Simplicity. This is Dan Roam's message in The Back Of The Napkin. Just as RenA Descartes summarized the entire philosophy of existence in five words (just three in the Latin translation) and Stephen Hawking summarized the history of time in a book with a single mathematical formula, Roam gives business communicators a lesson in simplicity.
We all dread business meetings with their mountains of documents that few people ever read, and the endless bulleted power points that serve only to dull the mind into nervous slumber. Roam cuts through all that to demonstrate how the use of simple, but well chosen, drawings, executed while the audience watches, can communicate infinitely better that the complex presentations that incite loathing and yield only distraction.
Is a picture truly worth a thousand words? Having told us how to communicate with pictures, Roam rounds out his message by explaining that "We don't show an insight-inspiring picture because it saves a thousand words; we show it because it elicits the thousand words that make the greatest difference." And that is communication that works.
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The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures Used Books New.