the Napkin goes into more depth about why the techniques work. This book's "hands on" workshop format gets you involved -doing- by having you practice the techniques. It is something you really need to do as well as read about.

If you aren't sure that simple pictures, as advocated in both of Dan's books, can be effective, take a look at his drawings explaining the current US health-care situation, linked from: [...]

While the level of drawing skill needed is very low, what you'll probably find is that you need to work through drawings as you are working through your understanding of your problems. Simple doesn't mean Easy, but the difficulty here is not the drawing, it is working through whatever your problem is.

My only complaint about the book is that it could use a few more blank pages.
I did the exercises in a separate notebook; I had a number of "do overs" and there just weren't going to be enough blank pages for that.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars It's a must have if you're serious about communicating January 14, 2010

By Jordan Schaffel

Format:Paperback

Being that I'm in the 'Explaining' business, I have not only come to rely on the info in both books, but have recommended the books to hundreds of prospects that couldn't afford a video explanation. Yes, it requires you take time to read and practice, but the real results will start as you do the exercises on your own business problems. If you don't have a whiteboard, grab a large blank page notebook and get your pen moving. If you don't like what you see, rip up the page and start over. Unless you want to pay others to create your vision, this is as detailed as you can get with a self-help book so to speak. Take a few hours each week and study Dan's materials. Then go to a coffee shop and see if you can tell your story to someone in under 3 minutes using the visual(s). You'll be glad you did.

Jordan Schaffel
Co-founder
Say It Visually!

32 of 38 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Dan's Godfather III March 22, 2010

By Glenn Scott

Format:Paperback

Dan wrote a really great first book. I saw him present at Mix09 in Las Vegas and he was transcendantly good. But this second book is really just the first one again.

It's like back in the 70s when musical artists had their one hit and for the B side of the single they put out a track named "Part Two" which was really just "Part One" without the vocal track. (c.f., Bertha Butt Boogie).

I can tell from reading this that Dan was sensitive about this happening, and I think he tried to avoid it, but it didn't work. Same book. I guess when you have a hit you just ratchet up into another level of expense and expectation and Seth Godin-esque pressure to keep churning stuff out. Perhaps it is simply too hard to say, "Nope, that one book is all I got."