News and thoughts from CS Odessa, maker of the ConceptDraw product line: ConceptDraw PRO, ConceptDraw PROJECT and ConceptDraw MINDMAP.
Showing posts with label entrepreneurs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label entrepreneurs. Show all posts

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Lawyers: Help Startups Make Good Decisions

Last week I spoke with Russell Case, an attorney here in Boise. He just started using ConceptDraw MINDMAP in his legal practice and is pretty thrilled with the results.

Case's work falls into three main categories: corporate expansion, international law, and business startups. While each category is unique, they all have one thing in common: Success depends on his clients fully understanding the choices before them and the implications of the choices they make.

“By using MINDMAP or PRO," Case says, "I can create a visual document that shows them where they are now, where they’re trying to get to, and the decisions they’ll most likely have to make on the way. What’s so great about these programs is that they make it easy for me to show them the most likely implications of each decision. That makes for a much more informed client—one who is able to make better decisions.”

Case says he works with startup clients to, for example, brainstorm around the things they’ve looked at to confirm their market analysis—the size of the market, their opportunity, who their ideal customer is, how their product of service is different from competitors. He talks to them about their intellectual property, what they’re trying to create, when they will need money, and how much they’ll need.

“I can capture all this information from them in real time, drill down into each one as much as we need to, organize it all into a logical structure, and then use it to build the story they’ll present to investors. It’s an incredibly efficient, thorough process.”

Friday, January 4, 2013

James' 5 Toxic Beliefs, Mind Mapped

Having just blogged about books I like to have as mind maps, I ran across "5 Toxic Beliefs That Ruin Careers" by Geoffrey James, an Inc. magazine article that seems like a good thing for all you/we entrepreneurs out there (except for those of you who are so unrelentingly confident that none of these beliefs plague you) who want to start 2013 off on the right foot... the proper foot, I should say.

It makes me feel like adding...
This map may not be the best example. It's a very short article, as opposed to a long book. But it does show how mind maps put information in a very different setting. Is it better or worse than a regular article? Probably not.

But seeing things as a mind map always get me thinking about how to add my own content. In this case, I want to add:

  • My personal thoughts about each belief.
  • Examples of how a belief has screwed me up in the past.
  • And how I (or others) have helped myself move on...

And it's easy to do...
I've always liked the mind map form because it makes information so easy to amend, annotate, adjust. I'm a writer, so I know how to insert copy into word programs. But it always feels like I'm shoehorning something in to something that's finished.

But when the information is in a map, the interface just screams out to me to hop in and add a comment, rearrange the order, add a graphic--all to make the information more personal and useful for me.

But that's just me. Would it work for you? Take a small risk and find out!

NOTE TO VARIOUS AND SUNDRY LEGAL DEPARTMENTS:
I do not intend in any way, shape or form to plagiarize this article in the process of turning it into a map. I have linked the title to the Inc. page. I have cited the author. I am not trying to pass it off as my own thinking. Instead, I am simply trying to help spread James's nice piece of work.