And this time it’s not the little-crafty-ladies selling their adorable wares on Etsy or eBay. It’s the big boys, getting on the doodling bang-wagon, the UPSs and Microsofts of the corporate environment. They’re down with doodling and apparently – loving it. They use them in ads, on business meetings, Business Week posts articles about it, there’s even such a thing as “visual thinking consultant”. Doodling is definitely the new “IT” thing in the business world.

Business on the Back of a Napkin
Who says doodling is a waste of time? Here are four ways to solve serious business problems with a simple drawing
© Douglas MacMillan & BusinessWeek

No e-mail, no spreadsheets, no PowerPoint—no problem. All you really need is a pen and a cocktail napkin, says Dan Roam, a visual thinking consultant who earns his living teaching execs at Microsoft, Wallmart, Sun Microsystems and other big companies how to use doodles to solve business problems and sell ideas to colleagues and clients. In his forthcoming book, The Back of the Napkin (Penguin Portfolio, March, 2008), he shares his secrets for tackling complex problems with simple visual frameworks..

Take the story of Southwest Airlines (LUV): During a dinner meeting with his lawyer in 1967, Texas entrepreneur Rollin King jotted down the names of three cities on a napkin—San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas—and connected them to form a triangle. A small airline that offered nonstop flights between these hotspots, he explained, would have an edge over big airlines like American and Continental, which forced travelers in the region to fly through expensive and time-consuming hubs.

For this BusinessWeek.com slide show, we handed Roam a felt-tipped pen and a stack of napkins, and asked him to give us a primer. He shares four types of drawings—portraits, maps, charts, and timelines—and shows us how each one has been put into action by memorable business leaders.

More interesting facts about doodling from the business prospective where all of this came from.