February 25, 2008

“doodling for profits”

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There’s a great little article on the Busi­ness­week web­site about the power of dood­ling in the cor­po­rate world. Steve Clay­ton, The Blue Mons­ter and myself all get a wee mention.

In the fall of 2006, a group of senior Euro­pean exe­cu­ti­ves at Mic­ro­soft ente­red a mee­ting expec­ting to see a Power­Point pre­sen­ta­tion. Ins­tead, Steve Clay­ton — then the chief tech­no­logy offi­cer for Microsoft’s U.K. Part­ner Group — sho­wed them a hand-drawn image of an impish blue crea­ture bea­ring gnar­led fangs and spor­ting the pro­vo­ca­tive cap­tion “Mic­ro­soft: Change the world or go home.” After a few ini­tial gasps, recalls Clay­ton, the atten­dees enga­ged in a lively dis­cus­sion around the current direc­tion of the com­pany and the brand. “Peo­ple liked the way it chan­ged the angle of con­ver­sa­tion,” Clay­ton says.

Rock on.

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11 Responses to ““doodling for profits””

  1. I have always been a huge fan of seeing things dif­fe­rently and using unu­sual means to ‘change the con­ver­sa­tion.’ I find your ideas refreshing and ins­pi­ring. Great example!

  2. Toby Moores says:

    I’ve just seen your tweet on this story.
    We have a crea­tive thin­king tool­kit at work and one of the things that we find works really well is get­ting peo­ple to draw a pro­blem. I think this works partly because it makes peo­ple think about the pro­blem from a dif­fe­rent angle. I also think that it is because most peo­ple stop dra­wing when they leave school, and the idea of having to draw sca­res them a little. It means that they have to desc­ribe the pro­blem cons­trai­ned by what they can draw.
    We borro­wed ideas from Tony Buzan’s Mind Map­ping and De Bono’s PO. Cheers. Toby.

  3. I’m very glad of your doodle… it’s part of the rea­son why I’m really happy to have joi­ned Mic­ro­soft.
    Hope to catch you @ MIX.…

  4. Misty Olen says:

    I like that you are get­ting to do what you love by dra­wing car­toons with Mic­ro­soft. In the past I loved Mic­ro­soft pro­ducts, so much so that I got my MCSE and used the pro­ducts for years. I still do use some actually (Win­dows XP). I’ve been thin­king of going Mac or Linux though lately after Vista coming out. The deal of me switching was sea­led today when I let an action pack expire and got a rather rude let­ter from Mic­ro­soft deman­ding that I des­troy all soft­ware they ever sent me. I didn’t mind that they said this, it’s just that they were rude. They didn’t ask for feed­back on why I let it expire. They didn’t start a con­ver­sa­tion about it. They didn’t seem to care at all to save the busi­ness and a per­son that had pro­mo­ted their pro­ducts in the past. I do truly hope that you can get the idea across to Mic­ro­soft on crea­ting con­ver­sa­tions because at this point I don’t think they get it at all.

  5. Paul Caplan says:

    I’m all in favour of dood­ling. I just use Twit­ter to do it now.

  6. pac says:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQVWDoqbN48
    Life At Mic­ro­soft — The Truth Revea­led
    Guest Sta­ring — The Blue Mons­ter
    =)

  7. John says:

    Social object meets per­for­mance art.

  8. Uncle says:

    Dear Mr Mac­Leod,
    Bea­ver Hate­man has sto­len all my paintings,and repla­ced them with a a nasty doodle of me.
    Is it my spi­rit of entre­pre­neurship that he hates?
    Ter­lin­gua Ghost Town sounds very like Bad­fort — a ramshac­kle blot on the lands­cape.
    Yours Faith­fully
    Uncle
    http://talesfromhomeward.blogspot.com/

  9. Michael Harman says:

    Hi Ever­yone,
    I have been dood­ling for years and come up with these:www.theimaginationpictures.com
    The ima­gi­na­tion pic­tu­res are made up from thou­sands of small hand drawn doodles,because they are pla­ced in a cer­tain way your ima­gi­na­tion will ‘find’ hun­dreds of other pic­tu­res.
    Mike

  10. Reginald says:

    I won­de­ring, how much com­pu­ter savvy is requi­red for one to make an attempt to twit­ter in an effort to com­mu­ni­cate with you?

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