Mind Maps for Business Tony Buzan

Welcome to Mind Maps for Business and a new way of managing your business thinking and practice.

Mind Mapping is a powerful skill that, once learned, will revolutionise your business practice and the way in which you work. Why is it so powerful? Because creating a Mind Map requires ‘whole-brain’ synergetic thinking, a process that reflects the explosive nature of the neurons zapping across your brain in search of new connections during the process of thinking. Put more simply, a Mind Map allows your brain to function like some vast pinball machine with billions of silver balls whizzing at the speed of light from flipper to flipper.

Your brain does not think linearly or sequentially like a computer; it thinks multilaterally, ‘radiantly’.. When you create a Mind Map the branches grow outwards from the central image to form another level of sub-branches, encouraging you to create more ideas out of each thought you add — just as your brain does. And because all the ideas on Mind Maps are linked to each other, your brain is able to make great leaps of understanding and imagination through association.

Mind Maps are the ultimate thinking tool to unlock your brainpower; they reflect the internal Mind Maps of your brain. If you have lost sight of your organisational goals, or your bigger business picture has become blurred, drawing a Mind Map will provide an overview of the situation that will bring clarity and potential to the forefront.

How Can Mind Mapas Help Your Business?

Mind Maps can revolutionise the way you run your business on a day-to-day basis, allowing you to really think about a situation from every angle in a way that is concise and, importantly, does not waste precious time.

Mind Maps can be used by every individual in a business or professional organisation in any situation where linear notes would normally be taken. For example, in the morning you can plan your day, week or month using a Mind Map diary. As the day goes on, you can mind map your telephone calls, meetings, brainstorming sessions, team planning events, presentations and interviews. (Subsequent chapters will go into more detail about how to use Mind Maps in specific situations that might arise during your business day.)

In general, Mind Maps facilitate the core business skills — such as making choices; organising your own and other people’s ideas; individual and group creativity; analysis; defining and solving problems; setting time and amount targets; and especially memory and communication — all the elements that are essential for successful business management.

By using Mind Maps in their training courses, companies such as Boeing, British Petroleum, Digital Computers and EDS have already found that they can make huge savings — in some cases cutting as much as 80 per cent of their overall expenditure. In addition to increasing the speed and efficiency of learning, Mind Maps overcome the usual memory-loss curve, whereby 80 per cent of the detail you have learnt is forgotten within 24 hours. Reviewing Mind Maps at regular intervals ensures that everything learnt is both retained and utilised by your brain.

Mind Mapping doesn’t have to cost you money, either. All you need is paper and pens and you can be on the first step to thinking more successfully in business.

Tony Buzan

Made famous as the inventor of Mind Maps, Tony Buzan is a prolific author who has written over 100 books that have been translated into over 30 languages. He has helped hundreds of millions of people to unlock their creativity, enhance their memory skills and expand their thought processes and is in great demand as a motivational speaker for businesses and government organisations all over the world. In 2008 Tony received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Creativity Association (ACA) and in 2008, together with Chris Griffiths, launched his revolutionary Mind Mapping software iMindMap.