Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath (PDF)

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The instant classic about why some ideas thrive, why others die, and how to make your ideas stick.“Anyone interested in influencing others—to buy, to vote, to learn, to diet, to give to charity or to start a revolution—can learn from this book.”—The Washington Post Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus news stories circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas—entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists—struggle to make them “stick.” In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds—from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony—draw their power from the same six traits. Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate. It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice. Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas—and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.

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Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The SUCCESs. Not the word that counts its literal meaning, but that invisible, intangible theory where we are able to express, deliver, and stick ideas to others. In this revealing book, you will be introduced to the six ingredients designed specifically to make ideas sticky, and let me deliver what I caught from this eye-opening book. Others may experience over time they develop habits that slowly erode their mind’s sensitivity. The inevitable pain and disappointment of moments such as delivering your ideas at a business meeting or a conference have caused you to set up walls around your mind. Much of this is understandable. But, there’s no way around the truth: your mind is out of tune with confidence it was created to maintain. As we live in community, communication is the way for us to feel the unity. The book is even greater because the authors, Chip and Dan Heath, apply their SUCCESs theory onto practical situation to help readers understand more clearly. Without the SUCCESs rule, some kinds of communications might ease our conscience temporarily but would do nothing to expose the deeper secrets we carry and deliver. And, it might be the secrets that keep our minds in turmoil. Worse, this kind of communication could actually fuel destructive behavior rather than curb it. The rules the authors explain in this book might seem the things you would feel that you already know. But, these are the things you could easily ignore. The book is a great reference to keep you on succeeding the efficient deliverability of your ideas.Chapter summaryChapter1: SimpleWhen you needed to deliver your message in a brief and compact way, how would you prepare to deliver it to your audiences or readers? Simplicity is the key and first step to make a message sticky to others. Making it simple does not mean that you need to bring out your most important idea. It is critical to find the core. According to the authors, “finding the core isn’t synonymous with communicating the core.” But, that simplicity must come with its value. Like the metaphor of a company for the employees to be encouraged, your message needs to be simple and important to make your message remain not just in your mind but others as well.Chapter2: Unexpected”We can’t demand attention. We must attract it” says the authors in the book. In order to grab people’s attention, your message may be attractive with unexpectedness. Breaking a pattern could be one way. For example, the old emergency siren was too monotonic to stimulate our sensory systems and therefore failing to attract our attention. As the siren gets systematically and audibly improved, people hear much brighter and more stimulating sound and therefore being aware of some situation. In order to catch people’s attention, you need to break the ordinary patterns. According to the book, “Our brain is designed to keenly aware of changes.” The more you learn knowledge, the greater the knowledge gap you would get. Because we sometimes tend to perceive that we know everything, it’s hard to glue the gap. However, curiosity comes from the knowledge gaps, so these knowledge gaps can be interesting.Chapter3: ConcreteHumans can hallucinate and imagine what we’ve experienced in visual, audible, or any other sensory pathways. When we use all our sensory systems to visualize ideas or messages, then the ideas get much more concrete. As an example the authors provide in this chapter, “a bathtub full of ice” in the Kidney Theft legend is an example of abstract moral truths that makes it concrete.Chapter4: CredibleWhen you are a scientist, you believe more in the things that are scientifically proven or that are referred to many other studies or to the words or the theories that the well-known scientist has established. That much, credibility makes or deceives people believe your ideas. Both authorities and antiauthorities work. We present results, charts, statistics, pictures and other data to make people believe. “But concrete details don’t just lend credibility to the authorities who provide them; they lend credibility to the idea itself.”Chapter5: EmotionalWhat’s in it for you? It is a good example of the power of association. Sometimes, we need to grab people’s emotion. It does not mean tear jerking, dramatic, or romantic. It means that your idea must pull out people’s care and attachment to it. However, we don’t always have to create this emotional attachment. “In fact, many ideas use a sort of piggybacking strategy, associating themselves with emotions that already exist (Made to Stick).” People can make decisions based on two models: the consequence model and the identity model. The consequence model can be rational self-interest, while the identity model is that people identify such situations like what type of situation is this?Chapter6: StoriesHave you seen and heard the story of the college student from the Subway campaign? He’s the guy who lost hundreds of pounds eating Subway sandwiches. The story inspires people and even connects to people’s real life. Like the book, Made to Stick, also presents a lot of stories to deliver and to help readers understand in each chapter, stories allow people to understand how your idea can affect or change their mind.Close the book and think for a moment before you start reading. How are things with your mind? Chances are, you’ve never stopped to consider your mind. Why should you? There are interviews to prepare for, meetings to blow others’ mind with your amazing ideas, and moments you need to bring up emotional attachment with your family or your friends. If you are all caught up with these things and ask yourself this, “how are things?” “How have I dealt with those situations?” Before you go reading, you first need to dispel a commonly held myth about communication. You need to understand your old habits would die hard. And, like any habit that goes unchecked, over time they come to keep disturbing you to make your ideas sticky. Try to use the clinic part in each chapter. It will enhance your understandings, and you will improve your skills to make your ideas survive. If you really want to understand much deeper, as you read the book, look up some informative articles about the anatomy and physiology of the brain. It will help you. According to the book, your ideas must simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and stories. Try to apply these rules into your next presentation. I was not a good organized speaker. When I adjusted my mind with these rules to prepare my presentation recently, an amazing thing happened. I am the leader of the young adult ministry of a small local church. At almost every meeting, I needed to make the members understand what and why we need to awaken ourselves and other people; they barely paid attention to what I was saying. Even they seemed understanding, but once they returned to their home or to their life, they forgot what I emphasized. However, with the rules I learned from the book, the members started showing their interests in what I say and paying good attention to it. It works! Part of our confusion in delivering ideas stems from a misapplication of the rules we think we already know for persuasions. The notion that all confusions can be reduced down to a single underlying problem may strike you as a case of oversimplification. However, with the book, Made to Stick, you will track and be ready for your next presentation. When I was looking for a neuroscience book, Made to Stick was one of the recommended books related to neuroscience. The book is easy to follow, and it is really made to stick! If you are looking for a scientifically texted neuroscience book, this is not the book for you. However, this book will stir up your curiosity about neuroscience as a fundamental connector to higher neural knowledge. Simply, highly I recommend.

⭐Overall Assessment:I can vote this book four stars because, despite its defects, I have already verified its effectiveness in my own teaching and research–even before I read the book! And in fact the book actually does a good job, for the most part, of getting its message across using the very rules of the SUCCES model it is articulating: “Sticky” ideas tend to have the attributes of:SimplicityUnexpectednessConcretenessCredibilityEmotionStoriesKey for readers is to understand the importance of how these rules help overcome “The curse of knowledge”, illustrated beautifully by the cited research example in which “tappers” were amazed that “listeners” could not discern the tunes the former were composing using taps, because they of course already had the tune clearly in their head and could not grasp their listener’s lack of frame of reference. The key thing we must do when trying to communicate a topic we thoroughly understand to a neophyte audience is pare messages down to basic cores and give them the attributes of the SUCCES model to make them “sticky”–or so the Heath brother say.Again, the authors in each chapter did a nice job of applying the very rules they articulate while in the act of articulating those rules.IChapter 1 (“Simple”) They provide the excellent examples of “Commander’s Intent” employed by the military to simplify operational instructions for battlefield units confronted with the fact that “No plan survives contact with the enemy;” paring down the ’92 Clinton campaign message to “It’s the economy stupid;” following the generally applicable rule in journalism of not “burying the lead”; the “a bird in the hand” metaphor and its multinational variations; Hollywood high-concept pitches such as Alien being “Jaws in Space”, the use of “generative analogies” such as “staff as cast members” at Disneyland.Chapter 2 (“Unexpected”).People pay attention when something is counterintuitive. I was pleased that I had been instinctively using this principle in my teaching. The “gap theory” of curiosity posits that “gaps” in our understanding of the world (mysteries) create a need for resolution in the mind of the audience. Sticky ideas play to this crucial aspect of human nature.Chapter 3 (“Concrete”)Specific, concrete ideas (“”60 Chevy”) are stickier than more general and abstract ones (“American automotive engineering”), so concrete examples and references help ideas stick. Making an idea sticky means exploiting the “Velcro theory” of memory: Memory is like Velcro, with loops that enable a concept to attach to it, and different constituents of our memory have more loops to which an idea might be attached. Concrete ideas have more loops.(I was less pleased with the Heath Brothers’ use of the example of Jane Elliot, who famously used the blue-eye/brown-eye distinction among her students to illustrate the power of arbitrary bias. To me it was a concrete example of overeager progressivism degenerating into an unethical psychic assault on children.)(Chapter 4: “Credible”)Obviously, support from real authorities can make an idea stickier if people believe it has expert corroboration (e.g. “97 percent of researchers whose specialty is climate science agree with the conclusions presented by the IPCC”). However, an idea can have “internal credibility” if it contains little concrete details that make it seem real (like the various renditions of the urban legend of the boyfriend murdered and scraping his lifeless foot on the roof of the car to be discovered by discovered by his horrified date; people always place it in their home county!). Another way to make an idea credible is to put it in a comprehensible scale. Statistics require comparative referents that make sense to people (you’re more likely to be killed by a deer than a shark–which also has counterintuitiveness). There is the Sinatra Test of credibility: one impressive factual achievement means the product can “make it anywhere”. Another example is the “testable credential”, such as Ronald Reagan asking if you are better off four years ago than you are today.(Chapter 5: “Emotional”)No surprises here, and again it pleased me to note I was using this technique if not explicitly. And one of the best emotional appeals is self-interest: (“Acting on climate change now could save our ass.”) An interesting discussion to come out of this is that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs might not be a correct model in the sense of recognizing a set order in which those needs are met. Different appeals can be successful by appealing to different components of the hierarchy (e.g. you might be able to appeal to someone better at actualization level even if some “lower” level need might seem like the likely target.) Examples of emotional appeals to get kids to appreciate the importance of math with near slam-dunk application of the SUCCESS model: “Never. You will never use this again. But Math is mental weight training.”(Chapter 6: “Stories”)Yet again having used this in my own research and teaching it’s a sense of vindication to see it recommended. Obviously, memorable anecdotes stick better than dry recitation of dreary numbers and arguments.Minor Critique:All this is great food for thought for those of us trying to articulate something we think is “true” to the world, but I do have a couple of reservations, and I do not guarantee that their articulation conforms to the SUCCES model:First, taken to an extreme, the SUCCES model makes communicators slaves to the psychology, emotionalism, simplemindedness, and laziness of the audience. Neil Postman’s *Amusing Ourselves to Death* discusses the degeneration of American culture from the days of a highly literate populous in the early republic to the modern discordant hash of electronic sound bites. For example, while the Heath brothers lauded the Clinton campaign’s successful employment of “It’s the economy, stupid,” as a keen adaptation to James Carville’s admonition that “If you say three things, you say nothing,” I more lament that power in our democracy is so easily won and lost on such paltry turns of phrase.Second, some really important things just might be inherently un-sticky, and maybe sometimes the best way to make something stick is to communicate it to a strictly qualified and interested audience, or warn an unqualified an uninterested in advance: “Look. This is tedious and boring. But it’s still very important. Pay attention.” The current deficit reduction debate is an example in which sticky but grotesquely distorting clichés like, “on the backs of the elderly and sick”, or “no more taxes on the American people,” or “tax breaks for the rich,” and so on are thrown around willy-nilly, and more often than not, stick.At some point we as an audience consuming ideas need to see what’s sticking to us and why–and ask whether we need to get ourselves disentangled and be open first to the truth, not stickiness.

⭐This is a reasonably decent source of information on the title subject: making ideas stick. However, I have two criticisms that aren’t meant to dismiss or rubbish the book, just to put it into context:1. The useful information content is minimal and could be fitted on less than ten pages, in my opinion2. The book suffers from repetition and that American writing style of endless cameos to illustrate the point. Yes, cameos can be helpful, but the amount of writing dedicated to examples far outweighs the simple explanation of its simple principles.In summary, good basic principles that could comfortably fill a pamphlet but that have been massively padded out into a book.My suggestion: buy a used copy

⭐Each year one or two books change my view on the world and I start quoting them constantly. Last year it was Jo Owens’ How to Lead. This year it is Made to Stick. Just last week at Bring Your Child to Work Day a colleague asked me to talk to her daughter about communication and my job as a business analyst. How could I get across the idea that my job was about translating requirements from the business into specifications for their mother to code? Sounds pretty boring for a 9-year old, right?But I had just read ‘made to stick’ and the chapter on the Curse of Knowledge. So we played a game. I tapped out a tune for her to guess and she didn’t get it. Then I got her to tap out a tune for me and I didn’t get it. “Did you hear the tune in your head?” I asked her. Yes, of course she did. “So did I when I did it, but all you heard was tapping.””And that’s what it is like when someone tells me they want your mum to solve a problem for them. They maybe have a clear picture in their mind of what they want, they hear the tune in their head, but I have to make sure your mum hears the tune too and not just the tapping.”Thank you, Chip and Dan.

⭐I believe this book should be compulsory reading for every educator. Indeed I will go a step further – I think it may well be more useful to us than any single book on teaching.The book is about effective and persuasive communication. The Heath brothers start with the Q: ‘Why is it that some ideas are so memorable?’ A: Six key elements [SUCCES]: i) Simplicity (Keep it simple!) ii) Unexpectedness (Surprise = retention!) iii) Concreteness (Avoid abstract or ‘deep’ messages) iv) Credible (Is it believable?) v) Emotions (It is emotion, not reason that makes people act!) vi) Story (The most memorable messages are in the form of a story).In analysing these elements they explain all kinds of interesting notions, such as ‘the curse of knowledge’ (p. 19). What would happen if you were to tap your finger to the rhythm of a well-known song without actually humming it? Would people be able to guess it? 50% of respondents said ‘Yes’. Incredibly, the actual number was 2.5%!! It is exactly the same when we try to communicate a message – we think others understand, but very often they don’t! (Moral: check that your students have really understood what you have told them or what they have to do. Get feedback as much as possible!)Heath & Heath go on to stress the importance of ‘curiosity’ (pp. 84 – 87). This is the technique that soap operas, cinema trailers and some gifted presenters use to hook the readers/listeners’ interest. (Moral: Whether it is the contents of a text, or the lesson, it pays not to tell students everything up front. We can excite their curiosity even about mundane things.)A surprising research finding on p. 89 is of great importance to us; Q: Which is better: consensus-building activities or ones encouraging heated debate? A: The latter! In a controlled study, 18% of students who had done a consensus-type activity chose to watch a short film about the topic, but the number rose to 45% among those who had engaged in a debate! (Moral: use more debates to get students worked up so they are motivated to find out more about the subject under discussion!)The two brothers also give us a host of useful tips on how to make our presentations / articles interesting (which is of course of immense value for students / adult learners). Here are a few research-supported findings: a) avoid obscure language (p. 106) b) including details makes your argument more convincing (p. 139) c) ‘translate’ statistics down to the human scale (the human brain cannot make sense of huge numbers! – p. 144).Above all however, remember to use stories. Human beings are wired for story. As somebody once so memorably put it: ‘Facts tell – stories sell!’

⭐Before you buy this book, read about the concept it’s covering. This covers the success of ideas/concepts and reasons behind them with examples. It’s advocates that any idea can be put through a framework to make it more sticky or successful among people. This book may not be for all but people with content writing, user experience , product management etc Anybody who has to convey the ideas.

⭐Some amazing ideas in this book… if you’re an educator, this book will help you think about how to structure your lessons to create intrigue and to make the ideas stick.There is one thing I disagree with though; the book lists some conventional advice about making ideas stick, such as delivery, posture, etc; it then goes on to say that all of these techniques have some merit, apart from repetition and that repetition is a quality of a badly designed story or idea. I fundamentally disagree; repetition has been a cornerstone of so many of history’s most memorable speeches, Shakespeare’s writing and a classic and reliable technique in learning; repetition is incredibly important and if it is done right, can help students look at a topic from multiple perspectives and leverage long term memory.Don’t bash repetition!

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