Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

by Chip Heath

What we mean by “simple” is finding the core of the idea.

The French aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once offered a definition of engineering elegance: “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

They’re simple because they reflect the Commander’s Intent. It’s about elegance and prioritization, not dumbing down.

This tendency to gravitate toward complexity is perpetually at war with the need to prioritize.

Curiosity, he says, happens when we feel a gap in our knowledge.

Abstraction makes it harder to understand an idea and to remember it. It also makes it harder to coordinate our activities with others, who may interpret the abstraction in very different ways. Concreteness helps us avoid these problems.