3 strokes of genius, 30 years of unbroken profitability


Sitting in a club with Herb Kelleher, Rollin King picked up a napkin and on it made three strokes to form a triangle. As he wrote San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas on each of the three points of the triangle, Rollin explained an idea -- a NEW idea that became Southwest Airlines.

Amazingly, Rollin's simple picture illustrates the operating principles of the company that he and Herb decided to start that day: fly short routes between busy cities, avoid hubs, and where possible fly into smaller, secondary airfields. "One napkin, one good idea, one profitable airline." says Dan Roam in The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures.

If you place Rollin's triangle side by side with the route maps of the big airlines of the day, that's when you clearly see why his business idea was NEW and destined to succeed.