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Visual Thinking Tool Drives Process Clarity |
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The Importance of Idea Mapping |
What are the benefits of idea mapping?
Clarify thinking and business processes
Productive brainstorming and gathering information
Organizing thoughts and information
Capturing detailed and diverse information
Group analysis and problem solving
Understanding strengths, associations, and connections
Defining hierarchy and highlighting priorities
How can idea mapping assist business?
This technique has been proven to boost team efficiency and clarify
thinking, driving business results and increasing productivity.
Administrators and management can use this technique to organize ideas,
prioritize information, and
resources. Idea mapping is also very effective for group and team
environments, enabling individuals to work creatively together,
allowing idea generation and process alignment, problem solving, and
group analysis.
Click here view more information: TheThinking Business
Click here to view more examples
Location / Tools:
How do you incorporate idea mapping into your business practices?
Choose a conference room or office space good for group discussion. The
only tools needed are a large white board, dry erase markers, post-its
(lots of them), and an active mind.
Topic: Select an upcoming meeting or brainstorm topic that you think could benefit from an idea mapping discovery session.
Meeting Facilitator / Recorder: This person's responsibility is
to encourage discussion by asking questions, defining the categories,
linking other related topics, and questioning the process.
How it's done?
Step 1: Place the main idea in the center. Begin with a word or
image that symbolizes what you want to think about and place it in the
middle of the page or whiteboard.
Step 2: New ideas radiate from the center. Instruct participants
to start with an open, playful attitude ... they can always get serious
later.
Step 3: Look for relationships. Use lines and branches to show connections between the ideas generated on your mind map.
Step 4: Think fast. Your brain works best in 5-7 minute bursts. Record ideas as quickly as possible.
Step 5: Judge not. Put everything down that comes to mind, even
if it is completely unrelated. Writing down unrelated items makes way
for great ideas.
Step 6: Keep moving. Keep your hand moving. If ideas slow down, draw empty lines to fill, or change colors to reenergize.
Step 7: Allow organization. Organization can always come later;
the first requirement is to get the ideas out of your head and onto the
paper.
Idea mapping software
There are dynamic idea mapping software programs that enable increased
organizational flexibility. Although, there are significant advantages
to using the software, experts believe that there is still a memory
enhancing benefit that
occurs while the hand is drawing a map.
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Supporting Links: |
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Idea Mapping Success by Jamie Nast
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FreeMind and MindManager Mind Map Lirary
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MindJet Pro
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Sales Brochure Displays Company's Value |
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Gomez: The .com Customer Decathlon |
Jumping over hurdles. Stuck in the mud. Lost in a maze. Running on a
treadmill that's going nowhere. These are the metaphors XPLANE
incorporated into the multi-fold brochure that visually describes the
daunting, disjointed, and often
painful process that online shoppers can experience on Web sites that
do not utilize Gomez's services.
Gomez
provides the online industry's only complete solution for managing Web
application experience from development through deployment and the
entire life cycle in between. When making plans for an early-2008 sales
conference, Gomez
came to
XPLANE
for assistance in the development of a high level communications tool
to help prospects better understand the value of the company's
services.
XPLANE's creative team developed the .COM CUSTOMER DECATHLON concept to
highlight the extremely painful consequences of a poor Web site
experience, namely lost customers. The imagery is particularly powerful
since it draws on Web
experiences all consumers have had and equates them to familiar, yet
unpleasant, analogies on an obstacle course. The brochure connects with
Gomez's audience by revealing the "behind the scenes" stages of Web
development that are often the
root of customer pains, and offers Gomez's solutions to each individual
problem, one by one. Not only does each of the brochure's folds serve
to ensure a hand-held quality necessary for a sales tool, but they also
underscore the decathlon
concept in this unique brochure that clearly depicts the Gomez value
proposition.
XPLANE's creative team is very familiar with developing unique and
creative tools for companies to visually communicate their value
proposition. XPLANE is well known for creating XPLANATiONS, which are
simple visual stories that quickly
and clearly explain complex business issues. XPLANATiONS are generally
created as an 11" x 17" deliverable that can be also deployed in
multiple formats such as an interactive presentation or PowerPoint to
suit any audience or
environment. In this engagement, XPLANE was challenged to create a
sales tool that encompassed the entire pain / gain process but also
allowed the salesperson the option to present each "pain" and
accompanying "gain" individually.
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The results of this project drove our ratio of prospects-to-sales up by 300% |
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Jose Luis Ayala, General Director of Diverza
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XPLANE Challenge:
To create an effective sales tool that explains the value of
Diverza's
Electronic Invoicing solution and visually depicts "how it works." The
sales tool should guide clients through the process of information
management, hiring requirements, and implementation of the service.
XPLANE Discovery Session:
"The consulting process with XPLANE opened our eyes to information that
was previously complex to communicate, was in fact much simpler to
explain visually to our customers. The process was effecient,
interactive, creative, to-the-point,
and colaborative."
Click here to view pdf of the XPLANE process
Business Results:
The results drove the ratio of prospects-to-sales up by 300%.
The Cost-Benefit analysis of this type of investment is completely justified.
Infomation taken from an interview with Jose Luis Ayala.
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Diverza XPLANATiON pdf |
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