Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

made_to_stick

By Chip & Dan Heath
ISBN400064287
This book, inspired by Malcolm Gladwell’s best selling book The Tipping Point examines the concept of idea “stickiness”,  that is why some ideas are unforgettable and others aren’t.
The authors have looked at what makes some stories memorable and others not.
They boil it down to 6 key principles; simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions and stories.
Fundamentally this book is about storytelling.  When you are sitting around the corporate campfire how do you tell a story that gets the message across and is memorable.  I found this book to be incredibly useful.  There are many anecdotes and case studies that really open your mind as to how to construct a message that will cut through.
One of the key concepts that they talk about in the book is the idea of the curse of knowledge.  The proposition is that many business people and  professionals with more than a few years of specialist subject matter under their belt become so familiar with the material may forget just how expert they are.
They know so much about their subject but they just cannot comprehend how anybody could know so little.  This of course leads to a message that goes straight over the heads of the audience and is thus potentially wasted.  I found this book to be a very easy read and there are many lessons that can be immediately adopted.

For further reading visit the authors website :    The Heath Brothers

Comments are closed.