Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

by Chip Heath

The first clue is the classic urban-legend opening: “A friend of a friend.

The Kidney Heist is a story that sticks. We understand it, we remember it, and we can retell it later.

some ideas are inherently interesting and some are inherently uninteresting.

Are ideas born interesting or made interesting?

Good ideas often have a hard time succeeding in the world.

“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!”

“Popcorn Gets an ‘R’ Rating,” “Lights, Action, Cholesterol!” “Theater Popcorn is Double Feature of Fat.” The idea stuck.

Your ideas need to stand on their own merits.

“stick,” we mean that your ideas are understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact—they change your audience’s opinions or behavior.

The Tipping Point has three sections. The first addresses the need to get the right people, and the third addresses the need for the right context. The middle section of the book, “The Stickiness Factor,” argues that innovations are more likely to tip when they’re sticky.

Our interest is in how effective ideas are constructed—what makes some ideas stick and others disappear.

Six Principles of Sticky Ideas

Both stories called for simple action: examining your child’s candy and avoiding movie popcorn. Both made use of vivid, concrete images that cling easily to memory: an apple with a buried razor blade and a table full of greasy foods. And both stories tapped into emotion: fear in the case of Halloween candy and disgust in the case of movie popcorn.

There is no “formula” for a sticky idea—we don’t want to overstate the case. But sticky ideas do draw from a common set of traits, which make them more likely to succeed.

One skill we can learn is the ability to spot ideas that have “natural talent,”

PRINCIPLE 1: SIMPLICITY

To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion.

Proverbs are the ideal. We must create ideas that are both simple and profound.

The Golden Rule is the ultimate model of simplicity: a one-sentence statement so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning to follow it.

PRINCIPLE 2: UNEXP...

We need to violate people’s expectations. We need to be counterintuitive.

We can use surprise—an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus—to grab people’s attention.

For our idea to endure, we must generate interes...

We can engage people’s curiosity over a long period of time by systematically “opening gaps” in their knowled...

PRINCIPLE 3: CONC...

Naturally sticky ideas are full of concrete images—ice-filled bathtubs, apples with razors—because our brains are wired to remember concrete data.

PRINCIPLE 4: CREDIBILITY