Back of The Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

We don’t have to know all these answers today; the point of this picture is that it gives us a good starting point for knowing who and what we should be looking for.”

What people want to DO (or what we want them to do) determines function; what people want to KNOW (or what we want them to know) determines content; and what we want them to REMEMBER determines the brand.

I turned to the window and contemplated how best to jump off the train

London’s St. Pancras Station for Sheffield,

by the then-new British prime minister, Tony Blair.

typical MBA progra

Back of the Napkin is divided into four parts—this introduction and then one part each for discovering ideas, developing ideas, and selling ideas, all using nothing but our eyes, our mind’s eye, our hands, a pen, and a scrap of paper. (

you were able to walk into this room this morning without falling down, I guarantee that you’re enough of a visual person to understand everything that we’re going to talk about and to get something useful out of it.”

managing businesses in San Francisco, Moscow, Zurich, and New York

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.