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| 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: $10.80
You Save: $14.15 (57%)
New (36) Used (10) from $10.80
Avg. Customer Rating:  60 reviews
Sales Rank: 316
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
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
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New, Excellent Condition, may have Remainder Mark , Immediate Shipping, Email Notification, Professional Service, MILLIONS Served, SATISFACTION GUARANTEED!
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| Customer Reviews:
 a big disappointment July 17, 2008
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
i was really disappointed with this book. i tend to be a visual guy, and had a high level of expectancy about how fun this book would be to read, and how helpful it would be. but i was bored -- crazy bored. i could barely finish it.
there are some good ideas in the book, to be sure. but i found it horribly paradoxical that a book about using drawings would be so pickin' linear. there were three steps for this, and 6 rules for that. i felt like i was reading a john maxwell leadership book! the cute little drawings on every page even got really old. tons of repeated info, and `no duh' stuff also.
sorry, not a helpful book.
Disappointed April 9, 2008
8 out of 36 found this review helpful
I was really looking forward to reading this book and using it as a resource for helping me solve many of my everyday business issues. I very disappointed. The book does describe a very simplistic view. However, the process lacks any depth to be useful in my work.
 All sizzle, no steak August 27, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Dan Roam's "Back of the Napkin" is an important first step in teaching business people how to compose problems visually. However, it's definitely a rookie effort, heavy on sizzle but light on steak.
Roam spends nearly half the book explaining how our minds process information. Okay, fine. Kind of like a book on how to build a house explaining what is a hammer, a saw, a drill. Then Roam proposes some different ways to draw the different ways the brain processes information. Kind of like showing that a hammer is good for nailing wood together, a saw is good for dividing wood in half, and a drill is good for drywall and screws. The reader cannot wait to see how this will all fit together - "This is going to be good!". Finally, Roam throws out an example of how to pull it all together to solve a problem.
Unfortunately, the example is overly-easy, explores many blind alleys, and finally arrives at a solution that is fundamentally flawed. Roam's case study shows flat sales for a proprietary software company for two years. Roam's analysis shows $78 million in proprietary software will be purchased next year vs. $48 million in open source. The solution - convert their software into open source. Huh? Leave a $78 million industry to a single competitor to compete with two other open-source vendors for a $48 million industry? What kind of solution is that? Will you fire all your developers and hire open source developers? Will you force your existing customers to move to open source too, or just abandon them?
In the end, after many chapters of "wait till you see this" type posturing, Dan Roam never delivers the goods. I don't doubt Roam's sincerity, and hope he will continue to iterate on his models until he comes back with something that actually works.
 One of the Top Communication Books this Decade! April 12, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This book should be taught at the college level. It is an extremely well written book that captures the essence of business communication and what it should be. How many of us have sat through boring word wall presentations of list after list of speakers notes. The next time someone makes me sit through one I am going to send them this book.
The basic concepts of Visual Thinking: Look, See, Imagine, Show are helpful in providing a framework for developing your thoughts prior to starting any presentation. Then using the SQVID guide to understand what type of picture to use helps you think through the problem and finishing with the author's six ways we see and show of Who/what, how much, where, when, how, and why provides a guide for how to communicate your ideas.
I never read a business book twice but find myself studying this one. I have read over 50 business books in the last 18 months and this is at the very top of my list.
poor kindle conversion... July 15, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This review refers ONLY to the kindle version.
The way that the kindle converts the text to an e-format forces the images at a fixed size -- a size that too small to be able to see details.
You can resize the text, but not the pictures.
Obviously, this was more than a little annoying in a book that is all about using pictures to convey information.
Also, there were several places in the book where there was a caption for a picture but just a blank space where the picture (presumably) was supposed to appear.
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