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Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

By Chip Heath & Dan Heath

Summary/Book Overview:

Made to Stick takes an interesting approach to examining ideas and what makes them successful. The Heath brothers take the ‘stickiest’ (most successful) ideas of today and their ‘unsticky’ counterparts and examine the factors that contribute to their success or failure. They identify six attributes that help make ideas stick: simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and stories (SUCCESs).

Focusing each chapter on a different attribute of successful ideas, the Heath brothers use examples of ideas that have stuck to explain how each attribute can be pulled into any idea to increase its chances of success.  A clinic in each chapter where readers can work on identifying the “sticky” factors and how to improve ideas that aren’t sticky provides a unique interactive aspect to the book.

Recommended Readers (who should read it (titles) and why):

  • People who enjoy good writing. The Heath brothers write very conversationally, use relevant examples, and explain their thinking in an accessible yet interesting way.
  • People who have ideas that they want to succeed. This book won’t help you come up with good ideas; it will help you to package your ideas using the SUCCESs template to optimize its stickiness.

Top Takeaways:

Remember the keys to SUCCESsful ideas:

  • Simple: Find the core. Share the core.
  • Unexpected: Get attention through surprise.  Keep attention through interest.
  • Concrete: Help people understand and remember; then help them coordinate.
  • Credible: Help people believe.
  • Emotional: Make people care. Appeal to self-interest
  • Stories: Get people to act. Stories as simulation and inspiration.

About the Author:

Chip Heath is a professor or organizational behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.  He lives in Los Gatos, California. Dan Heath is a consultant at Duke Corporate Education. A former researcher at Harvard Business School, he is a cofounder of Thinkwell, an innovative new-media textbook company. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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