New presentation new insight

The way common data is presented changes the way it’s understood and applied.

Tim Brown introduces his book with two ways to approach the information within. For the traditional, he maintains a regular table of contents, a sequential order of the chapters that provides a broad overview of its linear structure. For readers who desire to see the connections between his ideas, he also provides a mind map (Brown, loc 171). The mind map presents the same data in a dramatically new way and helps the reader (or visualizer?) to understand Brown’s work as a single idea with many factors and connections. It’s a vivid demonstration of Brown’s perspective that “the continuum of innovation is best thought of as a system of overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps (Brown, loc 234).” He encourages his reader to take the same approach to his book that he takes to his client’s problems at IDEO with the hope that the example of re-imagining a common object, a book, will spur a reader to finish his work and apply it.

The way an idea is presented can re-shape how people see problems and opportunities in business. There is an overwhelming flood of information available to even the smallest business, let alone the trillions of data points a large company produces in a single month. The presentation of that data is crucial for it to be understood and acted upon by business leaders.

A lean startup isn’t presented in a regular document the way businesses of old have, a business plan, charter, etc. It’s presented as a canvas. There might even be drawings (gasp!). The new presentation emphasizes a change in the way business models are approached and therefore the way they’re understood and drafted.

To take another example from the software kCura produces, the way truth is being found in trillions of documents has moved away from traditional sifting through documents in offices full of reviewers to increasingly visual methods, such as presenting a chain of emails pictorially, with directional arrows and colors to indicate relationships and document relevance (Beckman).

I’ve been using mind maps for years and have found that, for brainstorming, I can think up a greater number and variation of ideas than with a simple list. Surprising since the act (brainstorming) remains the same in either activity. The business ideas I’ve modeled using the canvas variant Bob showed us in Jordan have been easier to envision and more likely to capture the nuances of an idea than a traditionally categorized business plan. My application, therefore, is to break away from the standard top-down list I normally use when drafting the business assignments, branding ideas for example, and utilize other methods to brainstorm.

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