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Chip Heath

Dan Heath

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die Hardcover – January 2, 2007

by Chip Heath (Author), Dan Heath (Author)

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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.

Print length

291 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Random House
Publication date

January 2, 2007
Dimensions

5.9 x 1.13 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

1400064287
ISBN-13

978-1400064281
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Popular Highlights in this book

What are popular highlights?

What we mean by “simple” is finding the core of the idea.
1,040 Kindle readers highlighted this
The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pattern.
1,116 Kindle readers highlighted this
For our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity.
840 Kindle readers highlighted this

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Unabashedly inspired by Malcolm Gladwell's bestselling The Tipping Point, the brothers Heath—Chip a professor at Stanford's business school, Dan a teacher and textbook publisher—offer an entertaining, practical guide to effective communication. Drawing extensively on psychosocial studies on memory, emotion and motivation, their study is couched in terms of "stickiness"—that is, the art of making ideas unforgettable. They start by relating the gruesome urban legend about a man who succumbs to a barroom flirtation only to wake up in a tub of ice, victim of an organ-harvesting ring. What makes such stories memorable and ensures their spread around the globe? The authors credit six key principles: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions and stories. (The initial letters spell out "success"—well, almost.) They illustrate these principles with a host of stories, some familiar (Kennedy's stirring call to "land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth" within a decade) and others very funny (Nora Ephron's anecdote of how her high school journalism teacher used a simple, embarrassing trick to teach her how not to "bury the lead"). Throughout the book, sidebars show how bland messages can be made intriguing. Fun to read and solidly researched, this book deserves a wide readership. (Jan. 16)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—While at first glance this volume might resemble the latest in a series of trendy business advice books, ultimately it is about storytelling, and it is a how-to for crafting a compelling narrative. Employing a lighthearted tone, the Heaths apply those selfsame techniques to create an enjoyable read. They analyze such narratives as urban legends and advertisements to discover what makes them memorable. The authors provide a simple mnemonic to remember their stickiness formula, and the basic principles may be applied in any situation where persuasiveness is an asset. The book is a fast read peppered with exercises to test the techniques proposed. Some examples act as pop quizzes and engage readers in moments of self-reflection. The book draws on examples from teachers, scientists, and soldiers who have been successful at crafting memorable ideas, from the well-known blue eye/brown eye exercise conducted by an Iowa elementary school teacher as an experiential lesson in prejudice following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to conversations among Xerox repairmen. Readers who enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell's Blink (2005) and The Tipping Point (2000, both Little, Brown) will appreciate this clever take on contemporary culture.—Heidi Dolamore, San Mateo County Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Chip and Dan Heatha Stanford professor and an education entrepreneur, respectivelyattempt to determine why one idea succeeds while another fails. What could have been a dry marketing textbook is, instead, a generally engaging narrative generously endowed with anecdotes and instructive sidebars. The Wall Street Journal expressed annoyance at the profusion of personal stories, while the Washington Post cited some problems with the overall framework. Overall, however, Made to Stick is a worthy addition to the spate of recent books that explain why we do the things we do and how this self-knowledge can be used more effectively. "Anyone interested in influencing othersto buy, to vote, to learn, to diet, to give to charity or to start a revolutioncan learn from this book" (Washington Post).
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist

Based on a class at Stanford taught by one of the authors, this book profiles how some ideas "stick" in our minds while the majority fall by the wayside. Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and compelling advertising make up much of the intrinsically interesting examples that the Heaths profile that qualify for "stickiness." This book explores what makes social epidemics "epidemic" and, as the Heaths cite from Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point (2000), defines the secret recipe that makes an idea viral. The principles of stickiness are examined--an unexpected outcome, lots of concrete details that we remember, emotion, simplicity, and credibility--all packaged in an easily told story format. Taking these five stickiness attributes, the book offers numerous examples of how these properties make up the stories we are all familiar with--the urban legend about kidney theft and the razor blades supposedly lurking in Halloween candy. Exercises, checklists, and other tools are sprinkled throughout the book to help the reader understand and test how stickiness can be applied to their ideas, whether they are teachers, parents, or CEOs. Gail Whitcomb
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“Made to Stick summons plenty of brain science, social history, and behavioral psychology to explain what makes an idea winning and memorable—and the Heaths do the telling with beautiful clarity.”—The Christian Science Monitor

“Utterly compelling.”—Los Angeles Times

“Surprising and provocative.”—The New York Sun

“Savvy.”—People

“Fun to read and solidly researched.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About the Author

Chip Heath is a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, teaching courses on strategy and organizations. He has helped over 450 startups hone their business strategy and messages. He lives in Los Gatos, California.

Dan Heath is a senior fellow at Duke University’s CASE center, which supports entrepreneurs fighting for social good. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Together, Chip and Dan have written three New York Times bestselling books: Made to Stick, Switch, and Decisive. Their books have sold over two million copies worldwide and have been translated into thirty-three languages, including Thai, Arabic, and Lithuanian. Their most recent book is The Power of Moments.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I I N T R O D U C T I O N

WHAT STICKS?

A friend of a friend of ours is a frequent business traveler. Let’s call him Dave. Dave was recently in Atlantic City for an important meeting with clients. Afterward, he had some time to kill before his flight, so he went to a local bar for a drink.
He’d just finished one drink when an attractive woman approached and asked if she could buy him another. He was surprised but flattered. Sure, he said. The woman walked to the bar and brought back two more drinks—one for her and one for him. He thanked her and took a sip. And that was the last thing he remembered.
Rather, that was the last thing he remembered until he woke up, disoriented, lying in a hotel bathtub, his body submerged in ice.
He looked around frantically, trying to figure out where he was and how he got there. Then he spotted the note: don’t move. call 911.
A cell phone rested on a small table beside the bathtub. He picked it up and called 911, his fingers numb and clumsy from the ice. The operator seemed oddly familiar with his situation. She said, “Sir, I want you to reach behind you, slowly and carefully. Is there a tube protruding from your lower back?”
Anxious, he felt around behind him. Sure enough, there was a tube.
The operator said, “Sir, don’t panic, but one of your kidneys has been harvested. There’s a ring of organ thieves operating in this city, and they got to you. Paramedics are on their way. Don’t move until they arrive.”

You’ve just read one of the most successful urban legends of the past fifteen years. The first clue is the classic urban-legend opening: “A friend of a friend . . .” Have you ever noticed that our friends’ friends have much more interesting lives than our friends themselves?
You’ve probably heard the Kidney Heist tale before. There are hundreds of versions in circulation, and all of them share a core of three elements: (1) the drugged drink, (2) the ice-filled bathtub, and (3) the kidney-theft punch line. One version features a married man who receives the drugged drink from a prostitute he has invited to his room in Las Vegas. It’s a morality play with kidneys.
Imagine that you closed the book right now, took an hourlong break, then called a friend and told the story, without rereading it. Chances are you could tell it almost perfectly. You might forget that the traveler was in Atlantic City for “an important meeting with clients”—who cares about that? But you’d remember all the important stuff.
The Kidney Heist is a story that sticks. We understand it, we remember it, and we can retell it later. And if we believe it’ s true, it might change our behavior permanently—at least in terms of accepting drinks from attractive strangers.
Contrast the Kidney Heist story with this passage, drawn from a paper distributed by a nonprofit organization. “Comprehensive community building naturally lends itself to a return-on-investment rationale that can be modeled, drawing on existing practice,” it begins, going on to argue that “[a] factor constraining the flow of resources to CCIs is that funders must often resort to targeting or categorical requirements in grant making to ensure accountability.”
Imagine that you closed the book right now and took an hourlong break. In fact, don’t even take a break; just call up a friend and retell that passage without rereading it. Good luck.
Is this a fair comparison—an urban legend to a cherry-picked bad passage? Of course not. But here’s where things get interesting: Think of our two examples as two poles on a spectrum of memorability. Which sounds closer to the communications you encounter at work? If you’re like most people, your workplace gravitates toward the nonprofit pole as though it were the North Star.
Maybe this is perfectly natural; some ideas are inherently interesting and some are inherently uninteresting. A gang of organ thieves—inherently interesting! Nonprofit financial strategy—inherently uninteresting! It’s the nature versus nurture debate applied to ideas: Are ideas born interesting or made interesting?
Well, this is a nurture book.
So how do we nurture our ideas so they’ll succeed in the world? Many of us struggle with how to communicate ideas effectively, how to get our ideas to make a difference. A biology teacher spends an hour explaining mitosis, and a week later only three kids remember what it is. A manager makes a speech unveiling a new strategy as the staffers nod their heads enthusiastically, and the next day the frontline employees are observed cheerfully implementing the old one.
Good ideas often have a hard time succeeding in the world. Yet the ridiculous Kidney Heist tale keeps circulating, with no resources whatsoever to support it.
Why? Is it simply because hijacked kidneys sell better than other topics? Or is it possible to make a true, worthwhile idea circulate as effectively as this false idea?

The Truth About Movie Popcorn

Art Silverman stared at a bag of movie popcorn. It looked out of place sitting on his desk. His office had long since filled up with fake-butter fumes. Silverman knew, because of his organization’ s research, that the popcorn on his desk was unhealthy. Shockingly unhealthy, in fact. His job was to figure out a way to communicate this message to the unsuspecting moviegoers of America.
Silverman worked for the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a nonprofit group that educates the public about nutrition. The CSPI sent bags of movie popcorn from a dozen theaters in three major cities to a lab for nutritional analysis. The results surprised everyone.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommends that a normal diet contain no more than 20 grams of saturated fat each day. According to the lab results, the typical bag of popcorn had 37 grams.
The culprit was coconut oil, which theaters used to pop their popcorn. Coconut oil had some big advantages over other oils. It gave the popcorn a nice, silky texture, and released a more pleasant and natural aroma than the alternative oils. Unfortunately, as the lab results showed, coconut oil was also brimming with saturated fat.
The single serving of popcorn on Silverman’s desk—a snack someone might scarf down between meals—had nearly two days’ worth of saturated fat. And those 37 grams of saturated fat were packed into a medium-sized serving of popcorn. No doubt a decentsized bucket could have cleared triple digits.
The challenge, Silverman realized, was that few people know what “37 grams of saturated fat” means. Most of us don’t memorize the USDA’s daily nutrition recommendations. Is 37 grams good or bad? And even if we have an intuition that it’s bad, we’d wonder if it was “bad bad” (like cigarettes) or “normal bad” (like a cookie or a milk shake).
Even the phrase “37 grams of saturated fat” by itself was enough to cause most people’s eyes to glaze over. “Saturated fat has zero appeal,” Silverman says. “It’s dry, it’s academic, who cares?”
Silverman could have created some kind of visual comparison— perhaps an advertisement comparing the amount of saturated fat in the popcorn with the USDA’ s recommended daily allowance. Think of a bar graph, with one of the bars stretching twice as high as the other.
But that was too scientific somehow. Too rational. The amount of fat in this popcorn was, in some sense, not rational. It was ludicrous. The CSPI needed a way to shape the message in a way that fully communicated this ludicrousness.
Silverman came up with a solution.

CSPI called a press conference on September 27, 1992. Here’s the message it presented: “A medium-sized ‘butter’ popcorn at a typical neighborhood movie theater contains more artery-clogging fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries for lunch, and a steak dinner with all the trimmings—combined!”
The folks at CSPI didn’t neglect the visuals—they laid out the full buffet of greasy food for the television cameras. An entire day’ s worth of unhealthy eating, displayed on a table. All that saturated fat— stuffed into a single bag of popcorn.
The story was an immediate sensation, featured on CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN. It made the front pages of USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post’s Style section. Leno and Letterman cracked jokes about fat-soaked popcorn, and headline writers trotted out some doozies: “Popcorn Gets an ‘R’ Rating,” “Lights, Action, Cholesterol!” “Theater Popcorn is Double Feature of Fat.”
The idea stuck. Moviegoers, repulsed by these findings, avoided popcorn in droves. Sales plunged. The service staff at movie houses grew accustomed to fielding questions about whether the popcorn was popped in the “bad” oil. Soon after, most of the nation’ s biggest theater chains—including United Artists, AMC, and Loews— announced that they would stop using coconut oil.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House; 1st edition (January 2, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 291 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1400064287
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1400064281
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.9 x 1.13 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #8,891 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4 in Epistemology Philosophy
- #19 in Communication Reference (Books)
- #23 in Strategic Business Planning

Customer Reviews:
3,049 ratings

About the authors

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Chip Heath
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Chip Heath is a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, teaching courses on business strategy and organizations. He is the co-author (along with his brother, Dan) of three books. Their latest book, Decisive: How to Make Better Decisions in Life and Work was published in spring of 2013 and debuted at #1 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and #2 on the New York Times. Their 2010 book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, hit #1 on both bestseller lists. Their first book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, spent two years on the Business Week bestseller list and was an Amazon Top 10 Business Book for both editors and readers. Their books have been translated into over 30 languages including Thai, Arabic, and Lithuanian. Chip has consulted with clients ranging from Google and Gap to The Nature Conservancy and the American Heart Association.
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Dan Heath
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Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Dan Heath is the co-author, along with his brother Chip, of four New York Times bestsellers: Made to Stick, Switch, Decisive, and The Power of Moments. The Heaths' books have sold over 3 million copies worldwide and been translated into 33 languages.
Heath's fifth book, Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, will be released on March 3, 2020. Heath is a Senior Fellow at Duke University's CASE center, which supports entrepreneurs who are fighting for social good. A graduate of the University of Texas and Harvard Business School, he lives now in Durham, NC.
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Top reviews from the United States

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Joe

Terribly boring, bad writing

Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2018

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I love almost all business and marketing books - I inhale them in a few days.

I can’t read this book for more than 10 minutes at a time. It actually makes me angry how boring it is.

One chapter per letter of SUCCES (intentional).

Each chapter is drawn out like no other.

The basic premise is revealed, then come in some random stories loosely based on studies.

It’s really a terrible book.

The idea is cool, will look for a summary.

57 people found this helpful

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Thomas M. Loarie

Do Your Ideas Gain Traction and “Stick” or Are They Cast Aside?

Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2016

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Brothers Chip and Dan Heath in their New York Time’s best-selling book, “Made to Stick,” explore the stickiness of an idea. Those of us who spend time in the start-up world marvel at why one idea gains traction and other, seemingly better ideas, fall to wayside. The Heath brothers provide insights on this phenomenon and provide help for those bent on creating ideas that are “sticky.”

“Sticky” ideas are understandable, memorable, and effective in changing thought or behavior. The six underlying SUCCESs principles for making things “stick” are:

• Simplicity – Simple=core+compact. Find and share your core idea; make it simple and profound. “It’s the economy, stupid” (Clinton campaign, 1992) is a great example. The inverted pyramid approach which is used in journalism is a good tool to get your headline.
• Unexpectedness - We need to violate people’s expectations to get them to pay attention. Break existing patterns to get people’s attention. Southwest flight attendants use humor (there are two doors on either side if you need to jump!) to hold attention when giving the pre-flight safety announcement. Humans adapt incredibly quickly to patterns. Consistent sensory stimulation makes us tune out.
• Concreteness – You must help people understand and remember. Don’t use abstractions. Make your core idea concrete. Use common knowledge to make your idea stick. Our greatest villain is the Curse of Knowledge or when we assume everyone knows what we know or shares our unique perspective. We have to see it from the “others” point of view. We forget what other people do not know and slip into “abstractspeak.” Boeing’s criteria for a new plane was not “the best passenger plane in the world” but one that can seat 131 passengers and land on Runway 2-22 at LaGuardia. No ambiguity here.
• Credibility – Help people believe by making sure your idea carries its own credentials. Pass the “Sinatra Test.” Examples offered include “Where’s the Beef?” and Reagan’s “Are you better off today?” Both were credible and resonated as they were based on common shared knowledge.
• Emotional– Make people care by using the power of association, appealing to self-interest, or identity. “People donate to Rokia more than a wide swath of Africa”; “Honoring the Game” versus the use of the word ‘sportsmanship’; “I’m in charge of morale” as stated by a US military cook in Iraq. We must make people feel something to get them to care. We are wired to feel things, not abstractions.
• Stories – Stories get people to act on our ideas. Stories act as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively. Stories are told and retold because they contain wisdom. The Healths provide what they view are the three basic story plots – the Challenge Plot, The Connection Plot, and the Creativity Plot. Stories can almost single-handedly defeat “The Curse of Knowledge.” I have been involved in a ministry for people in career-transition for over fifteen years. We consistently advise those in-transitions to create stories to highlight their skills and experience when interviewing. It is well understood that interviewers will mostly remember your comportment and more importantly, your stories.

A chapter is devoted to each principle with the authors providing context for clarity and understanding, examples, and tools to guide the development of a “sticky” idea.

The Curse of Knowledge is what escapes most when trying to pitch an idea. It is the natural psychological tendency that consistently gets in the way of our ability to successfully create “sticky ideas” using these principles. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know. This knowledge has “cursed” us and makes it difficult to share our knowledge with others. It is because we cannot readily re-create our listeners state of mind. When a CEO discusses “unlocking shareholder value,” there is a tune playing in his head that the employees can’t hear. On the other hand, President John F. Kennedy knew that opaque, abstract missions don’t captivate and inspire people so he concretely challenged the country with “landing on the moon by the end of the decade.”

Throughout the book, the authors present “Idea Clinics” which illustrate how an idea can be made stickier. Example: ”Do smokers really need to understand the workings of the lungs in order to appreciate the dangers of smoking?”

The book itself is “sticky’ filled with stories of normal people facing normal problems who did an amazing thing simply by applying these principles, even if they were not aware that they were doing this. They distinguish themselves by crafting ideas that made a difference.

Do your ideas gain traction and “Stick” or are they cast aside for less important ideas? “Made to Stick” was written for you.

100 people found this helpful

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vlad-george ardelean

Not quite a waste of time, but close enough!

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2019

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Lots of little stories, some common sense, more motivational than scientific, more of a mainstream pop culture book, slightly superficial.

However, I enjoyed the short stories, and it made me feel motivated. I'm pretty sure that in a few hours I'll just feel ripped off, and will feel the time spent reading this could have had better uses.
Read this only if you are not looking for anything more than to binge on motivational stuff, and you really have no other problem to solve.
Oh, and I learned that in general, people seem to require stories, if you plan to have them remember anything. And if you want to have them act, you need to make them care, so you need to give them emotional stuff.
Not a waste of time, but pretty close.

37 people found this helpful

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Dr. C.H.E. Sadaphal

An easy-to-use formula on how to identify and create successful, “sticky” and transformative ideas.

Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2016

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Some ideas are very “sticky” meaning they are lasting, generative, and convey an important message. A classic example is: “Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.” In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath explain why ideas stick, and provide the reader with a “sticky blueprint.”

Essentially, sticky ideas are never a matter of happenstance, but all share six common traits. With a keen understanding of all six traits, you will be able to produce stickier ideas and subsequently revitalize the way you express yourself and transform those whom you lead with positive results.
Made to Stick empowers anyone with the right insights and the right message to make any idea “stick.”

The book proceeds linearly through the sticky blueprint: the acronym S.U.C.C.E.S. Hence, in order to make an idea sticky it has to be simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and tell a story. The peculiars of each trait are explored in comprehensive detail within each chapter. Generally speaking even though this book is 250+ pages, it is a very quick read.

Made to Stick is one of three books written on transformative change by the Heath brothers. The other two books are Switch: How to change things when change is hard and Decisive: How to make better choices in life and work. There are many areas of cross-over between the three selections, and I have derived the most value from each book after considering it in context of all three. Hence, Made to Stick helps you to start your journey with a bold idea that anyone can latch onto. Switch reveals how to materialize that idea into tough environments. Finally, Decisive equips you with the tools to navigate fuzzy terrain in the midst of your path to something revolutionary.

30 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Frankselbow

Good, but too much filler

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 3, 2018

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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 opinion
2. 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

15 people found this helpful

C. Weldon

Best read of the year

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 1, 2019

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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.

5 people found this helpful

Nick Michelioudakis

A Review - for Educators

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 14, 2016

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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!’

15 people found this helpful

Neil

Love this book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 17, 2019

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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!

3 people found this helpful

Amit N

Very good book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 26, 2021

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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.

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Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die Hardcover – January 2, 2007

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