It was with great pleasure that we recently published our Annual Mind Map Report 2015, which presents an overall view of the mind mapping domain at the start of the year, and is now available to download for free from the Biggerplate website.
The Annual Report is based on our own research and learning at Biggerplate.com over the course of 2014, and the results and feedback gathered from over 1,000 mind map users who took part in our survey at the end of the year. The report contains a wealth of information about the current state of the mind mapping sector, with a strong focus on trying to understand who is using mind mapping, why are they using it, and what benefits they get from working in this way.
The survey also gave people the chance to vote for their favourite mind mapping software, in our ‘Mind Mapper’s Choice’ poll, where Mindjet came out in 1st place for the second year running! Huge congratulations to Mindjet for this great achievement – it’s a great endorsement of the MindManager product, and a hopefully a nice pat on the back for all those at Mindjet who continue to push forward development and innovation within the product, with a particular shout-out going to our great friend and long-term Mindjet magician Michael Deutch.
Mind Mapping Software: Trends, Benefits, and Approaches
In addition to giving a great community endorsement for Mindjet, the report also highlighted several key things that should give confidence both to companies like Mindjet, but also to anyone out there using mind mapping software who perhaps struggles to engage others with the potential uses and benefits of the software.
For example, when we asked our survey participants for their Job Titles, the over-arching theme that came out was that participants were people in Management roles, as can be seen by this word cloud (featured in the report) which shows the words used most by participants when they stated their job title.
From our perspective, this should be viewed as encouraging and valuable insight, as it suggests and endorses the view that mind mapping software could (and should) be viewed as an essential management tool. This is something that’s easily said, but perhaps less easily proved. Hopefully the Annual Report findings help to add to the body of evidence that can support such claims.
The Missing Link
Further to this, we asked our survey participants to tell us what tasks they most using mind mapping for, and the resulting graphic (below) again illustrates something that Mindjet, Biggerplate, and anyone in the world of mind mapping can take encouragement from! To see ‘Planning’, ‘Brainstorming’ and ‘Project(s)’ as the most prominent words is great validation of what many of us have been saying for many years. At Biggerplate, we often (always) talk about mind mapping software being ‘the missing link’ in business, and what seems to be emerging is the fact that the missing link in many processes is proper planning in the early stages. Something that mapping software is absolutely the right tool for. The good news is that over 1,000 mind mappers are confirming this back to us through their survey answers!
There is a great deal more to be learned from reading the report, so I invite and encourage you to download the full document (it’s free), and then join us as we discuss the findings, either through social media using the tag #BPAR15, or perhaps by joining our Annual Conference, which is coming up on March 19th in London. Details of the upcoming conference can be found here. We hope to see lots of Mindjet users at the event, where we’ll be exploring the findings of the report itself, and discussing more broadly the current state of innovation, and adoption in relation to mind mapping!
The overall conclusion of our 2015 report? This year is going to be a big one for mind mapping software, and we’re excited to be part of it!