Digital Roam

Launch! on the back of a napkin

A few weeks ago, Guy Kawasaki asked if I'd like to deliver the keynote at the SVASE (Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs) Launch 2009 event.

There are a couple important things to know about Guy. One is that he gets to go on all the coolest blogging trips. (Check out his recent photos from onboard the aircraft carrier Nimitz.) Two is that he knows everybody. Three is that when he asks you to do anything, the answer is "YES!" -- especially if it's as such a great event as Launch!

The whole idea of Launch! is that a whole bunch of brilliant start-ups that need money come to a big event at the Microsoft Mountain View Campus next Tuesday, June 9 from 7:30 - 1:30. They each have 10 minutes to present their concept to all the big Silicon Valley money people. If they launch well, they should come out of there with money in their pockets.

I'm going to use my opening 20 minutes to convince everyone to throw away whatever PowerPoint presentations they've been working on for the last months and instead use a whiteboard. We'll see...

Speaking of moving abroad: The Back of the Napkin takes Asia!

Over the past few weeks, I've received three of the first non-US editions of THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN in the mail.

The first to arrive was the Taiwan edition, published by Yuan-Lion, Taipei. I understand that within weeks it had become a bestseller in Taiwan.

Next arrived the South Korean edition, published by Book 21, Seoul.

And yesterday I received the Japanese edition, published by Kodansha, Tokyo.

I want to thank all the editors, writers, and designers for such spectacular work! It is difficult to describe the pleasure of seeing my words in a language I can't read -- while my pictures remain clear without any translation required.

I'm telling you folks, visual thinking is the global language of the future.

Want be more creative? Move abroad.

Frommer's travel site today quotes a study in the May edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association, indicating that people who have lived outside their native country may develop more creative minds. The full study is here.



I can't speak for anyone else, but I know that in my own life the times I lived outside the USA forced me to become a more creative thinker. At age seventeen I moved from Montana to Thailand for a year. That was an extreme shock, but after the initial cultural drowning period I loved every minute of it. It was a wonder in every way to see that the world was more than downtown Billings, MT.

Later, I lived and worked in Russia for several years. I often say that everything I learned about business I learned while watching communism stagger towards becoming capitalism. It wasn't all pretty, but it was without a doubt the most formative business experience of my life.

The APA study concludes with this thought:
It may be that those critical months or years of turning cultural bewilderment into concrete understanding may instill not only the ability to “think outside the box” but also the capacity to realize that the box is more than a simple square, more than its simple form, but also a repository of many creative possibilities.

I can easily see that picture. And I agree completely.

Unfolding the Napkin: book two is a wrap

Last week I completed the manuscript for my next book. It is a great feeling to have it done.

Unfolding the Napkin: The Complete Workbook for Solving Complex Problems with Simple Pictures will be available in January, 2010. Like The Back of the Napkin, it will be published by Adrian Zackheim at Penguin Portfolio. Courtney Young is editing.

The Workbook covers the visual thinking concepts, tools, and rules I introduced in The Back of the Napkin, but this time I present everything through guided do-it-yourself exercises. I 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."

That's a big leap. But I believe it's doable. Having spent the last seven months fine-tuning every exercise, I know it is. I can't wait for you to see it for yourself.

I'll keep you posted on details as we get closer to the publication date.

 

The Force was with us

Without a doubt, the best part of getting your business book done is getting asked by companies you admire to come give a talk. All the effort is instantly worth it the moment the company you always dreamed of working for calls up and wonders, "Would you be willing to share your ideas with our people?"

The answer is YES. Especially if the company calling is Lucasfilm.

I wanted to work for Lucas every single day since I first saw Star Wars thirty years ago. I don't think I've ever recovered from receiving a copy of Joe Johnston's "Star Wars Sketchbook" for Christmas 1977. I must have drawn Y-Wing fighters for months.

I guess it paid off: drawing pictures on the biggest digital projection screen in the most immaculate theater I've ever presented in was pure joy.

Thanks Kelly for asking me to come share "visual problem solving" with ILM, LucasArts, and Lucasfilm. The pleasure was all mine.

Mixing it up in Vegas

For the second year in a row, Microsoft asked me to come give a talk at their MIX "web user experience" conference in Las Vegas. This time, rather than talk about solving problems with pictures on the back of a napkin, I expanded the canvas.

I titled this session "The Way of the Whiteboard: Persuading with Pictures". As the title indicates, I wanted to open up our visual thinking on a bigger page, the better to help us use simple pictures to sell our ideas.

Click image to view clip.

The session was tremendously fun to deliver and was well received. I'm also really pleased how well the AV team captured both my words and the pictures I draw. You can watch it in its entirety here:
http://mschannel9.vo.msecnd.net/o9/mix/09/wmv-hq/c16f.wmv

After Twitter, where next?

I just returned from SXSW in Austin where I had a chance to participate in a panel about visual thinking with Lee LeFever, Sunni Brown, Dave Gray, and Tom Crawford. We had a huge crowd in the room, and there was a lot of Twittering going on, most of which you can read here.

Seeing all those fingers flying and tweets popping up got me thinking. In a few short years we've gone from individual website content authors writing thousands of words of text for big websites to lots of friends writing thousand of tiny notes to each other.

Seen visually, the progression looks like this Teeter-Totter diagram...

There is a clear trend here towards fewer words delivered with increased frequency. Given that each new web technology remains hip for a shorter time than the previous, we should pretty soon see Twitter's replacement in the form of a one-word blip that is constantly updated by everyone alive.

Let's call it -- whatever "it" is -- BLIPPER.

Stella 3.0

The single most beautiful car of all time will be on display at NY's Grand Central Terminal from March 24 - April 6. Even if it means taking the 4/5/6 at rush hour, we must go see it.

Among auto styling aficionados, the early '70's-era BMW 3.0CS is considered one of the true classic car designs. A long low profile, acres of blue-tinted glass with no apparent structural support (the lack of a 'B-pillar' is mimicked in coupes to this day), the shark-nose with an endless row of headlights; now this is a CAR.

Now imagine making a racing version: replace the heavy steel doors and hood with light-weight aluminum, yank out every ounce of unneeded stuff, bolt on body-hugging spoilers, dams, and fenders to make it look like the Bat Mobile.

Now ask abstract artist Frank Stella to paint it any way he wants. You end up with 1976's 'Art Car' BMW 3.0CSL. Black line drawing on the white canvas of the car. Sublime. See you at Grand Central.

What does this have to do with visual thinking?

Everything. For ten years from 1971 to 1981 (from age seven to age seventeen) I knew I was going to be an auto designer when I grew up. I was going to attend the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena then go on to become the next Raymond Loewy.

Things worked out differently. At age 17 I spent a year living as an exchange student with a Thai family in a rice field longhouse two hours north of Bangkok, Thailand. I learned there were more important things than cars, and instead studied biology and painting. But I never lost that love of cars, especially that BMW.

In fact, when I moved to California a few years ago, the first thing I did was buy one.

Thank you eBay.

The details:
BMW Art Car Exhibition
Dates: March 24 – April 6, 2009
Location: Vanderbilt Hall, Grand Central Terminal
Park Avenue at 42nd Street
New York, NY

Learning from Japanese school children (amazing)

A truly wonderful book has just hit the stands: Ken Watanabe's Problem Solving 101. If you like The Back of the Napkin's approach to looking at the world, you owe it to yourself to get this book.

I don't know Ken, but I was introduced to his book through my own publisher, who sent me a review copy a few months back. The moment that I looked at it, I felt I had found a kindred spirit. Ken is a former McKinsey consultant who decided to take a consultant's holistic problem-solving approach and apply it to the Japanese education system.

Apparently, there has been a lot of discussion in Japan these last few years that much of that nation's economic stagnation can be blamed on a school system that relies almost entirely on rote memorization. Rather than learning "how" to think, many in Japan thought their kids were only being taught "what" to think. The result is poorly developed innovation and critical thinking skills.

So Ken wrote Problem Solving 101 as an inspiring way to show kids the fun of solving problems. What no one expected was that the book would so appeal to grown-ups in business that it would instantly become a business bestseller in Japan. After 350,000 copies sold in Japanese in the first months, the book was picked up by Portfolio in the US. And now we have a great new resource.

It's always potentially questionable to so enthusiastically promote something from one's own company. In this case I'm willing to take the risk. This is a book we should all read.

The Credit Crisis explained, part 2

Jonathan Jarvis' wonderful animation of the credit crisis is the best explanation I've seen yet.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Aside from being a darn good animation, this clip illustrates the key elements to an effective visual explanation:

• Clear signposting of who, what, how much, and where
• When accounted for through a fluid storyline that takes us from a simple set-up through increasingly complex concepts
• How revealed through an effortless deduction of what is being built before us
• A well written and clear simultaneous verbal narration

Looking at the comments on Jonathan's original posting tells us that not only do we now "get" what's going on, we see it clearly enough to point out possible errors and omissions. And that is a good thing: we can only make intelligent criticism when we understand what we've seen. It takes courage to be this clear.