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Dan Roam: The Back of the Napkin

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Bio

Dan Roam

Dan Roam is the author of the international bestseller The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, Business Week and Fast Company's best innovation book of the year, and Amazon's #5 selling business book. The Back of the Napkin has been published in 25 languages and is a bestseller in Japan, South Korea, and China.

Dan has helped leaders at Microsoft, eBay, Google, Wal-Mart, Boeing, Lucas Film, Gap, Kraft, Stanford University, The MIT Sloan School of Management, the US Navy, and the United States Senate solve complex problems through visual thinking. Dan and his whiteboard have been featured on CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, Fox News, and NPR. Dan's visual explanation of American health care was selected by Business Week as "The World's Best Presentation of 2009". This inspired the White House Office of Communications to invite Dan in for a discussion on visual problem solving. Dan is the founder of Digital Roam Inc, a management consulting company that helps business executives solve complex problems through visual thinking.

Through lectures, workshops, books, and hands-on projects with many of the world's most influential organizations, Dan has helped teams learn to solve complex problems by relearning how to see. Dan discovered the power of pictures as a business problem-solving tool in the 1990's when he founded the first marketing communications company in what was then the Soviet Union. With no Russian language skills, Dan quickly realized that his business pictures transcended the language barrier. Since that eye-opening experience, Dan has been fine-tuning the visual thinking tools he introduces in his books. Dan received two degrees at the University of California, Santa Cruz: fine art and biology. This combination of art and science kicked off Dan's cross-disciplinary approach to problem solving. Dan is a licensed pilot, a skill that demands constant practice in understanding complex visual information displays. Dan has applied his business-oriented visual thinking skills while working in Switzerland, Russia, Thailand, France, Holland, and the US. He lives in San Francisco.

The Napkin Sketch That Introduced Supply-Side Economics

02 min 50 sec

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The Conference Room Whiteboard: What Type of Pen Are You?

03 min 16 sec

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Watch Full Program

01 hr 06 min 19 sec

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7 Comments

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aserra

Posts: 1

Posted: 09.28.09, 07:19 AM

unfortunately without seeing the pictures mentioned during the speech I did not understand much, which perhaps confirms the theories exposed but that does not helps at all

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countyroad

Posts: 1

Posted: 05.06.09, 05:54 AM

So frustrating to watch a lecture about visual reasoning and no one can see what Mr. Roam is drawing on his whiteboard.

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jorge03

Posts: 1

Posted: 05.01.09, 12:26 PM

The cameraman either dozed off, went away or did not understand the name of the lecture, he does not show the picture and drawings Dan makes, takes about 80% of the objective away.

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vladsinger

Posts: 1

Posted: 04.13.09, 08:23 PM

Well, talk about deeply ironic. Here he's attempting to convey the importance of visual representation, and we are unable to see the visuals he presents.

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Jim Batterson

Posts: 2

Posted: 04.11.09, 06:21 PM

I have drawn a picture to tell you what I think of this presentation and it is right here on my left. Okay, and here's another picture. Now you understand the point I'm trying to make. No need to thank me, Mr. Cameraman.

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whatnj

Posts: 1

Posted: 03.19.09, 01:29 PM

Great message and great speech. It would have been lot better if the person who shot the video captured the diagrams as well when Dan was pointing and talking about the diagram. It is very annoying when the camera is just focused on Dan when he is trying to talk about something on the screen or whiteboard.

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m0nkeybl1tz

Posts: 9

Posted: 03.06.09, 06:35 PM

It's a very interesting concept, and I've started doing it a bit in my daily life, but I wish he would've made a more convincing argument for why it works...

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