Book of the Week: Made to Stick

13 Jan 2014

Made to Stick This week I read Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath to learn how to make my ideas sticky. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t make it sticky, it won’t matter. Chip teaches OB 568: How to Make Ideas Stick at Stanford. They mention that this book complements The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. A tipping point occurs, when you reach the right people at the right time with a sticky idea. Made to Stick details what makes an idea sticky.

There are 6 principles to SUCCESsfully making an idea stick.

or succinctly, “a Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story” Simplicity

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left take away. - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Not really as simple as much as stripping the idea to its core. Unexpectedness The best way to get someone’s attention is to break a pattern. Concreteness Details take make things easier for people relate to and put in context. Abstraction is for experts. Concrete details and examples are for normal people to understand. Credibility Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren won The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005 only after Marshall shallowed a beaker of bacteria to prove that bacteria caused ulcers, because nobody would believe him. Emotions Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs More like a ladder than a pyramid. Need to satisfy lower ones before appealing to higher ones. Targeting higher is better. Stories People remember stories, not statistics. If you want a a nice summary, there is an easy reference guide at the end of the book. This is why I didn’t bother to be overly detailed in describing each of the sections. Now to put this into practice.