What can Entrepreneurs learn from Gapminder?

Congrats to the people over at Gapminder for getting nominated for a webby. Check their site out because not only is their message so important, but their presentation is really impressive. I was particularly attracted to the interactive graphs in tools - it's a great way of getting their message across.

I'm all about statistics, but I think what really grabbed me was the ability to manipulate the graphs to get the data displayed the way I wanted so that I could do "my own" analysis. You can think about this as it relates to your business development. This can function as a great lead generation tool. Do you have customers in different segments where you can plot their average income gains as a result of purchasing your product? What about investors that want to see the projected impact of your business on the market? Quantitative studies like this are great, and so is giving your audience data that they can play with. This has many implications. In general, you present your ideas to people with limited time - how quickly can you get your message across?

Data visualization and interactivity are two very important subjects in a world where information is constantly being thrown at us. Presenting it in a way where the user can quickly understand the message and easily manipulate the data is vital to effective communication.

I think the guys over at Quibblo are trying to get this idea across en masse. There are tons of sites where you can design surveys and polls, but they're the only ones I saw that presents the data nicely.