Visual tools for the knowledge worker : PowerPoint and MindMap

As industries get more and more productive (as measured by the increase of EBITDA/employee), we see the emergence of the knowledge worker (see Peter Drucker 1959's paper). This emergence can be measured by the growing importance of tacit interactions between workers, and as a result more and more intellectual capital (employee knowledge and abilities, in the form of information) is exchanged in a non-structured way. Tools like email, instant messenging, collaborative workspaces, allow synchronous and asynchronous exchanges of information and knowledge over a wide area (across different sites and organizational departments). But when the stakes get higher such tools are not enough. This takes place in several cases : * the information is complex and need to be synthesized / clarified * the targets (individuals, departments or businesss units) lack a common culture and do not share a common vocabulary * the communication is massive and/or urgent and/or critical * a common future vision (a new organization, market, product) existing as concept must be formalized, shared and people adhere to it In such cases visualization has proven to be a useful approach, and the most widely used tool by managers is PowerPoint, but more recently another one has started to get traction : MindMap, named after Tony Buzan's early 90's work Both tools have got their fans and their detractors, so let's look at the opposing parties arguments :